• What special elevator served as the inspiration for an action scene in a movie?
What elevator in Germany has no door and never stops moving?
From hidden monument trams to the world’s first rotating boat lift, here are 10 of the
coolest elevators on Earth.
10 –Rising Tide Elevator • For most elevators, the sole purpose is
just to travel.
You go up or down, preferably as quickly and as smoothly as possible.
• But on the Oasis of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, it’s less about where
you’re going, and more about how.
• The Rising Tide is a bar, that also happens to be an elevator.
It seats 35 people and a full serving staff, and slowly travels between the fifth and eighth
floors of the ship.
• Of course, most of the people on the elevator probably won’t even get off at their destination.
They’re just trying to have some drinks on a cool elevator bar.
• After all, a three-story trip takes about nine minutes.
So it’s not exactly more efficient than taking the stairs, but it’s a lot more relaxing.
9 –Autostadt Silos • The Autostadt silos in Wolfsburg, Germany,
are something straight out of a sci-fi movie.
In fact, they were a major inspiration for similar towers in the movieMission Impossible:
Ghost Protocol.
• The pair of 200-foot-tall silos are right next to one of Volkswagen’s biggest production
plants, and simply put, they serve as a giant parking lot for new cars.
• The towers contain 400 brand new cars each, just waiting to be pulled out by a mechanized
elevator, and shipped out to their new owners.
• The towers are so impressive, they’ve become the center of a tourist attraction
for Volkswagen buyers that now includes a three Michelin-star restaurant.
8 –Gateway Arch • The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri
is one of the most distinct landmarks in America.
It stands as a sort of dividing line between the Eastern and Wester halves of the United
States.
• And unbeknownst to many, you can actually go inside the monument.
• It looks like just a simple concrete arch.
But there is in fact a tram leading from the bottom to the top of the arch.
• So you can actually travel up the entire arch and see out over the city from the tallest
man-made structure in the U.S.
• At least, as long as you’re cool with riding a 630-foot-tall tram designed in two
weeks by a man with no college education, named Dick Bowser.
7 –GlobenSkyView • The Ericsson Globe is the largest spherical
building in the world.
But perhaps its greatest attraction isn’t something on the inside, but the outside.
• Because the Ericsson Globe has ELEVATORS scaling the outside of the building.
The SPHERICAL building.
Incidentally, the elevators themselves are also spheres.
• They carry 21 people each up the outside of the building, giving a panoramic view of
Stockholm, Sweden.
• And once in a while, the gondolas will tilt or employ some lighting effects – just
to keep you on your toes.
6 –Paternoster Lift • Germany’s Paternoster elevators are
sort of like vertical conveyor belts.
• They’re very small,with each compartment only meant for one rider at a time.
They have no doors… and they never stop moving.
People just sort of hop on and hop off.
• They were invented in the UK, but Germany has adopted them, and despite some obvious
safety concerns, they’re very resistant to giving them up.
5 –Trampe Bicycle Lift • Biking is great…
right up until you hit that steep hill with like a 30-degree incline.
Then you either kill yourself trying to cycle up it, or you just hop off the bike and walk
it up the hill.
• Or, you live in Trondheim, Norway, and you use a bike escalator.
• Okay, yes, it’s an escalator, not an elevator.
This is cheating a bit.
But this thing is cool, so just deal with it.
• The escalator gets you and your bike up the hill by giving you a footplate to rest
your right foot on.
The plate slowly pushes you up the hill, while you’re still on your bike.
• That way you can reach the top of that hill without your thighs screaming at you.
4 –Taipei 101 • From 2004 to 2010, the Taipei 101 Tower
was the tallest building in the world.
And normally, that would mean the trip to the top is going to take a while.
• But the Taipei 101 has one of the most technologically advanced elevators in the
world.
It’s pressure-controlled, and goes from the fifth floor to the 89th floor in about
40 seconds.
• That’s a rate of about a thousand meters per minute.
3 –Bailong Elevator • The world’s tallest outdoor elevator
sits on a massive sandstone shelf in China, and can take about 50 people in over a thousand
feet in right around a minute’s time.
• Of course, it’s a scary ride to the top, and it might not be the most comfortable
thing for everyone involved.
• But it probably beats the 2 and a half-hour hike up dangerous mountain trails you’d
need to take the hit the top instead.
2 –Falkirk Wheel • At this point, boat lifts are nothing
special.
They’ve been around since forever, and the science behind them is cool, but not really
exciting.
• But the Falkirk Wheel is no ordinary boat lift.
It is a ROTATING boat lift.
The canals it connects simply could not be connected via conventional means.
• But with this miracle of engineering, the Forth Canal, Clyde Canal, and Union Canal
in Scotland were connected in 2002 for the first time since the 1930s.
• Obviously naval traffic through a city isn’t as important as it once was, but the
Falkirk Wheel makes it possible once again, and has given the region new life as a tourist
attraction, for people who want to ride it themselves.
1 -AquaDom • The Aquadom in the Radisson Blu in Berlin,
Germany, contains one of the most interesting elevator experiences you can ever hope to
have.
• The Aquadom is the largest cylindrical aquarium in the world, and also the largest
free-standing aquarium.
• It contains over 2,600 fish of 56 species, and even a coral reef.
And while it’s big enough to be seen from the ground, that’s not really where the
magic is.
• An elevator takes passengers up THROUGH THE MIDDLE of the aquarium, giving a 360-degree
view of the inside of the tank up close.