How We Rigged a Homecoming Balloon Drop at a School in San Jose

On Friday, October 23, we set up a homecoming balloon drop at a school in San Jose, the day before their Spider-Man Homecoming dance. A balloon net holding 500 red, blue, black and silver balloons had to go up across the ceiling of the school's multipurpose room. It took my husband Kyle higher on a lift than he had ever gone, and he is afraid of heights. Once it was up, a school staff member would pull the string at the dance, so it all had to work for someone who had never done it before.

How a balloon drop works

A balloon drop is a large mesh bag of balloons hung from the ceiling. It has a slit held closed by a string, and when someone pulls that string the slit opens and the balloons fall. To do a balloon drop in a big room, filling it is the easy part, and the harder work is finding safe places to hang it and getting the pull string to the edge of the room.

"It's basically a giant net that has a slit in it with a string holding it together and you pull the string and then all the balloons drop," Kyle said that morning. A balloon drop hung in the middle of a room also leaves the string dangling there. So we tie a string with a small ring at the side where the pull will happen, then run the pull string through carabiners and that ring so it travels across the ceiling and comes down at the end. We always use very thin string, because a thick one creates friction and gets caught.

Step 1. Zipping balloons into the balloon net in our truck

A full balloon drop net is far too big to carry through our office doors, so we parked our rental truck outside and loaded the balloons straight into it there. We open a bag of balloons, push it in, close it most of the way and pull the empty bag back out. As I said while we worked, "we pull the bag out over and over again because it won't fit through the doors of our office with it full."

By about 10am it filled the back of the truck, and the rest of the balloons rode along in bags to add at the school.

Step 2. Kyle's zipper trick at the school

Kyle got to the school just after 11am with about an hour to get everything up. He laid the balloon net along the tables and added the rest of the balloon bags.

He also worked out his own zipper method on the spot. He unties the front of a balloon bag, unzips the mesh just enough to fit it, shoves the whole bag in, zips it back up with a small gap and pulls the empty bag out through the gap. "One thing to know about me, I love figuring out a new, more efficient way to do something," he told the camera. It's pretty close to what I'd done in the truck that morning, but he was very proud of it.

Step 3. Finding a safe place to rig

A balloon drop needs somewhere safe to hang. As I explained that morning, "they can't be attached to just any ceiling. They need rigging points." A ceiling can look full of places to tie off when it isn't, because "you can't rig to, like, the metal lines that have gas or electric or water."

In this room Kyle tied the balloon net to the air conditioning ducts and clipped it in place with carabiners. A school staff member moved the lift for him each time he needed a new spot.

Step 4. Up the lift, even though Kyle hates heights

The ceiling in that room is high. "I'm terrified up here. Just for the record," Kyle said as the basket went up. In his recap afterward he said, "I've been in one lift before but the ceilings were way lower."

At the top, the pull string came up tangled, and Kyle spent about eight minutes working it loose with sweaty hands. "What I should have done is I should have checked all this down there," he said. "So this is on me." On the next string he untangled everything on the ground first, and we now check the string and rigging on the floor before anyone goes up.

Step 5. Teaching someone else to pull the string

The release would happen at the dance, so the last job was getting the school staff member who would pull it ready. Kyle leaves slack on one end of the string "so you could pull and get the feel for it before you do the real pull." He had her practice a few times while he told her when to stop, so she could feel how hard it takes without opening anything.

For the real pull, he told her to start about seven seconds before she wanted the balloons to fall and pull as hard as she could. Then he lifted the string so it wasn't dangling where someone could grab it, and taped the end down with a loose flap so one pull pops it free.

The finished balloon drop ready for the dance

Kyle finished around noon. The balloon net stretched across the ceiling, tied off to the ducts, with the pull string waiting at the side for the Spider-Man Homecoming dance on Saturday. Then he headed to our next setup of the day.

Planning a balloon drop for a school dance

Book early. We recommend booking at least two to four weeks ahead, and more for big installs or venues with strict access rules.

Set up the day before. Filling and rigging takes time, and it keeps the event day calm.

Ask about the ceiling and a lift. We need the ceiling height, whether a lift is available and what we're allowed to rig to.

Air, not helium. A balloon drop uses air filled balloons so they fall when the slit opens, and all 500 in this one were air filled.

Pick the moment and the person. Decide when the balloons should fall and who will pull the string, so we can show that person how before we leave.

Cost. Custom installs start at $650 and vary with the size of the setup. Our latex balloons are biodegradable, and our balloon drop page has pricing details and more photos.

Tell us about your event

Whether it's homecoming, a school rally or a countdown like our New Year's Eve balloon drop in San Ramon, we'd love to help you plan the moment. See more school event balloon decor, read our FAQs or learn about our family run team. We set up in San Jose and anywhere in the entire SF Bay Area, including San Francisco, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Oakland, San Ramon, Pleasanton and so much more.