Real Life Balloon House From Disney/Pixar’s ‘UP!’ Actually FLIES! [VIDEO]

Watching the flying balloon house in Disney/Pixar's 'Up!' of course got my wheels turning thinking 'yeah right' that'd happen in real life, but looks like the folks at National Geographic decided to bust (or should I say pop) that myth!

Last spring inquiring minds and a bunch of skilled people got together to turn this fantasy into reality. This whole project was done for a TV show that aired on the National Geographic Channel last fall called How Hard Can It Be? They built a replica house although smaller than scale and little more than a painted shell (minus furniture and kitchen appliances of course) and attached 300 huge 8 foot weather balloons each of which took a whole tank of helium to float. The house not only flew but climbed up above 10,000 feet and stayed aloft  for an hour! Check out ABC's coverage of this awesome spectacle below:

Unlike 'Up!', the pilots (either incredibly brave or absolutely crazy) would also need supplemental oxygen up that high in order to not lose consciousness, although that woulda fit the old man in the movie quite well if he was carting around an oxygen tank the whole time. Otherwise the two balloon-house flyers have an over-abundant supply of helium and I suppose they could suck on that and sound like chipmunks likely dying of laughter, literally!

But in all seriousness this team of experts not only satisfied their curiosity (and ours) but also set a world record in the process for the biggest cluster-balloon flight ever. Watch a collection of the actual National Geographic special excerpts below: