The Air Balloon, Horley

The Air Balloon is a Fayre and Square pub with a Wacky Warehouse soft play area at the rear. There are two outside seating areas full of picnic tables, one of which has a small climbing frame. Being a food led family orientated pub there is a large car park. During my visit at 20:00 on a recent Saturday evening there were four or five families present so the pub wasn’t that busy. However, the kitchen seemed to be struggling because a couple of early twenty-something lads with basic education were remonstrating with the barman about the amount of time they had been waiting for food. I’m not sure what I found the most disappointing. Was it the fact that they had no qualms about using very foul language in front of passing children or that the parents of these other children didn’t even bat an eyelid? The smell of deep fried food was overpowering and my half a pint of generic lager was a little tangy. Alongside the usual draught suspects was San Miguel and the two hand pumps were unused so no real ale. There was no background music and I didn’t spot any televisions, however there were some gaming machines. This isn’t a place I will be revisiting whilst it is in its present guise because it is awful.