When the new Sky Trail High Ropes Course opened at Westfield Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Dudley, UK on 10th November 2012, it became Europe’s tallest indoor Sky Trail Course and Innovative Leisure’s greatest feat of engineering in its twelve year history.
As part of the mall’s brand new Quest Merry Hill activity district, the Sky Trail is a striking focal point visible from the centres vast car park. At four separate levels and a dizzying seventeen metres high, the Explorer course comprises 39 challenging ropes elements which get more difficult the higher you dare to go.
Over a period of two weeks, Innovative Leisure’s installation team turned nocturnal as the course’s location in a main entrance atrium meant construction could only be carried out in the hours the centre was closed to the public. Working through the night with a complicated system of crane and various other plant machinery, the course steadily rose into the atrium. The install is by far the most difficult Innovative Leisure has undertaken with very little space to work with, so much so that an entirely unique method of installation was devised. Working closely with Paragon the company behind Quest enabled Innovative Leisure to successfully complete the installation within the given time frame.
Following an intense period of staff training and finishing touches, the course is now open under the title Quest for Adventure: Extreme and hopes to pull in visitors from all over the Midlands and further afield. It will always be an installation Innovative Leisure is extremely proud of and one that has taught us an awful lot. It is a benchmark of what we can achieve with a small group of engineers and the lessons learnt on this most challenging of installations will set us in good stead for the future.
Accompanying Westfield Merry Hill’s Sky Trail Explorer Course is Innovative Leisure’s first ever Sky Tykes installation. Installed in just three days, the metre high ropes course gives young children the chance to experience Sky Trail without the extreme heights. Children less than one metre tall can now take on their own ropes adventure on the six pole triangular course which operates parallel to the larger Sky Trail course. Access gates around the course enable parents to hold hands with their child as they tackle rope bridges, balance beams and lily pad platforms.
Quest at Westfield Merry Hill is now open for business and in addition to the Sky Trail High Ropes Course and Sky Tykes consists of an Adventure Mini Golf Course and the UK’s first Nerf Shooting Gallery and Battle Zone.
Written by Kier Lymn – Part of the Innovative Leisure Marketing Team.