Golden Gate Park Is About to Get the Mother of All Ferris Wheels

Move over, windmills. Pipe down, de Young Museum. San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is about to get a new attention-grabbing icon: a 150-foot observation wheel, which will be erected next spring in observation of the park’s 150th anniversary.

The observation wheel will be located in Golden Gate Park’s central Music Concourse, which is the large plaza outside the California Academy of Sciences. It will look like a carnival Ferris wheel, but will have weatherproof gondolas instead of open cars, and will stand much taller—passengers at the top will find themselves almost eye-to-eye (a little higher, actually) with visitors on the lookout on top of the de Young Museum. It will light up at night, and will appear very much as it does in the photo above, taken during a previous chapter in the wheel’s life, when it resided in Louisville, KY.

The wheel will turn more slowly than you might expect—it’s an observation wheel, not a thrill ride. And it will cost more: An adult ticket is expected to go for $18. You will get your money’s worth, though, as each passenger gets 12 minutes on the wheel.

If all goes according to plan, the wheel will take its first passengers for a spin on April 4, 2020, and remain in place through March 1, 2021.