I can say that I've done it now, and that's good enough for me! (London Eye)

Member Name: razielle

Product:	London Eye
Date:	24/03/09 (90 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: views, nice and slow, smooth journey, awesome piece of machinery

Disadvantages: jumping from a (not everso) speeding wheel!

A couple of months ago I made a small trek to London with a friend, and found myself being led in the direction of the London Eye.

For the entire duration of the journey to London I had been refusing to go on it. I do not like heights, I do not enjoy being scared, I've never even been in an airplane! There was no way on the planet that I was going to go in what seemed to me to be a flimsy bubble dangling on a hula hoop (bearing in mind I hadn't read or seen anything factual about it, my only knowledge came from people unhelpfully saying 'it's great, you must try it!') 135 metres in the air above London! Oh, and I most certainly wasn't going to pay over £15 for the privilege!!

Okay, so I later discovered they're not bubbles, they're 'capsules', and they're not dangling, they're actually very securely mounted. Actually I cannot help but be in awe of the design, there is in fact no dangling involved, the capsules glide serenly around the big wheel, and at such a slow speed that even I started thinking 'maybe...'

We neared, I got scared, I dug heels in ground and came up with every excuse for not going on that I could think of, including 'but the light's wrong!'

As you might have guessed, I got on the thing, went round the wheel, up in the air, and did actually manage to come off again in one piece and only slightly shaky - though that had been due to the wheel still moving when we got off, I almost felt as though I was being asked to leap from a speeding car, even though the wheel was moving extremely slowly.

Actually it was a spectacular thing, the view is truly stunning, and I had imagined the pods to be quite small, but in fact they are pretty roomy, the two of us shared the pod with about four other people and a child. You can walk around them easily, there is a bench in the centre if you do want to sit down, and rails around the sides if you'd like to hang on for dear life. Though, as I say, it does move extremely slowly, however I did still feel reassured by having the option of something to hold on to.

We were up there for about 30 minutes, I took lots of pictures, though had the dilemma - to flash or not to flash? I don't know if it's just my stupid Hitachi camera (review imminent I feel!), but if I took a picture of the scenery through the glass you just got the reflection of the flash. Turn the flash off and every goes shaky and blurry and rubbish. So I got a couple of fluke good pics, the rest were a bit wasted unfortunately. See! the light WAS wrong!

For a little while I kept remembering scenes from a disaster movie I'd seen as a kid called 'Hanging By A Thread'... But once we got higher, and the views became apparent, all that went away, and I even began to enjoy it!

We noticed that in two spots of the capsule floor there were markings indicating that if you stood there, at somepoint in our adventure we would have a picture taken. So, on our descent I spotted where the camera was and promptly moved as far from the marked spot as possible! Plenty of people wanted the photographic evidence of their Eye Experience though, if I recall they were about £8 a picture (deals if you bought more I think?) We decided against, especially since our rears were about all that could be seen of us.

I will probably never ever go on it again. But I can say that I've done it now, and that's good enough for me!

Summary: I can say that I've done it now, and that's good enough for me!