Ride safety video

We get plenty of these ride safety/accidents stories every year. It always brings up the argument of whether or not it's the operators responsibility to stop riders from doing almost anything (like reaching back to high-five a friend, as told on the video). "Hold on to the handle bar at all times."

None of this is new to us, but the interesting thing to me is the Ferris wheel with every other car facing the opposite direction. It looks like the arms that hold each seat are extended as well, probably making a normally creepy old fashioned Ferris wheel even creepier (a good thing in my book).

That Wheel is an Eli Double Eagle wheel. The arms are no longer than on a standard Eagle or Aristocrat wheel, but there is no outer rim steel because it isn't needed, and there is no drive rope because it is a hydraulic rim drive wheel...but the rim is a smaller diameter than the wheel.

The reason for all this is that the wheel is loaded from the center instead of from the end, which means riders have to walk under the drive rim to get to their seats. The reason half the seats are turned around backwards is that when combined with the center loading, it allows two seats to be loaded at once, so it only takes 8 stops to load the wheel instead of 16.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.