{"id":1645,"date":"2014-03-31T06:53:57","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T06:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/?p=1645"},"modified":"2014-03-31T07:00:34","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T07:00:34","slug":"hamiltons-150-year-birthday-bash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/hamiltons-150-year-birthday-bash\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton&#8217;s 150-year birthday bash"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 745px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-1645-1\" width=\"745\" height=\"420\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/9887871.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/9887871.mp4\">http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/9887871.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p>A spectacle of flame and fabric filled Hamilton&#8217;s night sky on Saturday as an estimated 80,000-strong crowd gathered on Waikato University&#8217;s playing fields to watch the Nightglow.<\/p>\n<p>The annual ballooning event helped mark the city&#8217;s 150-year anniversary, as well as the university&#8217;s 50th birthday, with a medley of rock songs and a birthday cake standing more than 29 metres high.<\/p>\n<p>While the steadily-growing throng waited for darkness to fall, many took advantage of the numerous food stalls and carnival rides.<\/p>\n<p>Low thundering drums accompanied the inflation of the giant balloons at 8pm, while the crowd, many armed with cameras and waving glow sticks, grew quiet in anticipation.<\/p>\n<p>The Hamilton 150th Birthday Balloon soon towered over the rest, dwarfed only by the 33-metre high Rocketman.<\/p>\n<p>And then the event began.<\/p>\n<p>Illuminated by bursts of flame, each balloon became a visual instrument in a playlist of rock songs including, appropriately, Jerry Lee Lewis&#8217; Great Balls of Fire.<\/p>\n<p>Australian balloonist Kerry Frankel said there was no mystery to why the event was such a big crowd-drawer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The spectacle of seven, eight and nine-storeyed globes glowing in the dark in a field set to music . . . People are quite surprised about how spectacular it looks.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The night finished with a massive fireworks display.<\/p>\n<p>via- \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stuff.co.nz\/waikato-times\/news\/9885312\/150-year-birthday-bash-will-long-be-remembered\">Stuff.co.nz<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A spectacle of flame and fabric filled Hamilton&#8217;s night sky on Saturday as an estimated 80,000-strong crowd gathered on Waikato University&#8217;s playing fields to watch the Nightglow. The annual ballooning event helped mark the city&#8217;s 150-year anniversary, as well as the university&#8217;s 50th birthday, with a medley of rock songs and a birthday cake standing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,24],"tags":[979,977,946,978,202,976],"class_list":["post-1645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiesta","category-video","tag-150th-birthday-balloon","tag-cake","tag-hamilton","tag-kerry-frankel","tag-new-zealand","tag-nightglow","post_format-post-format-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Screen-Shot-2014-03-31-at-07.46.15.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3RIC2-qx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1645"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1652,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions\/1652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}