Bucket List tick off - What an amazing experience I had with my fab friend Shelley. We had such a great time. This was on my bucket list which has become extremely important to me since being given a terminal cancer diagnosis a month ago. A must do regardless of your personal circumstances.

You pay for the view not the service. - If you think about how much you pay for the experience. I Will say that you pay for the view. The service is not as expected. When we arrived at 6am we hope to have the opportunity to enjoy the first light in the air, but the balloon was not ready when we arrived. We needed to help for 1h30 before take off… so we missed the beautiful morning lights. The flight was really Nice and beautiful but not the same when the sun is up, also when we landed it was not smooth, we finished in a really hard bush, some of us were a little bit scratch. We had a glass of champagne but again, we needed to clean and put away things for almost 1h… It was a gift for my partner and i didn’t expect that he needed to work for doing the activity and lift really heavy things. I m disappointed when you know how much you pay for this kind of memory.

Crash landing. Avoid! - CRASH LANDING - Our hot air balloon ride in Wanaka with Adventure Balloons ended in a crash landing that required emergency response — including paramedics, police, and fire crews. My wife and I were among the injured; I personally suffered whiplash that took several weeks to recover. We understand that adventure activities carry risk — but the lack of meaningful safety preparation and the operator’s indifferent response left us shocked. Their tone was essentially, “these things happen.” No apology. No empathy. No refund. Just a flat denial of any responsibility. This wasn’t a minor bump — it was a serious incident that made local news: Otago Daily Times coverage titled 10-hurt-after-rough-landing-hot-air-balloon Personally, I believe there are better hot air balloon experiences out there — with operators who are more responsible, better prepared, and genuinely responsive when things go wrong. So make your decisions carefully.