Balloons over Waikato

The festival spreads across a city rather than occupying a field. Balloons launch from a different site most mornings, land where the wind puts them, and the week is built so that a resident can watch it from their own suburb — which is also why the attendance figure is as large as it is. The calendar has the comparisons.

The Nightglow is the exception, and the way it is run is worth knowing before you travel. It is free, and it is ticketed: tickets cost nothing but have to be claimed in advance, because the site has a capacity and the event outgrew it. They are released on announced dates and they go quickly.

The competition side is real rather than decorative. Pilots fly tasks — the key grab, where a balloon has to be flown accurately enough to take a key off the top of a pole, is the one spectators can follow without knowing the rules.

New Zealand autumn is the reason the festival is in March, and it is also the reason mornings get cancelled. The organisers call each launch early, and the difference between a full ascent and an empty park is a decision made before dawn.

Nothing in the programme puts a member of the public in a basket. Commercial flights over the Waikato exist and run outside the festival, from operators the event does not sell for. It is the pattern this list keeps finding: the larger the crowd, the less likely the festival is to be the one selling the ride.

It is run as a trust rather than as a business, and the programme shows it: balloons visit schools during the week, the competitive tasks are flown over public land, and the parts that cost money to attend exist to pay for the parts that do not. That structure is the reason a free festival of this size has survived in a city of Hamilton's size for a quarter of a century.