Space Needle, Seattle

...office work party at the Space Needle. Although its probably not the first time I had come across the Space Needle its the first time that it sunk into my conscious as somewhere I wanted to visit. I like a tall building and I like a bit of travel (in case you hadn't noticed..) and so the Space Needle had been hovering at the back of my travel thoughts for a while and since its now just down the road (OK, so its four hours from Vancouver) I headed ...
...is also home to the Space Needle.

The Space Needle stands at 184 meters high and was designed by Edward E. Carlson for the 1962 World's Fair held in Seattle. The Space Needle required a large cement foundation and it took 467 cement trucks an entire working day to fill it. Completed in December 1961 and opened four months later for the World's Fair, arriving at the Space Needle gave me one of those "Wow I'm really here" ... more

One of the most amusing books I have ever read is "21 dog years, My life @ Amazon.com", by Mike Davies, obviously based around working at Amazon.com in Seattle. Mike is a call centre drone and the book tells of such things as his obsession with stealing office stationery - regardless of its usefulness, and one story where he crashed an office work party at the Space Needle. Although its probably not the first time I had come across the Space Needle its the first time that it sunk into my conscious as somewhere I wanted to visit. I like a tall building and I like a bit of travel (in case you hadn't noticed..) and so the Space Needle had been hovering at the back of my travel thoughts for a while and since its now just down the road (OK, so its four hours from Vancouver) I headed down to Seattle.

The Emerald City is the largest city in the American Pacific Northwest region and was founded in the 1850's. Known of course for being the beginning of all that is grunge and all that is coffee houses, Seattle is also home to the Space Needle.

The Space Needle stands at 184 meters high and was designed by Edward E. Carlson for the 1962 World's Fair held in Seattle. The Space Needle required a large cement foundation and it took 467 cement trucks an entire working day to fill it. Completed in December 1961 and opened four months later for the World's Fair, arriving at the Space Needle gave me one of those "Wow I'm really here" moments. Despite being nominated as the best place to get engaged by a Seattle paper in 1994 I managed to escape unscathed and remain single.

On entering the Space Needle the first thing they do is search your bags, and then you queue up for the lifts. The lifts travel at 10 mph or 14 feet per second but unfortunately the queue does not. To distract you while you wait there are fun little facts on the wall like "On a hot day the Space Needle expands about 1 inch" and you can peek over the balcony into the gift store (I'm sure this is just a coincidence though and not planned). As the queue advances you can pose for a photo in front of a fake backdrop, and they then try and sell you the photo later after you come back down from the deck. We resisted.

There are 848 steps from top to bottom so I caught the lift. The lifts have glassed windows so you can watch as you ascend to 520 feet above Seattle, or if like me you hate glassed in heights (oddly I have no trouble with open heights) you can listen to the attempts at humor by the person staffing the lift.

As you step out of the lift you can choose to wander around inside, there is a display with more facts about the Space Needle, including a story of an April Fools joke by a local radio station involving the Space Needle falling down, you could grab an expensive ice cream or drink or wander outside to the deck.

The outside deck has free telescopes for public use and free human guides. There are four guides and each will talk you through the local highlights that you can see and then walk you around to the next guide. Guides are very easy to spot as not only do tourists surround them but also they are forced to wear very ugly shirts. The Guides chats do perhaps go on a little bit and by the third guide I had had enough, but the stories are interesting and one thing we learnt was that Elvis once visited the Space Needle and on seeing a giant E on top of one the local hotels (it was a hotel whose name began with E) thought it was to celebrate his visit. Though my name also starts with E i was pretty sure the hotel hadn't been informed of my arrival and was equally sure it had nothing to do with me..

The view from the Space Needle encompasses Mt Rainer in the south and the Cascade Mountains the east. You can see Lake Union and if you squint really hard you can see the area Bill Gates lives in. There are signs around the outside deck pointing out what you are looking at.

