Studio City Golden Reel

Architecture & Design

The Golden Reel is suspended 130 meters up between Studio City’s two hotel towers, and its engineering brief was as much narrative as structural: the resort’s Hollywood theme called for a form that read as two asteroids tearing through the building’s central core, so Goddard Group’s design threads a continuous figure-eight steel track directly through the negative space between the towers rather than mounting a conventional wheel beside them. It is the world’s first figure-eight Ferris wheel and, at its height, the tallest of its kind in Asia — a distinction owed to the specific configuration rather than to Ferris wheel height records generally, since several standalone observation wheels elsewhere stand taller. Seventeen retro-futuristic cabins, each holding up to ten riders, travel the loop, crossing the gap between the towers twice per full circuit.

Engineering & Economic Context

Anchoring a 2,500-tonne steel ring between two occupied 30-storey towers required structural calculations well beyond a standalone wheel’s, since the towers themselves had to be engineered to carry cantilevered loads neither would face independently. The result functions as a piece of applied structural bravado deployed for tourism value rather than necessity — a strategy consistent with Macau’s post-2022 concession framework, under which the territory’s licensed operators, including Studio City’s parent Melco, are contractually committed to sustained non-gaming investment as a condition of their ten-year gaming licenses. A record-setting engineering feature that draws visitors independent of the casino floor is exactly the kind of asset that policy was designed to encourage.

Studio City itself opened in October 2015 as Melco’s Hollywood-themed follow-up to its earlier City of Dreams resort, at a reported construction cost above three billion US dollars, with the Golden Reel positioned from the outset as the property’s signature external landmark — visible from a considerable distance along the Cotai Strip and functioning, alongside the resort’s twin towers, as an identifying silhouette in the same way the Venetian’s campanile or the Grand Lisboa’s lotus-shaped tower serve their own resorts.

Practical Information

Boarding is from Level 23 of the resort. A full rotation lasts approximately 18 minutes. Operating hours run Thursday through Monday, 14:00 to 20:00, with Tuesdays and Wednesdays set aside for routine maintenance closures and daily operation resuming on public holidays; tickets are available on-site or through digital booking platforms. The Cotai Connection shuttle network links Studio City to the Taipa Ferry Terminal and the Border Gate checkpoint, while the nearby Lotus Checkpoint station connects to the Macau Light Rapid Transit system. Visitors combining a ride with dinner can find Macanese Sino-Portuguese dishes — minchi and African chicken among the classics — at restaurants across the wider Cotai resort corridor. The ride is generally not recommended for guests with a strong fear of heights, given the open sightlines from cabin windows across the full 130-meter suspension height, and cabins operate regardless of most weather conditions short of high winds or storms, which can trigger a temporary closure. Because boarding takes place well above street level, guests should budget extra time for elevator access and security screening during peak hours, particularly on weekends when demand for the ride is highest.