Hot Air Ballooning in Orlando

[jwhiting]

Hello,
Has anybody been up in a Hot Air Balloon over Orlando?

We will be in Orlando for 8 nights next June before shooting down to the Keys and Miami for the rest of our trip. Obviously we will visit our preferred parks (been 4 times before) but we are keen to look at other memorable non park options.

I gather the hot air ride means an extremely early morning start which in itself sounds like a good idea for the first full day what with the 5am waking up etc.

Any idea on price and tales of your experiences would be appreciated.

Thanks

Julian

 

[rainyUK]

Hi we went up in a balloon on 12 February 2004 and used

http://orangeblossomballoons.com/

We had a great time, I booked when we arrived - from my hotel room, that way we were not "tied" to a specific day/date before we went. They were really friendly - we met at a hotel at around 6am (they gave us a "wake up call" at around 5am - at our hotel to make sure we were up - which was good). We then waited for the other people, after the briefing, we left our cars in the hotel car park - and were taken via their transport to the take off site "Fantasy of Flight" (which I remembered seeing earlier in the trip on the way to Busch Gardens). We helped with the preparations of the balloon and were up in the air quite quickly - it was an "awsome" experience of floating up in the sky - I only wore a T Shirt even though it was pretty "chilly" on the ground as the burners in the balloon keep it pretty warm up there.

I would recommend the balloon ride, it was great fun, we will book with Orange Blossom again when we go back next year. The funniest part was when we landed - in the middle of a building site - quite safe landing on sand (apparently this was an extremely rare occurence & only happens every three years or so) and seeing the builders faces as they ran over to our basket to make sure that we were OK - it was such a laugh - there were 3 balloons - we had the smaller of the three with 6 people in it - the other balloons had around twice the number we packed the balloon away and chased the other balloons - they landed just off of a golf course - had some champagne & then we went back to the hotel where we started for an inclusive breakfast - we were charged $378 (two adults plus our son who was 6 - who travelled free) which was converted to £201.18 - IMHO great value for money & even if you experience it once - no two balloon rides are the same as they have different sites to take off from depending on the wind - it is also quite informative - the guys running the balloons are "experts" in their field and answered every question we had & more.

 

[DisneyAli]

Ditto the above, cannot praise Orange blossom balloons enough, have a look at their website. I went up in November 2002 and it was fantastic, and as you are finnished around 10.00 am it still leaves the rest of the day to do something else. Top class people.