Northeast Gate Balloon Fiesta

The New Mexico Hot Air Balloon Festival is one of the most famous hot air balloon events in the world, usually held in the fall of each year. The hot air balloons soar into the blue sky, forming a spectacular sight that attracts many tourists and photography enthusiasts. The scene of 800 hot air balloons taking off at the same time is really shocking, showing the beauty of colorful hot air balloons in the sun. This festival is not only a grand event for aviation enthusiasts, but also an important platform to showcase community culture and art. Are you interested in learning more about this event? It's worth experiencing it.

We parked in this lot for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during the Balloon Fiesta. We were coming from the Sandia Resort and the entrance to the road that leads to this entrance was perfect. Never any traffic. It was ideal and I would recommend it every time. Also leaving via this entrance was perfect as it puts you on the highway.

Ballon fiesta was so fun. Only drawback is walking back to where you parked your car.

This review is from someone that attended Fiesta from 1988 to 1998, 2003, 2013, and 2015+. All of these problems listed below has been an issue since I've attended the 2013 and newer Fiestas. The event it's self is amazing, I highly recommend watching on TV or from the thousands of locations outside of the park. If you do go to the park I'd recommend park and ride (online only which has solved a lot of the issues) and catching the very first rides into the park. This whole Fiesta, other than park and ride, is a fiasco! What is the point of paying $15 to go and park your car? They have literally 2 lanes entering the park coming from tramway/Roy. To top that off the traffic coming from Alameda join into those 2 lanes, so now you just bottle neck everything! Oh wait it gets better when leaving the park they have you leaving with 2 lanes(used to be 4) but no! That is a lie as you get closer to the frontage road it all bottle necks down to 1 lane (let me remind you it used to be 4 lanes bottle necking to 2 on the frontage road)! Oh but it gets even better once on the frontage road it stays 2 lanes until you are almost to I25 studios. Hey but at that point it should have just stayed 1 because you get everyone cramming to move right to just move back to the left lane to get on I25 once passed the Alameda stop light. Oh but you are thinking, 'oh its ok, they have a lot of awesome police officers directing traffic' (btw the officers are great except for the ones directing traffic out to a lane just to be told that they have to make a u-turn by the officers 1 street up because that lane doesn't exist because traffic is flowing in both directions, and instead of moving just 1 cone to let you in to merge with the traffic leaving, they move 5 cones and say that they don't want to bother with traffic merging, so why not work with the officers down at the field where traffic starts to tell them that that lane doesn't exist back to what I was saying)! Yay we have a lot of officers for directing traffic...nope just 4 officers at every intersection standing around. Great! Even better when entering the park from the frontage road giant signs say 'traffic use 2 turning lanes' with well illustrated pictures. Then when I use the second lane I almost get t-boned because some SUV doesn't want to stay in the right (first lane). My family is done with Balloon Fiesta and we won't be saying anything good about it. If you want to see Balloon Fiesta, do it from the TV or go to Rio Rancho, or the millions of other places to see the balloons, because the park officials don't care about the visitors, they only care about the money!

There are few experiences in life that can even begin to hold a candle to the Balloon Fiesta! TRULY SPECTACULAR!