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SkyRide launched June 26, strapping riders in and lifting them up Auckland’s Sky Tower on cables before dropping them back down – a first for AJ Hackett Bungy.
Leo Medina, Auckland sales manager at AJ Hackett Bungy says “We are all about gravity challenging exercises, right? So, coming from the top and falling, that’s what the Bungy Jump was always about.”
The Sky Tower already offers the SkyJump and the Skywalk, plus the bridge climb. But nothing has ever lifted riders up from ground level.
“We never had anything that lifts you up, so even the (Sky) swings, you go down and with the catapult, you shoot across but nothing that started from the bottom.” Leo says. “So, when we had an opportunity to create something very similar to what we have but add on something that is completely different as well.”
The idea, he says, is to draw out the fear rather than deliver it all at once.
“Start from the bottom, have the experience to build that momentum, the adrenaline, to build up that sense of fear and then by the time you get to the top, you kind of drop again. We still will use gravity to build adrenaline but starting from the bottom means you will build that emotion as you go up.”
However, it’s not a completely new concept. Similar rides exist at amusement parks around the world, including Auckland’s own Rainbow’s End, Fearfall.
“But we’ve never had anything done the way we are doing it in that it is a ginormous tower that lifts you up from the bottom with cables and then drop you down. So, there isn’t anything like that around the world and this is the very first of its kind, and by far the tallest one in the world.”
And logistically, getting a new ride onto an decades-old tower isn’t as simple as bolting on new cables. Leo says the design had to work within the Sky Tower’s original engineering.
“We worked closely with Beca, the structural engineers for SkyCity and the original engineers behind the Sky Tower, to ensure SkyRide’s design was fully compatible with the tower’s existing structure,” he says. “No modifications were required to the tower itself – SkyRide operates well within the Sky Tower’s existing safety parameters.”
“Every new design comes with its own technical challenges, but that’s what innovation is all about,” Leo says. “The most important thing for us was ensuring SkyRide met the high safety standards we set ourselves. It’s been extensively tested and independently certified under New Zealand’s Amusement Device Regulations, so we’re really proud to now be sharing it with the public.”
Simply, SkyRide is designed to be shared. Riders can go in tandem, and Leo says that changes the experience.
“It changes the way that you share the scare. All our swings you can do tandems and I feel like the shared scare is a more intimate sort of scare,” he says. “We love to say that for honeymooners to do a swing as a honeymooner it’s great because that’s a bonding experience.”
He says the appeal of SkyRide is that riders don’t need to psych themselves up for a leap – the machine does the work.
“You’re going to sit there and when our team pushes the button, you’re already strapped in, you’re already safe in your position and then you’re going to enjoy the ride. So, it’s completely different than what we currently do with the SkyJump. And therefore, it is a gap in the market that we find,” Leo says. “And we do hope that we won’t cannibalise the experience that we currently offer. We still have people wanting to be brave and jump from the top.”
AJ Hackett Bungy hopes SkyRide will draw in different crowd altogether particularly those who’d never consider a typical Bungy Jump.
Leo says “We’re hoping to get much more tandem rides rather than solo rides. “The different point of attraction there is that you won’t need to look down before you are in the machine. It takes away a bit of that fear.”
