New York's Observatories

[NYguy]

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https://abc7ny.com/rockefeller-center-the-beam-ride-attraction-lunch-atop-a-skyscraper/14130095/

[NYguy]

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[NYguy]

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[NYguy]

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[ArchGuy1]

Originally Posted by NYguy

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A real drop tower ride is planned for 740 8th Avenue, which will have it's own observation deck. That drop tower ride's speed will be what is typically seen with a tall drop tower ride at your typical amusement park like Coney Island.

[ArchGuy1]

Originally Posted by NYguy

9 Mile Productions

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This drone video shows you why the Empire State Building, Top of the Rock, One World Observatory, and Edge at Hudson Yards should return to their pre pandemic hours, but keep the timed ticketing systems. Also shows you why 740 8th Avenue, the Tower Fifth, and the Affirmation Tower are planned to have observation decks on their top floors. This was certainly a missed opportunity to have 270 Park Avenue include one on it's top floors as that building is truly massive and certainly would have had the space to include a dedicated entrance and separate elevators, along with added egress capacity requiref for evacuations. The mass of 270 Park Avenue is larger than any of the skyscrapers currently with observation decks or have one planned.

[NYguy]

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[ArchGuy1]

Originally Posted by NYguy

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Explains why 270 Park Avenue should have had an observation deck. Also why 740 8th Avenue, the Affirmation Tower, and the Tower Fifth are planned to have observation decks.

[NYguy]

[NYguy]

[NYguy]

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[NYguy]

Now open...


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https://nypost.com/2024/10/01/lifestyle/...r-attraction-offers-360-degree-nyc-view/

[NYguy]

https://www.archpaper.com/2024/10/madgi-thg-creative-skylift-30-rockefeller/

MADGI and THG Creative complete Skylift, a moving observation platform at 30 Rockefeller Plaza






By Claudia Yoon
October 8, 2024





https://www.travelandleisure.com/top-of-the-rock-skylift-nyc-attraction-8720787

I've Been to Every NYC Observation Deck — Here's Why the Newest One Is My Favorite
Hovering 30 feet above the 70th floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, I felt like I found the new epicenter of Manhattan.


By Rachel Chang
October 7, 2024

Over my 21 years living in the New York City area, I’ve spent a lot of time at Rockefeller Center at the bottom of the Rock. One of my first internships in 2003 was in its 1271 Avenue of the Americas building, where I learned about all its underground subway passageways. Later, I worked across the street from Radio City Music Hall for four years, grabbing lunch and coffee from the basement level’s eateries daily. In recent years, I’ve even spent the night on its sidewalk camping out in the standby line for Saturday Night Live tickets. In many ways, Rock Center has always felt like my home away from home, a place I look at with comfort and familiarity.

Early into my time here, the 22-acre complex between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and 49th and 51st Streets, opened a rebranded version of its most elevated attraction, Top of the Rock in 2005, inviting visitors up a 45-second elevator ride to open-air observation decks on its 67th, 69th, and 70th floors right smack dab in the middle of midtown Manhattan.

.....with four other sky-high viewpoints in New York City — the Empire State Building and One World Observatory, plus the more recent Edge NYC, which opened in 2020, and Summit One Vanderbilt in 2021 — I never felt the need to join tourists for a viewpoint above a part of town I knew so well.

But a few months back, Top of the Rock announced its newest attraction, providing an extra boost on a cake topper from its top floor. Called Skylift, the open-air circular platform rises 30 feet above the rooftop and spins 360 degrees for a panoramic view. Luckily, I was able to snag a test spin the day before it opened to the public on Oct. 1.

Without a tinge of a jolt, the platform started rising, so gently I didn’t even notice at first. After all, I was completely engrossed in my surroundings. Instinctively, I started to turn, taking in every angle. But then the platform started rotating. I didn’t need to do any of the work. Skylift would show me the city — all I had to do was take it in.

I felt like I was floating among the city’s greatest hits. Facing north, Central Park rolled out in front of me like a crisp green carpet. As we spun counterclockwise, familiar skyscrapers in Columbus Circle and Times Square I knew from ground level took a new form, as I had now risen to their heights. Then when my viewpoint turned south, we reached the crown jewel, the view of the Empire State Building. From this perspective, 900 feet in the sky, I imagined that if King Kong had been hanging off of the tower, we would have been exactly eye to eye — if only he paused to take in the view. But that’s how immersed within the city the Skylift put me.

While other observation points had taken me up to see the skyline, here I felt that I was a part of it. Skylift blends in seamlessly with 30 Rock’s Art Deco architecture from its 1933 opening but adds a modern-day twist with 96 LED pixel flutes that can radiate with colors from the base that lift into the sky. In the middle of the platform, there's also a speaker blasting music from its center, and a camera that takes a panoramic photo.

And that wasn’t it. In the middle of the three-and-a-half-minute ride, our guide said to look down at our feet. Suddenly the frosted floor turned transparent. Not for the weak of heart, it provided an adrenaline boost on top of the feeling of flying above the city, exactly what the intent was.

[NYguy]

https://www.inparkmagazine.com/104thg/

[NYguy]

[NYguy]

Hope this doesn't cause a chain reaction....



https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/business/e...ks,under%20the%20surge%2Dpricing%20model.

