Balloon race

[sal1978]

Hi, just registered to thank you all. my friend was looking at arranging a balloon race for a fundraising event for a carnival on the isle of wight and asked me to research cost etc.... as i was looking it up, came across the forums on here and learnt a lot about the damage that can be done. persuaded her very easily to have a virtual balloon race from http://www.xexexexexexexexexexexexexexexexe (cheaper than the real thing too) and now we have the isle of wight county press writing about it. hopefully they will get the message across to the people on the island as there are so many balloon releases here that it is so contradictive that the island boasts its love for wildlife when there are things like this happeningbut it is simply down to lack of knowledge as i think if people know about the damage that they wouldnt want to do it.
anyway, ventnor carnival are now also holding the balloon race to raise funds for hampshire and isle of wight wildlife trust as well as themselves.
manybe this is something that can be done in your area as i dont think the local newspapers would refuse to print stories encouraging people to stop damaging our wildlife.
if anyone wants to buy a balloon for our race you can buy one here http://www.xexexexexexexexexexexexex...entnorcarnival

Thanks for reading, sorry for the long post

p.s seems teh links dont work anyway, you can just google balloonrace ventnorcarnival and it should come up

[dampflippers]

I manged to stop a balloon race once by telling them about the dangers.

As an alternative you can do a balloon pop- all at once or in a line one at a time.

[sal1978]

hehe sounds fun, never thought of that.
everyone we have spoken to about the virtual balloon race is very excited about it so hopefully with it we can get the word across

[fairplay]

Just spotted this thread and the idea of a 'virtual' balloon race sounded like a good idea, so having no luck with the Ventnor Carnival web site, I Googled 'virtual balloon race' instead, and this is one of the sites which came up:
Balloon Release, Balloon Launch, Balloon Race, Balloon Net.

The photo shows masses of red balloons being released from a huge net under the heading of 'virtual balloon race' - this is definitely what i didn't want to see.

Are we being conned ?

Neil.

EDIT: Just noticed you have to click where it says 'demo' - so although they do provide virtual races, they still do the polluting sort as well.

[Farplace]

Yes it looks like they do far more with real balloons than "virtual". They imply that if you dont tie string to your balloon, it is environmentally friendly. These quotes from their website:

"Inflate the balloons with helium and always hand tie - so they are 100% biodegradable."
errr..... surely biodegradable means that it will rot? This will depend on just what the balloon is made from, not whether it has been inflated with helium and/or hand tied?

"It is perfectly secure and the whole process is environmentally friendly."
Environmentally friendly until it is eaten by some marine creature......

[sal1978]

you're right the company that does this virtual balloon race have a website for the normal balloons also and like a lot of us people that have been ignorant to this sort of thing believed that biodegradable balloons meant it was ok. i spoke to one of the chaps who does it and the virtual side of things has only just been started after his company has spent a lot of money setting up the virtual balloon race website. surely this is a good thing if the companies that sell the balloons are now switching over to the virtual side of things and realising the damage? at least they are doing something about it instead of it just being the profit that matters like other balloon sales businesses, the balloon race on here is by far the best and most reliable on the net.
oh and the balloon race isnt on the carnival website yet because we havent actually sorted the prizes as yet but it will be on there shortly. to go to ours its the above web address /ventnorcarnival,
just so you know, this aint a con, just trying to do a good thing and as usual on forums mess it up.