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I saw a story on CNN today about a figure-eight ferris wheel being built in Macau.

I'm curious what path the cabins take, and how this occurs. Do they actually follow a figure eight pattern? Do they move from one wheel to the other somehow?

The story has a picture with the caption

The cabins don't actually cross in the middle. They follow a gourd-shaped track. Each ride takes around 15 minutes.

I don't understand what that means. A "gourd-shaped" track?

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  • $\begingroup$ gourd, though you can also visualize a stylized hourglass $\endgroup$
    – ratchet freak
    Nov 5, 2015 at 21:55
  • $\begingroup$ @DCShannon Some gourds (such as this one) are an excellent description for the shape of the track. Others (such as this one) not so much. $\endgroup$
    – Chris Mueller
    Nov 5, 2015 at 22:09

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It looks like the cars don't actually move in a figure eight, though it is designed to look like they do from afar. In the image below you can see that the cars travel around an hourglass-shaped (or gourd-shaped) track which is behind the outer yellow steel structure that looks like a figure eight.

enter image description here

They describe the track as gourd-shaped because some gourds, such as the one shown below, describe the shape of the track very well even though others do not.

enter image description here

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