The world's biggest observation wheel is ready to start up in Singapore tonight, with corporate clients paying thousands of dollars for the "inaugural flight," the company said.
At 165m, the Singapore Flyer will be 30m higher than Britain's London Eye, said Great Wheel Corp, which built the Singapore attraction.
"We're actually ahead of time and on budget," David Beevers, general manager of the Singapore Flyer, said from the waterfront site. "It's all systems go."
The wheel will start twirling just before dusk, organizers said.
The attraction's first three nights were sold out, Beevers said. Companies and individuals paid S$8,888 (US$6,271), considered an auspicious number, for the first rides.
"Through the month of February ... it's a whole series of private events each day that's going to allow us to ramp up to full opening March 1 for the public," Beevers said.
Groups of between 600 and 1,000 people were expected at the initial private events, Beevers said, with a formal opening to take place on April 15.
Unlike small Ferris wheel carriages that hang in the open air, the Singapore Flyer and other large observation wheels feature fixed "capsules."
The 28 capsules -- each about the size of a city bus -- are air conditioned and can hold up to 28 people each.
Among the first clients will be SG Private Banking. The French-based global private wealth manager has booked 11 capsules on Wednesday night for its annual staff celebration of the Lunar New Year, said Pierre Baer, the company's Singapore and South Asia chief executive officer.
Developers of the Singapore Flyer said there was no comparison between a giant, slowly rotating observation wheel and a Ferris wheel.
"We don't use the `F-word,'" Florian Bollen, the chairman of Singapore Flyer, told reporters during a preview of the attraction last year.
Bollen's Singapore-based company, Great Wheel Corp, is also building wheels in Beijing and Berlin which will edge out the Singapore Flyer as the world's biggest when they begin turning in about two years, he said.
Singapore's wheel is located across from the Marina Bay Sands casino complex set to open in 2009, and is near the pit area of a Formula One Grand Prix street race to be held for the first time in the city-state in September.
The Singapore Flyer project, worth about S$240 million, is a private venture backed mainly by German investors. But Bollen said it received strong marketing and other support from the city-state's tourism board.
Bollen said that his company was the only bidder for the project designed by Kisho Kurokawa Architects and Associates of Tokyo, along with Singapore's DP Architects.
The wheel was built by Mitsubishi Corp and Takenaka Corp of Japan.
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