Sky Whirl was the name of two

amusement ride Amusement rides, sometimes called carnival rides, are mechanical devices or structures that move people especially kids to create fun and enjoyment. Rides are often perceived by many as being scary or more dangerous than they actually are. This ...

s which featured triple Ferris wheels. Both debuted in 1976 at the California's Great America (in

Santa Clara, California Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...

) and

Six Flags Great America Six Flags Great America is a amusement park located in Gurnee, Illinois, within the northern Chicago metropolitan area. The amusement park originally opened as Marriott's Great America on May 29, 1976, as one of two theme parks built by the ...

(in

Gurnee, Illinois Gurnee ( ) is a village in Lake County, Illinois, United States. Its population was 30,706 as of the 2020 census. It borders the city of Waukegan, and is a popular tourist attraction within the Chicago metropolitan area. Best known for being t ...

) amusement parks. The ride in Santa Clara closed in 1997, and the ride in Gurnee closed in 2000. Two additional triple Ferris wheels were later built for the Seibu-en and

Lotte World Lotte World is a major recreation complex in Seoul, South Korea. It consists of the world's largest indoor theme park, an outdoor amusement park called "Magic Island", an artificial island inside a lake linked by monorail, shopping malls, a lu ...

parks in Japan (operating between 1985 and 2004) and South Korea (1989–97), respectively. All four rides were manufactured by

Waagner-Biro Waagner Biro is a Vienna-based group of companies formerly part of the same group which have developed into separately owned, independent companies operating in steel and mechanical engineering. Collectively, the companies have about 1000 employees ...

and brokered by Intamin.

Design

The ride resembled a huge tree topped with three arms; the arms rotated as a unit on an axis canted from vertical. Each arm was tipped with a rotating wheel, or "spider", and each spider carried 12 passenger cages. Due to the off-vertical axis, two wheels spun in the air in a near-vertical plane while the third was on the ground stationary in a horizontal plane, loading and unloading passengers from all the cars on that wheel simultaneously. Intamin marketed the ride as the "Tree Triple Wheel" and advertised a capacity of 2,000 customers per hour. The ride had a peak height of and required a circular footprint in diameter. Sky Whirl was developed from the earlier

Giant Wheel A Ferris wheel (also called a Giant Wheel or an observation wheel) is an amusement ride consisting of a rotating upright wheel with multiple passenger-carrying components (commonly referred to as passenger cars, cabins, tubs, gondolas, capsules ...

, a double wheel design that Intamin had first installed at

Hersheypark Hersheypark (known as Hershey Park until 1970) is a family theme park located in Hershey, Pennsylvania, about east of Harrisburg, and west of Philadelphia. The park was founded in 1906 by Milton S. Hershey as a leisure park for the employees of ...

in 1973. Intamin's Giant Wheel was in turn inspired by an earlier double wheel design patented in 1966 to address the slow loading of conventional Ferris wheel designs. That first double wheel debuted with Astroworld as the Astrowheel in 1968. The Sky Whirl design was commissioned by Marriott for both of its Great America theme parks. Because these parks (both Great America parks, Hersheypark, and Astroworld) were all designed by the same firm, R. Duell and Associates, some common design elements were carried through each park, including the double/triple-wheel designs.

History

Both rides debuted with the opening of the Great America parks in 1976. At the time the theme park in Santa Clara opened on March 21, 1976, it was billed as having the world's first triple Ferris wheel. The Gurnee park opened on May 29. The Santa Clara ride, which appeared in the 1994 movie ''

Beverly Hills Cop III ''Beverly Hills Cop III'' is a 1994 American action comedy film starring Eddie Murphy and directed by John Landis, who had previously worked with Murphy on ''Trading Places'' and ''Coming to America''. It is the third film in the Beverly Hills C ...

'' as "The Spider", was later renamed Triple Wheel before it closed in 1997. At Santa Clara, Sky Whirl was replaced by the

Invertigo Invertigo were an Australian four-piece pop, rock group active in the early 2000s. They originally formed as Vertigo in 1996, by the three Leigh brothers: Gerry (born 10 May 1966) on guitar, James (born 1 December 1967) on keyboards and Vince ...

roller coaster. The identical Gurnee ride closed in 2000 and was replaced by

Déjà Vu ''Déjà vu'' ( , ; "already seen") is a French loanword for the phenomenon of feeling as though one has lived through the present situation before.Schnider, Armin. (2008). ''The Confabulating Mind: How the Brain Creates Reality''. Oxford Univers ...

for the 2001 season. Two other triple wheels were produced for Asian clients: Seibu-en (

Tokorozawa, Saitama is a city located in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 344,194 in 163,675 households and a population density of 4800 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Tokorozawa is located in the ...

, Japan; operated 1985–2004) and

(

Seoul, South Korea Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 o ...

; 1989–97). According to Harry Michelson, because relatively few double and triple wheels were built, production was discontinued sometime in the 1990s and parts became scarce, making maintenance of these relatively complicated rides difficult and expensive.

References

External links

{{Intamin Former Ferris wheels Amusement rides introduced in 1976 Amusement rides that closed in 1997 Amusement rides that closed in 2000 California's Great America Six Flags attractions Six Flags Great America