Empire State Building approves hated surge-pricing model – visits to landmark could top $100





By Taylor Herzlich
Feb. 21, 2025

Tourists looking to watch the sunset from the Empire State Building’s observation deck could soon be forced to fork over more than $100.

That’s because the owners of the storied landmark have decided to institute dynamic pricing – the hated money-grabbing scheme that sends ticket prices soaring at times of high demand.

Tickets for the observation decks on the 86th and 102nd floors currently start at $79 for an adult, jumping to $96 for prime viewings at sunset. That figure could top $100 if desperate romantics drive up the cost under the surge-pricing model.

The stratospheric prices have led to an outcry from fans of the King Kong skyscraper.

“The Empire State Building used to be an iconic, affordable NYC experience,” Kyle Taylor, an Atlanta chef who has frequently traveled to the Big Apple over the years, told The Post. “Pricing it as a near-luxury attraction just adds to the growing exclusivity of the city, which in general, I’m not a fan of.”

The new pricing model was revealed during an earnings call on Thursday by Tony Malkin, chief executive of Empire State Realty Trust, who said the plan will help keep the company’s finances strong.

“We expect continued growth in 2025,” Malkin said, according to a Crain’s New York, which first reported the move. “We are still below overall 2019 levels of volume and have room for upside as visitation levels improve.”

Prices for tickets to the beloved tourist decks already fluctuate based on the time of day, rising to their highest level at sunset, according to Empire State Building’s website.

But even at their cheapest, a trip to the New York skyline staple’s top floors would require a family of five to shell out roughly $400. That’s a huge jump from the $1.10 ticket for the building’s observatory in the 1930s, or even the $55 price just 15 years ago.

A dynamic pricing system would employ an algorithm to further raise prices during times of high demand. It is unclear how much more expensive high-demand tickets at sunrise, for example, would fetch.

Jurga Rubinovaite, a Belgium-based travel writer behind the blog Full Suitcase, splurged on a ticket during a visit to the Empire State Building last year. Despite the tall price tag, she said the experience was worth it.

Still, she told The Post she wishes “they would introduce family tickets or bigger discounts at quieter times of day to keep it more accessible for families.”

“Iconic attractions like this should be something that everyone has the chance to experience at least once,” she added.

[NYguy]

Soon to be joining the observation deck experience…..


MAY 26, 2025


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[NYguy]

Downtown’s answer to 1 Times Square (maybe)…..


https://www.tribecatrib.com/content/towering-and-immersive-titanic-experience-pitched-seaport

Towering and Immersive, a Titanic 'Experience' Is Pitched for the Seaport






Carl Glassman
06/03/25

A Titanic experience at the Seaport?

That’s the aim of a group of descendants of the famed fated voyage who have organized an effort to erect a 12-story “one-of-a-kind city attraction” on Pier 16. As yet undesigned and unfunded, the ambitious project, called Beacon of Hope, would be a towering tourist attraction in the form of a futuristic lighthouse. “From construction to discovery,” it would tell the story of the ship as visitors ascend the structure, leaning heavily on virtual reality and other “immersion” technology rather than museum-style artifacts.

“It’s a timeless story about bravery and sacrifice and one that only descendants can tell,” Adrian Saker, president of the non-profit Titanic New York, told Community Board 1’s Waterfront, Parks and Cultural Committee during a presentation last month.

It would also be a big commercial draw to the Seaport, he said, noting that Titanic Belfast drew 800,000 visitors in 2023. (The Titanic was built in Belfast.) “You can see the profits there,” he said.

Saker, who is not a descendant, said he was looking for CB1 support as a first step in gaining political backing for the estimated $39 million project and, eventually, the investors to fund it. The design would emerge from a competition.

“Many other cities in the world have created stunning pieces of architecture on their waterfronts, and there’s an opportunity here in the Seaport to do that,” Saker said.

Although rescued survivors aboard the Carpathia disembarked at Pier 54 on the West Side (where there is a commemorative plaque), Saker insisted that the proposed Titanic lighthouse belongs at the Seaport because “historically there was a lighthouse there,” referring to the Coenties Slip tower.

Saker’s group proposes that the beacon-topped tower be included in a future redo of Pier 16 as part of the FiDi and Seaport Climate Resilience Plan.

The committee was not enthusiastic about a towering addition to the Seaport. “Lukewarm at best,” is the way that committee chair Paul Goldstein later put it.

“It strikes me as a theme park that we would be approving on the waterfront that is celebrating the sinking of a ship over a hundred years ago,” said Richard Corman.

Fellow committee member Jess Coleman said he liked the idea as a concept but “if you came to us with something that was more modest, more open to the public, I think there’d be a better reception.”

Saker later told the Trib over the phone that his group will be addressing some of the questions raised by the committee, “but initially we’re going to go forward and look for sponsorships and funding and business partners to develop this project.”

[NYguy]

Another new potential observation experience...


https://w42st.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Caesars-Palace-Times-Square-Executive-Summary.pdf

The property will also feature a unique SUMMIT experience intended for guests of Caesars Palace Times Square.

SUMMIT One Vanderbilt was conceptualized as a Central Park in the Sky, and is an immersive observatory experience that welcomes over 2 million visitors annually from all-around the world.

The SUMMIT Times Square immersive observatory experience will introduce CPTS guests to new perceptions of what is possible in Times Square from a singular vantage point.

[MolsonExport]

Are they still going forward with the Chrysler building observatory (reopening, after renovations)?