Quicker, quieter and smoother ride opens

By KELLY BLANCHARD in Rotorua
It's quicker, quieter and you no longer freak out when you go over the bumps at each pylon.

It's been over a year in the planning but finally visitors to Skyline Skyrides don't have to wait in long queues to get up and down Mt Ngongotaha.

English tourist Emily Skinner said riding the new gondola felt weird.

"It's so quiet, it's like you're floating up the hill."

The $6 million spend seems to have gone down well with visitors who rode the gondola for the first time yesterday.

After a blessing from Mauriora Kingi, Reverend Darren O'Callaghan and Ken Kennedy at 7am, the new gondola was ready to go.

The system, called the Doppelmayr Cableway, was designed in Austria and is the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

At a first glance, you might wonder what all the fuss is about.

The cabins look a little similar to their predecessors. But they're not.

They are twice the size, fitting eight people, have floor to ceiling windows and can move 2000 passengers an hour - about triple the present capacity.

The beauty of it is its variable speed.

A flick of a dial can see it go up to 5m a second - which still isn't too quick to miss out on the view over Rotorua.

As general manager Neville Nicholson puts it, the dial will get wound up when heaps of people arrive at once.

The varying speed also comes in handy when moving large groups at the end of functions in the restaurant.

Apart from a small price rise a year ago to coincide with increasing prices throughout the city, visitors are paying the same to ride the new gondola - which is $20 an adult, $9 a child aged between five and 14 years and under five-year-olds free.

Paul McFarlane, from the United Kingdom, said he had been on gondolas at theme parks around the world.

"They are nowhere near as good as this one."

Juliet Catton, 23, summed up what some overseas tourists probably thought about our Sulphur City.

"It's so nice to enjoy the view without the stench."