Volume 1, No. 22. November 30, 2001
Photo of Miracle Strip tower newly built in the 1960s. Photo by Florida News Bureau/Department of Commerce
Tower power
Another tower ride of a more traditional
type, the S&S Space Shot Turbo Drop Combo, will be assigned a supplementary
role as a sight-seeing structure overlooking the Florida Panhandle's top beach
resort.
Miracle Strip Amusement Park in Panama City Beach is installing the 185-foot
(56 meter) thrill ride O2 for next season. Because the park only opens
for the evening (while the adjoining waterpark, Shipwreck Island, operates during
the day), General Manager Buddy Wilkes plans to allow sight-seeing rides on
O2 during the day. For $8 camera-carrying guests can slowly ascend the
12-seat tower ride in maintenance mode, spend a bit of time perched at the top
shooting pictures of the Gulf of Mexico shoreline, then slowly descend to the
ground. The guests then hand over their cameras to ride attendants—or get
off the ride, if they so choose—before being shot back up to the top and
free-falling down.
The Lark family, who own Miracle Strip, used to own a sight-seeing tower on
the beach across Front Beach Road from the park, with an observation deck 185
feet up and a cafe at the bottom. That tower was torn down in 1994, and since
then the resort city's tallest structures aside from hotels and condominiums
have been bungee towers.
Already O2 is earning Miracle Strip income. Wilkes arranged for a local
television newscast to place its "beach camera" atop the tower, where it will
broadcast scenes of the beach, with a Miracle Strip promo, five times a day.
"And they're paying me to do that," Wilkes said.