Longleat Sky Safari
More than 200 hot air balloons from around the world ascended from Longleat as part of Europe’s largest annual hot air balloon event.
View photos of Longleat Sky Safari
Now in its fourth year, Sky Safari is one of the Wiltshire attraction’s most popular events; featuring spectacular mass launches, tethered daytime displays and dramatic night glows.
Pilots from as far afield as the USA, United Arab Emirates and Japan took part in the event as part of more than 160 individual teams; some of which flew multiple hot air balloons.
The star of this year’s event was Adelaide, a giant koala, which took to the skies to celebrate the opening of Longleat’s new Koala Creek which is home to a group of the iconic Australian marsupials.
Adelaide was part of an aerial ‘Safari Park’ which also featured Simbaloo the lion, a cheetah called Duma, a panther, a wolf, a fox, a parrot an owl and a guinea pig.
There were many other special shaped balloons making an appearance over the weekend; either flying or taking part in tethered displays with everything from a flying recreation of the Brandenburg Gate, a giant emoji and a full-sized version of the famous animated balloon from Disney’s ‘Up’.
Night glows, where tethered balloons are choreographed to a specially selected soundtrack, lighting up the night sky as their burners fire up in time to the music took place on the Friday and Saturday evenings.
Longleat has partnered with Exclusive Ballooning to put on the event which has attracted current and former world champions in hot air ballooning from Japan, USA and the UK.
Sky Safari is included as part of a Day Ticket to Longleat.
