New carousel in Lower Manhattan where you ride a fish instead of a horse

NEW YORK (WABC) -- A new attraction opens Thursday in Manhattan, and it aims to be a destination for both tourists and locals.

It's a beautiful new carousel opening in the Battery.

It looks like an alien ship landed at the southern tip of Manhattan. But inside is a carousel unlike any other. No horses here, but fish, a tribute to what once was.

"It's the memory of the first New York Aquarium of 1896 when 5,000 people a day would go," said Warrie Price, the founder of The Battery Conservancy. "The magic of the undersea is still as viable 119 years later."

The Battery Conservancy worked on this project for 10 years.

$8 million dollars in public money and $8 million in private funds resulted in Seaglass, a 3 minute ride that will undoubtedly attract plenty of the 6 million visitors who pass through this area every year.

"It was a really fun experience going up and down and spinning in circles," said one young rider, Simone Meisnere. ("Do you feel like you were in the ocean?", we asked) "Yes!" she said. ("Better than riding a horse in a merry go round?") "Yes, much," she said.

Every aspect of this carousel has a design element, from the fish, to the music playing inside the fish, to the actual structure that houses the carousel.

"The structure is really a shell structure, which means it's a 3 dimensional spiral," said Claire Weisz of WXY Architecture and Urban Design. "It plays off the idea of not being a building but kind of a sculptural being in that you're the creature crawling out of the shell."

The 30 fish were created by the same designer who did The Little Mermaid on Broadway. "What I wanted to create is when you watch fish in the aquarium, they dance, the choreography of the movement is the most important thing," said George Typsin of the George Typsin Opera Factory.

And at night the luminescence is even more apparent.

Seaglass will be open from 10 to 10 every day. It's $5 to ride.

For more information, visit:

http://www.thebattery.org/seaglass/