Monday, September 17, 2007
World's Longest Escalator
We now return to our regularly scheduled Atlanta tourism station broadcast. I'm going to get a little post happy today and try to finish up on our Atlanta trip. Life just keeps happening, so I don't want to drag this on for too many days.
Let's turn our attention to CNN Center. On Saturday the 8th, Hubby and I had the afternoon to putter around. We had an awards banquet to attend that evening, so we couldn't do a touristy activity far away. We decided to take a tour of CNN, which is headquartered in the CNN Center in Atlanta, which was conveniently attached to our hotel. We could see part of it from a hallway on the sixth floor of the hotel. Here you see a shot of the escalator that is the beginning of the tour.
Before you enter CNN, you go through a security check, sort of like the one you go through at the airport. No one is allowed to take pictures. It's a good thing we couldn't - at least from the standpoint of the guy sleeping in the newsroom with his hands in his pants. (I'm not making this up.) It was a fine, fluff tour, with more traveling through hallways and down stairs than any hard-hitting information. The most impressive thing to us was discovering that the escalator we had traveled up - the very one you see pictured here - is the largest free-standing escalator in the world. It's five or six stories, by our estimation, and was originally built as part of a Sid & Marty Krofft theme park. (Sid & Marty Krofft of H.R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund & the Sea Monsters, and Land of the Lost fame.) That was the original purpose of the CNN Center - a theme park. It went bankrupt within five months. All that's left is the escalator, which we have had the privilege to ride.
While I'm sorry I can't give you an escalator ride, here is an online tour of CNN.
Labels: atlanta, cnn, escalator, husband, photo, sid and marty croft, tourism
