Northampton Balloon Festival
The Northampton Balloon Festival is an annual hot air balloon festival held in Northampton, England.
The original festival was held in The Racecourse and managed by the Borough Council, and took place over a Friday, Saturday and Sunday in mid-August. The main features of the festival were the twice-daily hot air balloon lifts and a balloon glow, but other attractions included trade stalls, live music and arena entertainment.
The first festival was held in 1990. The start attractions were the Chubb fire extinguisher and the Rupert The Bear balloons. In its early years The Northampton balloon was a soaring success with families encouraged to come and enjoy the weekend, looking at balloons and visiting various trade stalls across the park.
In 2001 the festival was joined with the Northampton Town Show (previously held during July) to become the Northampton Festival, but has since reverted to its original name. Sadly the early years of the new millennium coincided with the rise of the "chav" and a growing obsession behind making money the festival became an oversized fairground full of topless louts. This was clearly the beginning of the end for what had become one of the town´s prized attractions.
The 2004 festival featured the Sugababes, Big Brovaz, and Ronan Keating.
The 2005 festival featured Rachel Stevens and Lemar.
The 2007 festival was a disaster due to poor attendance caused by bad weather on the last two days and the fact that the council decided to charge adults for admission, which discouraged many adults without young children from attending and spending money at the stalls.
The 2008 festival was scaled down from before, with fewer stalls, and featured Rick Astley and Signature but neither were able to revive the festival's fortunes and the event made a huge loss.
The Borough Council ceased its funding and in mid-2009 the festival was revived by new organisers and moved to Billing Aquadrome. It took place 14–16 August 2009 at the new location with free admission.
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