Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Designed like a giant bicycle wheel, it's a pan-European undertaking: British steel
and Dutch engineering, with Czech, German, French, and Italian mechanical parts. It's
also very “green,” running extremely efficiently and virtually silently. Twenty-five people
ride in each of its 32 air-conditioned capsules (representing the boroughs of London) for
the 30-minute rotation (you go around only once). From the top of this 443-foot-high
wheel—the second-highest public viewpoint in the city—even Big Ben looks small. Built
to celebrate the new millennium, the Eye has become a permanent fixture on the London
skyline.
After buying your ticket inside, you'll be aggressively ushered into the
London Eye
4-D Experience,
a brief (four-minute) and engaging show combining a 3-D movie with
wind and water effects. This bombastic ad for the attraction you already bought a ticket
for, in some ways, is more exciting than riding the Eye itself. You can politely skip the
show if you just want to get on the wheel, and you have the option of coming back later
to see the movie (which is free to enter, even if you don't buy a ticket for the Eye).
