Double and Triple Wheels
Swiss manufacturer Intamin produced a series of rides comprising a vertical column supporting multiple horizontal arms, with each arm supporting a Ferris wheel. Custom designed for the Marriott Corporation, each ride had three main components: the wheels with their passenger cars; a set of supporting arms; and a single central supporting column. Each wheel rotated about the end of its own supporting arm. The arms in turn would either pivot or rotate together as a single unit about the top of the supporting column. The axis about which the rotating arms turned was offset from vertical, so that as the arms rotated, each arm and its corresponding wheel was raised and lowered. This allowed one wheel to be horizontal at ground level, and brought to a standstill for simultaneous loading and unloading of all its passenger cars, while the other wheel(s) continued to rotate vertically at considerable height.
The first such ride was Astrowheel, which had two arms and wheels with 8 passenger cars each, and operated at the former Six Flags Astroworld, Houston, Texas, from 1968 until 1980.
Similar wheels included Giant Wheel (Hersheypark, Hershey, Pennsylvania), Zodiac (Kings Island, Mason, Ohio), and Galaxy (Six Flags Magic Mountain, Valencia, California). All were Intamin designs; all are now defunct.
Sky Whirl was the world's first triple Ferris wheel, debuting at both Marriott's Great America parks (now Six Flags Great America, Gurnee, Illinois, and California's Great America, Santa Clara) in 1976. Also known as a triple Ferris wheel, Triple Giant Wheel, or Triple Tree Wheel, it was 33 metres (108 ft) in height. The Santa Clara ride, renamed Triple Wheel in post-Marriott years, closed on 1 September 1997. The Gurnee ride closed in 2000.
Read more about this topic: Ferris Wheel
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