Wild View Yonder

Please visit Wild View Yonder, a collection of aerial photography from Shutter-Eye.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Look before you cross


Monday, July 02, 2012

Seattle Great Wheel

This is the inaugural weekend for the brand new Seattle Great Wheel, a large Ferris wheel on a pier on the Seattle Waterfront. As one might imagine, the queues for this attraction are fairly long - roughly an hour from the beginning of the ticket line to boarding the gondola. The price is $13 per adult; $8.50 for children 12 and under.

More information: Seattle Great Wheel web site.

The Seattle Great Wheel on Opening Weekend
The ticket is a card with bar codes that correspond to an account that can be reloaded and reused. One is pictured at the bottom of this post.

The ride is smooth and comfortable. The gondolas are enclosed. There are narrow slit windows at the top that can open for ventilation and there is also heat and air conditioning. There's even a call button on the ceiling in case someone has an emergency. The ride can operate rain or shine. And it has that new Ferris Wheel smell!

Edge-on
A few of the people in the gondola I rode were initially a bit skittish about the heights but settled down after the loading rotation and were fine after that.

This thing is big
I am not posting many view pictures - we'll leave that for the experience of riding the thing. I will comment though that at about 200' high, the view of the waterfront is quite impressive, but it is dwarfed by the city itself.

From inside a gondola it looks a little like a roller coaster
I don't know if I'd make this a regular thing, but I enjoyed it and might return to share it with visitors on special occasions.

The wheel also has an elaborate LED light show which I will return to photograph some evening in the future, when the days are shorter.


The ride is smooth and comfortable with Air Conditioning!

Viewed from the Pike Place Market skybridge

Ticket card