With the 90-second cap, I wasn’t able to finish. No eating is allowed on the Beam, but I was given special permission by a representative from Tishman Speyer to eat a turkey breakfast sandwich to try to re-create my own version of the classic photo. (If you are afraid of heights, the seat buckle may feel insufficient.) Instead, it fits neatly into the landscape of Instagram experiences disguising themselves as museums that now inhabit the shells of forgotten retail or once-landmarked sites, like the Hall des Lumières.

It’s a gentle up, down, and around in which the most adrenaline-producing aspect is the high winds. It would be a disservice, however, to call the Beam a ride.

The Beam, having the benefit of being built on top of an existing attraction, expedites the trend of turning midtown into an amusement park. Extell revealed plans to build a ride with a 260-foot drop atop a new building west of Times Square, and Stefan Soloviev threw a Ferris wheel into his Midtown East casino proposal. Last year, a flurry of high-profile retail and dining options opened in the concourse, and while not all are holding strong, the glorified office complex’s reputation seems to be better than some of its neighbors’. As the midtown office district crawls toward its tomb, developers have been trying to court a new clientele in the neighborhood: thrill seekers. The crowd was smaller than usual, I was told by my handlers, Nicole and Lizzie, when I arrived on a rainy Monday morning to be greeted by signage advertising the building’s most influential occupants, Jimmy Fallon and the hosts of the Today Show.

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