Navy Pier Rolls Out Its New Ferris Wheel This Holiday Weekend
(CBS) – For the first time, Friday, you can ride Navy Pier's new, bigger, taller and faster Ferris Wheel.
CBS 2's Vince Gerasole takes a test ride in one of the swanky new gondolas.
At nearly 200 feet, the Centennial Wheel stands 50 feet taller than the one it replaced. Its temperature-controlled gondolas will hold a total of 420 passengers, and that's 180 more than the old attraction.
Designed in The Netherlands, this model did not go up overnight.
Crews braved Chicago's ever-changing winter weather as they worked from last September till now to dismantle the old wheel and assemble the new one.
The original wheel drew 1.5 million people to the 1893 Columbian Exposition.
"A lot of people don't realize it was actually an attempt to one-up Paris and the Eiffel Tower," author John Schmidt says. "It moved – the Eiffel Tower didn't move."
Now, all these years later, a new wheel is spinning into Chicago history.
For more information about the Ferris Wheel and Navy Pier, click here.
