Balloon Festival Concerns

wreckage. the 31st annual el paso balloon festival was held at a new location this memorial day weekend- for the most part, everyone had a good time… despite concerns that came with the new location. this year it was at bowen ranch is in far northeast el paso near the new mexico state line. and while the nearby powerlines did not cause major problems.. something else… did! abc-7’s darren hunt just spoke with the festival’s organizers about it… he’s live in our newsroom with what he’s learned. darren? rick, there was a lot of excitement shifting this memorial day weekend tradition from wet and wild to bowen ranch … but some reported issues, such as thorns in the balloon launch field and a larger than expected crowd. “we just had overwhelming numbers of people show up and with the limited access of the roads out in that area, everyone kind of got stuck.” klaq an town square media g-m brad dubow was apologetic to thousands of balloon fest fans who never made it saturday night. “we had about 4500 people inside, the facilities were pretty much full and we couldn’t let anymore people in.” abc-7 received a few calls from frustrated festival-goers … including one man who told us he was stuck in traffic for hours only to be turned away. “we saw a lot of cars turning around. later we heard they were at max capacity, but the bowen ranch is huge. we were listening to the radio station. they should have said something.” carlos acost posted this on the klaq facebook page: “something told me that movin it to this ranch was going to be a bad idea, or that it wasn’t going to go as expected. seems as though my intuition was right.” and braulio castro posted: “m family and i were very disappointed. it was our first time attending the event. i truly hope it’s better next year and the misunderstandings are fixed.” “you know we could have done better job with parking, you know there’s kinks in the system, i got to be honest.” compounding matters was only a handful of balloonists launched due to concerns over mesquite thorns. “i told them point blank i’m no going to set up my balloon on that field, if they want us to set up, because of these thorns … if they want to have the fiesta here they need to do some major grading to remove all the thorns.” “31 years was this one of the most challenging? this was one of the most, like the first one at mountain shadow lakes, this 31st one at bowen ranch definitely was challenging.” klaq did issue an apology on its facebook page this weekend, stating, quote: “please accept our apologies fo the inconvenience and misunderstandings … we’re going to work to make this right going forward. we owe el paso better. we’re going to make sure we deliver it.” dubow said they have not yet determined whether the balloon fest will return to bowen ranch next year. rick. stormtrack weather