At the apex of the new Ferris wheel ride at Navy Pier, almost 200 feet above the boat-riding, margarita-drinking throngs, there are important things to think about, such as:
How is it that Shakespeare and public radio fit in amid all of that?
If I take a photo now, of Lake Michigan to the east or Lake Point Tower to the west, what percentage of that image will be occupied by the other people in my gondola also taking photos?
What is that patch of duct tape doing on the top southwest corner of gondola No. 41?
And: People think Dutch engineering is good, right? The dikes, and all?
You could, of course, stop thinking and just be happy to be up there, like one of the fellow passengers in my gondola on an early ride this week, ahead of Friday’s official opening of the Centennial Wheel. “It is so great. I am so excited. We are about to summit,” enthused Tiela Halpin, 30, of Evanston, a docent on the pier’s Seadog tourism boats. “Here we go! We’re at the tippy tip top, yo!”
You could also get metaphysical aboard Chicago’s newest tourist attraction, a smooth-spinning sky ride that is not unlike being in a higher-end ski lift, and start contemplating humanity’s unceasing refusal to yield to gravity. Or you could ponder our apparently boundless desire to be amused, one that stretches back 123 years in Chicago to George Washington Gale Ferris’ very first wheel, built and twirled and celebrated at the World’s Columbian Exposition.
“Nobody but the man in the moon as he spins through space on his fiery chariot ever took so strange a ride,” said the Tribune’s June 22, 1893, account of that inaugural journey on the mother of all Ferris wheels. “The earth seemed gradually to melt away and then as gradually to grow near.”
We may be more jaded these days, and we certainly understand that Earth’s natural satellite is not afire, but the planet still melts and grows from Navy Pier’s new wheel, a Netherlands-built replacement for the pier’s 20-year-old Ferris wheel, which became a key lure to one of Chicago’s most popular destinations.
The new structure is undeniably eye-catching. It is both a massive physical artifact, a white steel cobweb that has captured 42 insects, the navy blue passenger pods dangling at the perimeter, and a centennial-year symbol of upgrades throughout Navy Pier designed to make a visit more urban contemporary, less state fair and more of a draw for locals.
Supported visibly by six massive legs that angle from the structure to the pier surface, the Dutch Wheels Model No. DW 60 is bigger than its predecessor: 196 feet tall versus 148, up to 416 passengers on a full load versus 240. It’s faster: The ride takes you three times over the top in 12 minutes, including stoppage time for boarding, versus one revolution in seven. And it’s more posh: It boasts fully enclosed cars, with full HVAC systems, versus the old wheel’s open-air configurations that left the ride at the mercy of weather and support poles vulnerable to passenger gum.
(By way of further comparison, George Ferris’ ur-wheel was taller still, 264 feet high, and something of a cattle car. It dangled 36 passenger cars holding 40 seats each and spun in a 15-minute circle. It did all of this, mind you, with 19th-century engineering.)
My early Centennial Wheel ride this week came on an afternoon when select press were brought on along with Navy Pier employees. I can report that it is a buttery, very safe-feeling spin through the sky, in a counterclockwise direction.
The passenger-compartment design aesthetic is utilitarian. If this were a new car, Consumer Reports would give it credit for visibility and stability while subtracting points for speed and maneuverability.
Ferris wheels are in no way thrill rides. Imagine a carousel tilted sideways, the horses replaced with eight-seat passenger pods. Imagine a Tilt-a-Whirl, again rotated to a sideways orientation, but without the tilt or the whirl. Your pulse might quicken a bit on first ascent. But it soon settles and the only sense of danger is of being lulled into a trance by the blue of the lake.
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Indeed, the Centennial Wheel is a more contemplative experience than Chicago’s other big skyward attractions, the Tilt! moving window wall at the John Hancock Center and the Ledge glass-bottomed boxes sticking out of the Willis Tower. Those put a pit in your gut; this mild ride, if anything, might settle your stomach after you ate too much junk down below.
Video is integrated into the new structure. Small in-car screens can play informational videos (but can also be turned off by passengers); the wheel itself is festooned with multi-colored LED lighting and a big central circular video screen that can show countdowns, abstract patterns and more.
The Centennial Wheel is not the equal of the London Eye, the 450-foot-tall riding ring over the Thames River that kick-started the modern craze for destination Ferris wheels. The Eye, which I rode on last summer, takes you up above water and shows you Big Ben and fellow famous British structures. The Centennial Wheel does give you (comparatively lower) lake and city vistas, but the nearer field of vision is of Navy Pier’s rooftops, and the view below is of a carnival ride, the new performance space being built for Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and the long building that houses shops, restaurants and NPR affiliate WBEZ-FM 91.5.
But it isn’t designed to compete with London’s wheel or the current, 550-foot record holder in Las Vegas. It just wants to be a better wheel than was there before, one that’ll give visitors a new thing to do as it justifies its $15 standard ticket price. At that, it seems likely to be a success. (Another sign of success is that officials reported 7 people had already contacted them about wanting to use the ride for engagement proposals Saturday.)
“It feels more luxurious, which is what the pier wants,” said Halpin, who pronounced herself a sucker for any Ferris wheel: “Even the scary, parking-lot carnival ones, I’ll get on those.”
The old ride, used about 800,000 times a year and now being set up in Branson, Mo., cost $8. On the new one, adult riders can pay an extra $10, or $25 total, to join the “Fast Pass” line. Or they can shell out $50 for a seat in gondola No. 42, which boasts a glass bottom and just four bucket seats, looking a little like the back of your prom limo.
For my second go-round — at no time has that term been more appropriate — I asked Marilynn Gardner, the pier CEO, to ride with my photographer, a publicist and me.
The clear floor was kind of cool, but it’s not like you’re looking out over the Grand Canyon. You see Ferris wheel cars below, and the rides around the base of the structure.
After some early nerves, Gardner pronounced herself delighted with her first ride in that car. With the new wheel and other pier renovations, “We wanted to create a more authentically Chicago experience,” she said.
Few things are more authentic to this city than a successor to George Ferris’ wheel.
“To the north, south and west as the car rose lay the great city, church spires and skyscrapers piercing the cloud of dun smoke which lay above it,” the Tribune enthused in 1893. “Nearer at hand lay the Magic City (of the World’s Fair), its white palaces shining like jewels set in green. Up and down the plaisance streamed a black river of people, all looking upward in envy at the swinging cars.”
And then the ride was over and people returned to their ordinary, earthbound existence, no longer the objects of envy, no longer at the tippy tip top, yo.
Twitter: @StevenKJohnson
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