Inside, next to the lifts, are the bathrooms. You have to walk down quite a few stairs to get to the toilets in a narrow little hallway, I tried to get back to the deck via a cleaning closet - that didn't work. The bathrooms were clean but I'm not sure how anyone with a disability would make it to them, I would assume there must be some kind of alternate route for anyone requiring that.

Just a step down from the observation deck, at 500 feet, the Space Needle also has a restaurant; SkyCity is a revolving buffet. The restaurant revolves on a track and wheel system using a 1 ½ horsepower motor. Apparently you have to make reservations very far in advance and at certain times of the year they wont even book parties with more than ten people. There is also a private rooms for functions available to hire. Unsuprisingly the restaurant has won many awards locally for being the most romantic restaurant in town.

Back down at the bottom the gift store is quite extensive; with a wide range of prices which starting at about 80c for a pencil and rising to out of my budget. There are many postcards and t-shirts as per usual, and some odd looking space needle jewellery, pens, posters etc. There are also those mini cameras with pictures inside for kids. My friend was looking at one of these and clicking through it, as he finished and put it down a disgusted family, with a grandmother, tched him and asked if he had had enough. Amusingly they had assumed he was taking photos of their grandmother. I'm not overly a souvenir buyer these days, I have a lot of tat and its taking over my at the moment fictional but i have to live somewhere space in Australia, but I was in one of those must buy something moods and came away with..
1 Funky brown t-shirt with 50's style pink writing on it reading Space Needle. I refuse to wear souvenir t-shirts in public but i do like to sleep in them.
5.Hypercolour Space Needle pencils. It was so hot on the day we were there they changed colour and refused to change back until I got to Vancouver.
3.Postcards. I like to annoy my brother as he is a traveler too but not as traveled as I, its called rubbing his nose in it.
1Tin of mints. I love mint tins, i don't know why, i think its because they are compact and I reuse them to hold things like earrings and hair clips. And I just so happen to like mints too.

At the base of the Space Needle is a fun fair, with those knock the bottle down type games (we didn't win) and a few rides. You have to buy coupons for the rides and use those rather than cash. There's a water ride, a rollercoaster and a few other things to make you dizzy. About ten rides in all.

At the back of the fun park is the Experience Music Project. This funky looking building is a music museum, which has some interactive exhibits (like pretending you are in front of a crowd of adoring fans), the very colourful building is hard to miss.

There is also several other museums in walking distance.

Practicalities.

The all important How Much (in US dollars)
Adult: $14.00
Youth: $7.00
Child (age 3 & under): Free
Senior (ages 65+): $12.00
Active Military Adult w/ ID: $11.00
Active Military Youth w/ ID: $5.50

You can also pay a little bit extra and get a pass that allows you to go again in the night, called a day night pass. There's also group rates and an annual pass. So a lot of choices on how much to pay, except when you are me, a non military, non local, non junior, non senior.. I just paid $14.

When can I go?
The Space Needle is open from 9am to Midnight.

Where is it?
The official address is 400 Broad St. Seattle, WA 98109, but basically go to Seattle, look up. You'll find it.

Contact
206.905.2100

Excuses Excuses
Excuse the switches in spelling, feet and meters. I'm doing my best to remain Australian but spell checkers and fact checkers are conspiring against me.

It gets weird from here
- At one point there were plans to build a storks nest at the top of the needle. This idea was binned when they learnt that storks couldn't live in Seattle's climate.
- Another city in the state of Washington offered a truck load of money to Seattle City to move the Space Needle to their town.
- There is a claim, by the Committee Hoping for Extra Terrestrial Encounters, that the Space Needle was built to send transmissions to other solar systems.

Ciao's Question "Is it worth visiting". Yes if you like a tall building with views. Its nothing more than that really except a slightly funkier version of the usual.

An extra little bit at the end prompted by a comment on this review.
Another thing you can see from the Space Needle is the monorail. While you can see the monorail, you cant ride it at the moment. It seems that even though the drivers of the monorail were aware that there were certain points on the tracks where they couldnt pass each other, two drivers decided to give it a go anyway. As a result the monorail has been out for months. This I learnt from the bad-shirted guides.

 

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