This balloon drop at The Roundhouse in Camden was a little different because Google wanted big balloons. When we drop smaller 11″ they get jumped on and burst but when BIGGER balloons fall everybody wants to bop them back up into the air and punch them around
the room. The Roundhouse itself is a spectacular brick building originally built as a railway repair shed. Apparently it took 15 years to build and shortly after finishing the size of the trains changed and they could no longer turn around in The Roundhouse. The theme for this event was Gold & Black and we had to stuff our net with 36″ & 16″ Gold. The length of net was dictated by the Hex Truss at 38ft. I estimated we’d need 50 x 36″ & 150 x 16″ – in the end we used 70 x 36″ & 150 x 16″. We very nearly filled the net with nothing as FedEx lost the parcel, they tried to blame Cyber Monday but surely even Postman Pat can deliver a box in 4 days.
Even though the balloons were bigger we treated this the same as any drop. The total weight will be the same so there’s no need for extra strength. We supported the main weight with 500b nylon line and used 2 x 150b pull lines which were chain stitched into the centre of the net.
UPDATE: We were back at The Roundhouse on 1st June 2016 installing a 1000 drop to celebrate their 10th Birthday.