There are places that don’t exist, or rather, only existed in the imagination of Pete Docter and his teams at Pixar Animation Studios. Then Airbnb decided to change that. In May 2024, the platform placed, amidst the orange mesas of New Mexico, a timber-framed Victorian house painted in the film’s exact colour palette, crowned with a cluster of over 8,000 balloons inflated with compressed air over two weeks by a team of more than one hundred people. Carl Fredricksen’s house is real, and it floats.
A Set True to Every Detail
Stepping through the threshold, the illusion is complete. Every room was designed by the Airbnb teams in close collaboration with Disney and Pixar to match the film’s visual universe down to the very pixel. The living room features Carl and Ellie’s two armchairs, worn just enough, facing the fireplace. Photographs of the couple adorn the walls, tracing their shared life from childhood through to their golden years. On the table, Ellie’s Adventure Book awaits perusal. In the entrance, the letterbox bears the colourful imprints of their hands. Further on, Russell, the Senior Wilderness Explorer’s backpack, sits on a chair, and Dug’s bowl occupies its usual kitchen corner. The bedroom, with its two beds, accommodates up to four travellers. Built in three weeks, the house required that the exterior hues be validated colour by colour by the Californian studios.
The Suspended Moment: The House Takes Flight
It’s the moment all applicants describe as unforgettable. Before departing, guests gather on the lawn and witness the live take-off: the crane springs into action, the balloons tauten, and the house slowly rises fifteen metres into the New Mexico sky. The silhouette of the small house, suspended above Abiquiú’s red rocks, reproduces the film’s image so faithfully that several witnesses have spoken of the emotion of seeing an animated scene come to life before their eyes. Naturally, travellers are not on board during the ascent, but the visual effect, viewed from the ground, surpasses all that cinema promised. The surrounding landscape, that of artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s canyons, who lived and painted in this very valley for decades, adds an extra layer of poetry to the spectacle.
Activities and Itinerary
Airbnb has envisioned the stay as a true narrative immersion. Guests are invited to collect mail from Carl’s letterbox, prepare a picnic basket for an excursion in the surroundings, complete their own Adventure Book, and earn Junior Explorer badges, in direct reference to Russell’s character. As night falls, Abiquiú offers one of the purest star-studded skies in the American Southwest, far from any urban light pollution, transforming the terrace into a natural observatory. The stay is scheduled for one night, as a privatised single-property experience.
How to Try Your Luck in 2026
The Up house is offered complimentary, or at a symbolic rate under 100 dollars depending on the booking windows, as part of the Airbnb Icons programme. This programme is reserved for extraordinary experiences co-produced with figures from cinema, sport, art, and culture. Access is not reserved in the traditional sense: applicants submit a request via the Airbnb app during a limited registration window, state their desired dates and the reason for their application, then await selection by prize draw. Over 4,000 digital golden tickets were distributed during the first 2024 session, covering one-night stays between late June and mid-July. For 2026, Airbnb periodically renews application windows on the dedicated page airbnb.com/icons · following the brand’s official account remains the most reliable way to be alerted to openings.
The Up house goes far beyond a mere marketing gimmick. It embodies a fundamental trend in experiential hospitality: that of a place telling a story even before one unpacks their luggage. Whether one comes for rediscovered childhood, for photography, for the landscape, or for a night counting stars from Carl Fredricksen’s lawn, one leaves with something impossible to capture in an evaluation form. Perhaps that’s what adventure is.
