Here's how it could have been a real celebration!
So far, this "celebration" has been more of a forced resource drain without much reward for individual efforts. Some people are cranking out balloons, others are doing nothing. If BB wanted to really make this a celebration and motivate people to make balloons at the same time they could have done the following:
For every 100k balloons donated by an individual, that person gets those balloons converted to 1k granite.
Boom! Instant celebration for all players and an incentive to participate instead of letting others do all the work.
In my opinion, BB is 0 for 2 on global events when it comes to the fun factor, going back to The End of The World. If the next event is the same theme, i.e. forced resource drain with no individual motivation to participate, I vote for our server to opt out of further global events.
All things being the same as this event, would you like to participate in further global events?