While visiting their uncle in Atlanta, teenagers Anna Howington and Katie Cain from LaGrange, GA decided to go sightseeing. Instead of looking up at the city from the back of a tour bus, however, they looked down on it from 200 feet in the air while riding Atlanta’s newest attraction, a ferris wheel called Skyview Atlanta, which opened to the public July 16.
The idea of bringing a ferris wheel to Atlanta was pitched by Todd Schneider, one of the two owners of Skyview Atlanta, the company that owns and operates the ferris wheel. While vacationing in Europe with his wife, Schneider visited Paris, which has a ferris wheel across from the Louvre. After taking a ride on this ferris wheel, the same type as Skyview Atlanta, Schneider was inspired to bring the urban ferris wheel to America. He called up his then business partner and now co-owner of Skyview Atlanta, Al Mers, and told him his idea. Though skeptical at first, Schneider and Mers crunched the numbers and decided they could make a profit off this type of ferris wheel.
The partners launched their ferris wheel business in Myrtle Beach, S.C. with a ferris wheel called SkyWheel. Though successful, Mers and Schneider sold their interest in the wheel and built another one in Pensacola, Fla. as a “test market,” but were not planning to keep the ferris wheel there because Pensacola had a seasonal market. Out of a list of cities including St. Louis, Miami, Houston and San Diego, Mers and Schneider chose Atlanta to be the site of the Pensacola ferris wheel. According to Skyview Atlanta spokesman Jason Evans, Atlanta was chosen mostly because of its track record of successful businesses and location. Schneider and Mers studied the World of Coke, Georgia Aquarium, and other venues in Atlanta to gauge how many tourists came to Atlanta each year. Evans said so far, more people have ridden the ferris wheel, or boarded ‘flights’ as Skyview Atlanta calls them, than their projections originally estimated.
It took 2-3 weeks to create a plan for how to place and build the wheel. Evans said the ferris wheel would have taken a shorter time to site if not for an underground Georgia Power duct and the vast amount of rock and concrete they had to bring in.
“We had to bring in more than half a million tons of rock and concrete for the base [of the wheel],” Evans said. “We came across a Georgia Power power duct that we knew was going to be there but not exactly where because it was underground. We had to raise everything by one foot, so we had to bring in another half million tons [of concrete].”
Two week were required to build the ferris wheel, though it could have been put up in one week if the weather had been more agreeable. Evans described the ferris wheel construction as building a large, “safer” lego set.
“All the pieces of the wheel are premodulated and all you do is drop each one into place and put bolts into them,” Evans said. “It allows you take apart or put together [the wheel] very quickly.”
Senior Erin Fallen took a ride on the ferris wheel on Aug. 1 with her boyfriend, Grady alumnus Derwin Brown. Fallen said that she particularly enjoyed being in one of Skyview Atlanta’s 42 air-conditioned or heated gondolas. The gondolas can hold up to six people each, but the gondolas will not always be filled to capacity even if there is a long line.
“If it’s you and a date, you two go in a gondola,” Evans said. “We won’t put anybody else in there with you. We will never put people in with strangers.”
Howington and Cain both named Centennial Olympic Park as their favorite view from the wheel, as did Evans.
“You can watch the water go up to make the rings [in the fountain] and it looked pretty cool,” Howington said.
One flight lasts four rotations, which is about 15 minutes. Consequently, the average wait for the ferris wheel is 15-20 minutes unless there is a big festival or event in Centennial Olympic Park, which can bring the wait to around an hour or more. One ticket costs $13.50 plus tax for adults (13 years and older) and $8.50 plus tax for children (three to 12 years old).
