Sundance Balloons

DONT book through sundance. Not only am I mad at the weather now, but the quality of service at Sundance is beyond poor.
Still haven’t gone on my flight and the stupid lady on the phone named Katherine had nothing to say and had no information whatsoever on anything I asked.
I understand the weather conditions is THE factor that allows the flight to proceed but that should have been made clear that flights would be canceled over and over again.
I have made 6 attempts to reschedule a flight and only 2 apparently show up on file because their system refused to let me schedule a flight. When I tried the last time, it didn’t come up with my flight even existing because I can’t book in October, (even though flights are schedule between May and October)
The old lady on the phone did not make me feel any better about my situation and didn’t sympathize (considering this happens so often) Please learn what it means to be in the customer service industry and understand how to deal with distraught customers.

Flying in a hot air balloon was one of my bucket list things so when a special occasions presented itself I booked a flight.
On one side of the coin, I REALLY regret having booked with Sundance. On the other, I’m happy to have checked off that bucket list item now that it’s past.
Why do I regret using Sundance?
Flights are nearly $ 300 a person and you pay when you book ($ 400 for weekend flights). You get a voucher and you book yourself online. Fine. What they don’t tell you when you’re handing over that money is most of the balloon flights are cancelled and you are never getting your money back — they will just keep booking you. Your flight voucher is only good for a year though and if you want to get them to extend that flight voucher you better have a lot of cancellations before asking.
We had about a dozen cancellations before our successful flight and this is very very common. Give the flight line a dingle (it’s a recorded message) just to see if they flew today: (403) 503‑0633 — if it’s anything like my unofficial poll, flights are a go ahead about 5% of the time. After getting cancelled on, it’s about 2 — 6 weeks to rebook. That means if you’re trying to celebrate a special occasion the odds are not in your favor you’ll fly that day — or even within the same calendar year of the special occasion.
What’s involved with a cancellation? Well… if it’s a weekday (which I picked because it was less expensive) you will need to take the morning off work at minimum (remember I did this 13 times by the day we flew!). You will be asked to call in at 10:30 — 11:00 pm to check the flight line — if you are lucky it’s an outright cancellation right then and then you can sleep normally. If you are not lucky, they will instruct you to call back at about 3:30 am to check the weather and the reports will sometimes come in late so you stay up calling in over and over. (do the math on how much sleep you’ll be getting here btw) Depending on where you live — you might have to be dressed and driving before you find out if you’re flying because they meet up very early (6am the day we flew — this changes by the season and is later around new years when days are short). Realistically you may be half way there by the time you realize you can drive home and go back to bed.
For me, going through months and months of sleep depravation, mornings off for nothing and constant disappointment was killer to my enthusiasm for the trip. I was barely prepared to fly the morning I called in and hear it was a go. That meant one of our cameras had a dead battery which made me quite sad. :(
Moving on to the actual flight…
Overall the actual experience was pretty cool.
We met up in the parking lot of the Blackfoot Inn at a crazy early time in the morning. The wind had shifted so we drove in the van to another launch point. The crew set everything up and that took quite some time (I had no idea how time consuming this was! I think it was 2 hours until take off). You fly in a 12 person +pilot basket — which I hadn’t expected. You have very little space in the basket, I was a bit lucky because my quarter of the basket only had 2 people in it so there was a bit more room. The winds really dictate where the flight will be. For us they ended up being very slow and headed over the industrial areas which was not my favorite view. We did get a nice view of the core and some farm land by the end. Being up there was very peaceful — it was surprisingly stable and nothing like a small air craft. We landed in a construction site — actually on a future overpass of the ring road which was kind of interesting. The pilot and chase crew were all very good and professional — I felt very safe and have no qualms with the actual experience. At the end of the trip we celebrated with a little bit of sparkling wine and rice crackers which was a nice touch and a tradition in the sport. I’d say by the end it was close to 11 by the time we got back to our cars. The flight itself was only about 1 hour of that 5 hour period.
Overall I’d really liked my flight. Hated everything leading up to it. I know there is another balloon company in Calgary that has a «don’t pay until you fly» policy and I really like that model. They are not as large of company and I can’t speak to their safety record or whatever else but I like the business aspect. I would have liked the option to just give up on flying for a while at the peak of frustration — I hate the feeling of obligation because they had my money and being forced to keep trying to fly when I wasn’t excited anymore. If given the chance — DO go hot air ballooning but know what you’re getting into and check out the competition!
Review #19 of Unilocal’s 30 day challenge