Daycation: Seattle Great Wheel

Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz was right. Sometimes what you’re looking for is right in your own backyard or words to that effect.


We had what I call a “Daycation” last week where we spent the day doing fun touristy things in our own city, Seattle. We started the day with a nice brunch at a locally owned restaurant and then headed to the Seattle waterfront.  June saw the opening of a fun new  attraction, The Seattle Great Wheel. If you’ve been watching the Olympics and have seen the London Eye, ours is similar but smaller.

The “wheel” sits on the end of Pier 57 and goes out over the waters of Puget Sound. It’s 175 feet high and has 42 climate controlled gondolas including one “VIP” car which at $50 per ticket we did NOT ride in! We stuck to the regular tickets of approx $14 per adult.

These tickets are perfect for scrapbooking right? Wrong…this pic is as close as that’s going to get since you have to surrender them to board. Boo.

Each car holds 6 adults and is air conditioned for Summer and heated for the rest of the year.  The VIP gondola is black and has a see thru bottom and did I mention the $50 per person ticket?  You do get some other perks for the price but we were very content with our ride for the not $50 per person price!

You get to spend about 12 min on the ride and get a fantastic view Puget Sound:

The weekend we went was our big Seafair celebration which brings lots of Navy ships and the Blue Angels to town. In the pic above is one of the Navy ships in front of Norwegian Cruise Line’s Pearl ship getting ready to depart for Alaska.

The weather couldn’t have been more perfect and it was a fun family outing we got to do before College Boy heads back to school. If you get to Seattle, I highly recommend doing this if you can!  See? We do get some awesome weather!