Everyone loves a ferris wheel. Okay, maybe everyone doesn’t like to go up in one, but they are still fun to gaze at. London has a really, really, big ferris wheel called the London Eye. It is located on the banks of the River Thames in London and is 443 ft tall and the wheel has a diameter of 394 ft.
The cool thing is that the wheel is supported by tensioned steel cables and resembles a huge spoked bicycle wheel. Around the rim are large, clear capsules holding up to 25 people, who are free to walk around inside the during the thirty minute ride.
It is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe, and the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom, visited by over 3.5 million people annually. When erected in 1999 it was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, until surpassed first by the 160 m (520 ft) Star of Nanchang in 2006 and then the 165 m (541 ft) Singapore Flyer in 2008. Supported by an A-frame on one side only, unlike the taller Nanchang and Singapore wheels, the Eye is described by its operators as “the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel”. It offered the highest public viewing point in the city until it was superseded by the 245-metre (804 ft) observation deck on the 72nd floor of The Shard, which opened to the public on 1 February 2013.