Brigham Young University broke the record for the world's largest water balloon fight Friday and produced plenty of smiles along the way.
With 3,927 participants and 120,021 balloons, the event unleashed a massive barrage of colorful cool for six minutes. It had taken students three days to fill that many balloons. A free lunch, music, and a blood drive added to the festival.
The previous record, held by the University of Kentucky, used 3,902 participants and more than 119,000 water balloons. BYU has to wait for official word from the Guinness Book of World Records, but event organizers say they are confident their record will be verified.
The BYU fight started at 12:20 p.m. and lasted about six minutes. Students were divided into two teams and given bags of about 30 balloons each.
Student volunteers started filling balloons Wednesday morning. In order to have enough balloons to break the record (120,021) some students worked all night long; some volunteers started at 9 a.m. on Thursday morning and stayed until the event concluded on Friday.
Organized by BYU Student and Academic Advisement Services, the balloon fight is just for fun, to add to the fun of summer term at BYU. Following the water balloon fight, students were served free lunch. More than 100 students had also signed up to be part of an American Red Cross blood drive.
During the water balloon fight, students from BYU's Ad Lab also filmed a music video, in conjunction with recording artist Kyle Andrews (and ad agency McCann Erickson). Andrews is in Provo shooting a music video for his song "You Always Make Me Smile." For information about BYU Ad Lab or the music video, contact Jeff Sheets at 801-422-3524.
