Heads up: Don't look for balloons at Invesco Field

One of the signature images of a political convention is the presidential nominee celebrating on stage as thousands of multicolored balloons waft from the ceiling. Not this year.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama will be accepting his nomination at Invesco Field at Mile High, an open-air football stadium. That means there's no ceiling from which to hang balloons.

Convention officials are keeping quiet about their plans for Thursday night's celebration. "We'll have no shortage of energy and enthusiasm in that stadium Thursday night," said Jenni Engebretsen, deputy CEO for public affairs for the Democratic National Convention.

Skipping the balloon drop might be to the Democrats' advantage, considering what happened last time. Democrats budgeted $250,000 to make 100,000 balloons to drop around nominee John Kerry at the Fleet Center in Boston. But something went wrong and too few balloons dropped after Kerry concluded his speech.

Convention producer Don Mischer could be heard on CNN trying to get balloon droppers to get the rest of the balloons going. "I don't see anything happening," he said angrily.

Balloons were dropping - and Kerry, family members and delegates were happily batting them around - but not as many as scheduled.