Amber and her team just returned from Balloon Wonderland, created inside the Hyatt Grand Cypress in Orlando, Florida between July 10-16 and helped to raise money for Give Kids the World. 

This balloon installation is the largest of its kind and featured over 500,000 balloons and the skill of over 400 professional balloon artists from all over the world. Give Kids the World Village is an 89-acre, whimsical non-profit resort in Kissimmee, Florida, which provides week-long, cost-free wish vacations to critically ill children and their families from around the world who want to visit Central Florida.

The balloon industry specifically chose this charity because their administrative costs (92.3% of all of the funds raised go toward running their program according to the Charity Navigator) along with their vision and mission-aligned so well with balloons. Balloon artists from around the world came together to support the cause and work on a massive project to fund awareness of the foundation and to raise money for their cause.

Knowing that we could make wishes come true for children melted our hears every time we walked through the installation.

For 3 months prior to the build, children participating in their wish week wrote wishes on golden balloon stars to be added to the balloon build. Each of those stars were placed into the display.

Examples like:

“I wish I could fly” was placed on a hot air balloon.

“I wish dinosaurs were real” was placed in the dinosaur area.

“I wish I could ride a zebra” was placed in the hand of the zebra in Jungle Safari.

Every single balloon artist that worked on this project was brought to tears reading and placing wishes and hearing stories from the volunteers working with Give Kids the World. 

If you would like to contribute to Give Kids the World or learn more about them, visit the