******* UPDATE 26.07.02 ******* Lambeth Council have given permission for the London Eye to now be a permanent fixture, thus it will NOT have to be taken down!
Last weekend ‘er indoors and my good self decided to pay a visit to the London Eye to see what all the fuss was about, I know it’s been open a while now but hey…
~~~~~~~ QUICK INTRODUCTION ~~~~~~~
The London Eye was built as a ‘millenium’ project in conjunction with British Airways and Lambeth Council along with several other financial sponsors / shareholders. The London Eye is located on the River Thames next to Westminster bridge therefore and is basically a giant Ferris wheel with 32 glass pods mounted on the outside of the wheel which is approx. 140 metres high giving an unrestricted birds eye view of London, and is currently ‘the world’s highest observation wheel’, however as a ‘millenium’ project it was only given planing consent lasting until 2005 (5 yrs) in which it has to come down, negotiations are on going at the moment with the local council to extend this. The ‘flight’ lasts 30minutes. NB: Anyone would think we were boarding a flight somewhere as BA constantly used words like ‘flight’ (ride), ‘boarding card’ (ticket), ‘flight schedules’ (times of operation)
~~~~~~~ BOOKING THE ‘FLIGHT’ ~~~~~~~
We had booked our tickets on the website which I found easy to use, this allowed us to skip most of the queues on arrival as all you need to do when you get to the ticketing office located in the old County Hall building is insert your credit card in the machine to collect you tickets, we also ordered a guide book on –line at the same time, to collect this the machine will print out a voucher to redeem at the shop counter. After collecting our tickets a guide told us to follow the queue to the ‘flight’ and was told that we would bard in 20mins, considering there were about 120 in front of us we seriously doubted this, however we moved quickly down the line until we reached the boarding area.
~~~~~~~ BOARDING THE ‘FLIGHT’ ~~~~~~~
We had been steadily moving for about 15mins when it came to the security check area, basically all handbags or bags were checked with a metal detector and boarding card thoroughly checked for payment. (I think this was an elaborate plan to suss people out first). The first view of the wheel is amazing as you board right underneath it, suprisingly the wheel never stops and moves at approx. 3mph only stopping for wheelchairs or disabled passengers, it is a weird feeling walking into a moving glass pod! Each pod holds up to 20-30 people so it explains the fast moving queues, we entered ours along with about 12 other folks.
~~~~~~~ THE ‘FLIGHT’ ~~~~~~~
As the pod ascends upwards you start to see things that birds can see such as into the back garden of 10 Downing St. The pod itself is glass from floor to ceiling and a glass ceiling as well. The floor is a hard surface with a long bench in the centre to make for comfier viewing, trust me though as you wouldn’t want to sit down or you’d miss things, each side of the pod is labelled North, South, East, West. This is so that if you purchased a guide book then you can follow the rotation of the wheel in you book, each page in the book has a view which matches up with the view from each direction, in the book places of interest and prominent buildings you can see from the wheel are marked. Even though it was windy you couldn’t feel a thing, or even fell the wheel moving, only when your view changed could you tell you were moving. Towards the end of the ‘flight’ a voice told us all to look east if we wanted our picture taken in the pod, to which I hastily declined!
~~~~~~~ FLIGHT PRICES ~~~~~~~
Adult £10.50 Child £5.00 under 16 £4.50 OAP £8.50 Guide Book £5.50
Tickets can be purchased online or in person.
Website: www.londoneye.com or www.ba.com
~~~~~~~ MY OVERALL VIEW ~~~~~~~
Considering London’s other ‘millenium’ projects, this one is ace, excellent, value for money and just awesome!
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Is it worth visiting?
Family Friendly
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