The soaring popularity of drone spectacles has seen them edging out fireworks as a must-have festival centrepiece in recent years.

They’re more environmentally friendly, are generally considered safer and offer plenty of creative potential when it comes to wowing audiences with aerial storytelling.

But, as Vivid Sydney’s drone show Star-Bound illustrated this week, things can go awry.

“Everything seemed normal and then, very shortly after that first image was displayed on the southern side of Cockle Bay, you started seeing drones dropping in the water,” a witness named only as Robert told ABC News.

“… from there, it was a cascading failure of the drones.”

The Monday night show was one of 22 sessions planned to take place across 11 nights at Darling Harbour’s Cockle Bay during Vivid, Sydney’s annual festival fusing art, innovation and technology.

Organisers have touted Star-Bound as the festival’s “most ambitious drone show program yet”, promising it transforms the area into “a breathtaking theatre of light, sound and storytelling”.

“With Star-Bound, we’re evolving the Vivid Sydney drone shows from a sequence of singular images into a larger, poetic story – one that celebrates life, creation, hope and renewal,”  Vivid director Brett Sheehy said on the weekend, adding that it was a show “both intimate and epic”.

But at Monday’s night’s 7.30pm show, almost 90 drones moved away from the formation, with festival-goers watching on as they then fell from the sky.

The witness who spoke to the ABC reported that the drones made large splashes in the water, with some “crashing” into the marina wharf: “It sent people running… I know security was concerned.”

Vivid Sydney, which insists all the drones stayed within the safety boundary of the show’s parameters, has cancelled several scheduled Star-Bound sessions while it carries out an assessment.

Operator SkyMagic said the incident was the result of an “unforeseen change in the radio frequency”.

“This anomaly caused a number of drones in the fleet to enact failsafe landing procedures in response to compromised positional accuracy,” it explained in a statement.

A mixture of technological failure and human error has led to a number of other mishaps at drone events around the world in recent years, making them memorable for all the wrong reasons.

A dive in the Yarra

Australia’s biggest drone disaster occurred during a light show presented at Melbourne’s Docklands in July 2023 to celebrate the Matildas’ warm-up game with France ahead of the World Cup.

Drones abandoned the planned formations and collided with each other, with more than 400 ending up plunging into the Yarra River. Only around half were later retrieved by divers.

“The drones did exactly what they should’ve done with any technical glitch and they auto-rotated and landed,” Vic Lorusso from drone operator Australian Traffic Network said at the time.

“Unfortunately, when you’re over water they auto-rotate and land into the water.”

A later investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the wind conditions at the time of the show were more than twice the drones’ limit, but that this hadn’t been identified by the remote pilot.

“It also shows the impact human factors can have on drone operations, and how they should be actively considered and managed,” ATSB Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell said.

More red faces than red noses

Organises of a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Drone Show  in England last December were forced to apologise after audience members described it as an “utter shambles”.

Around 600 drones were supposed to light up the sky over a showground in West Sussex with festive displays featuring Rudolph, Father Christmas and the Abominable Snow Monster, but the routine was plagued by what operator Lumina Sky Theatre described as technical difficulties.

Missing drones meant there were gaps in the formations from the outset, viewers couldn’t make out what the imagery was supposed to be, and the big finale reportedly ended “with families looking up at an empty sky”.

“The show was a complete and utter shambles. A massive waste of time and money,” wrote one audience member on social media.

Is it a tooth? The drone imagery at the Christmas show was slammed for being unrecognisable. Photo: Lacey Bull / ITV

Christmas catastrophe

There were more serious consequences after a number of drones went rogue at a Christmas light show in the American city of Orlando in December 2024.

The free aerial show was being watched by hundreds of people at Lake Eola Park when several of the drones collided with each other and some fell to the ground. One struck a seven-year-old boy in the chest, causing serious injuries that required him to undergo open-heart surgery.

A preliminary report by the US’s National Transportation Safety Board identified a combination of operating errors leading to the Orlando incident, and noted that there was a “misalignment” when the drones launched.

The mother of the injured boy later filed legal action against the City of Orlando and drone operator Sky Elements.

It’s raining fire

A show combining drones and fireworks was perhaps always going to be either spectacular – or a spectacular disaster.

At an event called The Sound of Blooming Flowers celebrating China’s national day in October last year, organisers promised that bringing the two together would light up the sky in an eye-catching display over Liuyang, in the Hunan province.

Instead, the drones malfunctioned and videos shared on social media showed chaotic scenes as onlookers screamed and sought cover when sparks and burning debris began raining down from the sky. Remarkably, there were no reports of injuries.

“This was supposed to be beautiful, but it turned into something out of an apocalypse,” one user wrote.

Terrible! A major accident occurred in China due to the central computer malfunctioning during a drone show.

pic.twitter.com/yH1ohdGkXq

— Tansu Yegen (@TansuYegen) October 3, 2025

In its latest update, Vivid Sydney apologised for causing disappointment by cancelling the Star-Bound drone shows scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, saying “public safety remains our absolute priority”.

“No decisions have been made at this stage regarding the drone show scheduled for Sunday 31 May and beyond,” said a statement on the festival’s website on Tuesday afternoon.

“Further updates on future performances will be provided when available.”