Move to Bowen Ranch proves challenging for EP Balloon Festival

Moving to a new location out at Bowen Ranch in the Far Northeast proved to be challenging for the 31st annual El Paso Balloon Festival.

A larger than expected crowd showed up for Saturday night’s balloon glow, leading to heavy traffic congestion along McCombs, Martin Luther King and back to US-54.

This resulted in thousands being turned away as the festival reached capacity of nearly 5,000, according to KLAQ/Townsquare Media General Manager Brad Dubow.

“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,” Dubow said. “We had about 4,500 people inside. The facilities were pretty much full and we couldn’t let anymore people in.”

Complicating matters for balloonists were winds and mesquite thorns in the fields where they were launching.

“I told them point blank I’m not going to set up my balloon on that field, if they want us to set up, because of these thorns,” balloonist Ken Ferguson told ABC-7.

ABC-7 received numerous phone calls from people Saturday night stuck in the traffic mess. East El Pasoan James Burns told ABC-7 he sat in traffic for more than an hour, hardly moving at all.

“We went down the road and saw a lot of cars turning around,” Burns said. “Later we heard they were at max capacity, but the Bowen Ranch is huge. We were listening to the radio. They should have said something.”

Braulio Castro wrote on KLAQ’s Facebook page: “My 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.”

Linnea Hanson added on Facebook: “This was awful. No food, 5 toilets, 1 balloon got inflated … No cop within a mile and a 10 mile long nightmare leaving. If this is your fault, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Dubow said Town Square media will learn from the first year at Bowen Ranch and will determine later whether they will return next year or find a new location.

“We have to study the access,” Dubow said. “The folks at Bowen Ranch said that there’s a lot of versatile things we can look at going forward especially with time and everything.”

Dubow added that something also needs to be done about the area for the balloons.

“You can’t have a balloon rally without balloonists,” Dubow said. “It looks green it looks great, but when you really get out there from a balloonist perspective you’ve got to look at it through their eyes. And so it was a tougher location. It was pretty to look at, but landing and obviously and laying out your balloon is the critical part.”

KLAQ offered this apology to complaining balloon fest fans on its Facebook page:

“As you may have read on social media, Saturday night’s Balloon Glow and military tribute did not go as we would have liked it to. Or, truthfully, as ANYONE would have liked it to. Right now, please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and misunderstandings that took place. We’ll give you an honest, full account of what went wrong and what we’re going to do to fix it very soon. Let us get to the other side of the festival, and we’ll offer a more extensive apology – we promise. We’re very grateful for the support you have shown us in the past for the Balloon Festival and for the support you still show us, and we’re going to work to make this right going forward. We owe El Paso better, and we’re going to make sure we deliver it.”