Is Disneyland awesome? Well, it depends on your definition of awesome, and how strong childhood tendencies are within you. While there have …I love a good amusement park ride as much as the next guy, but even I might have some second thoughts about riding on this unusual double ferris wheel if it ever showed up at my local Six Flags.
Designed by the frequently whimsical, always creative team at Art Lebedev Studios, the Attraktsionus concept would link two ferris wheels together with a single set of cars that can travel between them.
Presumably, some sort of giant belts or cables would drive the cars between the two wheels, thus combining the sensation of riding a ferris wheel with that of a gondala ride. Thanks to the different wheel sizes, the whole thing looks like a giant bicycle chain when viewed from a distance.
I’m doubtful that we’ll ever see this ride turn up at real world amusement parks, but I do think it would be cool to create a whole series of fantastic and impossible rides like this. Oh yeah, there already is…
I go to amusement parks, but if I’m being honest, I’m not a big fan of heights. I don’t tell people I’m afraid of heights because I don’t want to be a puss. So I do the next best thing, I walk really slowly and scream at anyone who touches me even slightly because I’m convinced I’ll suddenly fly off those high platforms. It woudn’t have been a good day for me to be at Knott’s Berry Farm in California when 20 riders were stuck for four hours, 300 feet in the air.
The 20 people were riding the Windseeker ride, which takes the people over 30 stories into the sky, with their legs hanging in the wind, and spins them around. One woman says her husband kept her from having what I’ll call a “bat sh*t crazy” moment because she’s afraid of heights. She says he kept her calm, but the first half-hour was difficult.
Eventually maintenance workers were able to get all of the riders to the ground between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m., which was long after the park closed. This is the second time this month riders of this particular ride were left stuck in the air. Knott’s Berry Farm says the ride will remain closed until they can find the cause of the issue.
[via AP]
It's WiFi for your ass -- the animal kind -- and it's only available in Israel. Yes, as unreal and inappropriate as that proposition may seem, an historical amusement park located in the Middle Eastern country will offer tourists the opportunity to tweet, email and upload photos on-the-fly from the back of a burro. Known as Kfar Kedem, or Village of Yore (sounds exciting!), the unique attraction attempts to reenact life from the Common Era's First and Second centuries, albeit with a healthy dose of wireless internet. So far, only five of the village's 30 available donkeys are currently outfitted with routers, but park manager Menachem Goldberg's toying with an expansion to the rest of his "fleet." Sure, a biblical ren faire might not be your number one vacation destination, but if you're in the area, there's no way you can pass up this low-tech ride back in time.
Filed under: Transportation, Wireless, Internet
Israeli donkeys get WiFi-equipped for historical theme park originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Aug 2012 01:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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