The Skylift, a rotating glass platform that rises 30 feet above the very top of Rockefeller Center, is, like most non-office real estate in Midtown, a naked grab for tourist dollars that’s really meant to be experienced once. You enter the ride — or the “groundbreaking, heart-pounding 360-degree experience,” per the website — take your spot on the carousel, go up, spin, and snap a picture. I rode it twice and asked another visitor what they thought of it. “Sort of cool,” she said.
Skylift is the icing on the cake — three mechanical tiers of it, to be precise — of Tishman Speyer’s efforts to turn Rockefeller Center into Manhattan’s first theme park. The ride lives on Top of the Rock alongside the Beam, which is a beam that you can take pictures on. Rounded out with the Weather Room, the rooftop bar and café where you can pay $8 for a bagel with cream cheese, a person can now spend up to $190 to take selfies. Five years into the build, this was their accomplishment, and I was their cake topper.
The attraction was designed by THG Creative (recent projects include One World Observatory, the DreamWorks water park at the American Dream Mall, and the Secret Life of Pets ride at Universal Studios Hollywood), and despite being very 2024 in its post-pandemic, post-mall vision, its glass panels and various parts had to be transported in small pieces through a single guest elevator that was built nearly a century ago. This marriage of old and new is only reinforced when, about a minute into your Skylift experience, a 360-degree camera speaks to you and tells you it’s time to take a picture.
Isn’t it beautiful?
Photo: Zach Schiffman
Entering the new mezzanine-level gallery, ticket holders are welcomed with a five-minute show laying out Rockefeller Center’s history, explaining what a very good guy John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was and how he self-financed the Art Deco landmark. By the end of the video, it’s 4D snowing while the 3D projections reveal the tale of the Rockefeller Center tree. Rockefeller may have envisioned luxury dining experiences and striking views, but could he have predicted that the complex would be completely reimagined to live at the other end of an iPhone camera?
Me in one of the many mezzanine- level photo opportunities.
Photo: Zach Schiffman
Not that it’s a bad thing. Gaston Lachaise’s stone carvings still beacon grandly from Sixth Avenue, Lee Lawrie’s Wisdom still watches over the plaza, and Atlas still carries the world on his back. It’s still a city within a city. It’s just that nearly 100 years on, the city is kind of weird. While not designed by THG, Tishman Speyer’s Jimmy Fallon–themed Halloween horror maze (you read that correctly) is currently up, cementing the campus’s theme-park feel. From the below-street-level skating rink all the way up the Skylift, Rockefeller Center has been completely vertically integrated, just like its premier tenant, NBC. And like a celebrity on a press tour bouncing between appearances on Today, The Kelly Clarkson Show, The Tonight Show, and SNL, you can accomplish quite a bit without ever leaving Rockefeller Center, which was Rockefeller’s big idea. Theme-park-ification is just a new spin on it. And while the whole thing is less immersive than the “Honey I Shrunk the Audience” ride at Disney, honey, it worked on me.
