A new era for Queenstown’s most popular tourist attraction will dawn tomorrow morning, when Skyline’s new gondola starts taking passengers up and down Bob’s Peak.

Thirty-six 10-seaters replace the four-seaters which last plied the route on April 22 after 36 years’ service.

They are the centrepiece of a $250 million redevelopment that has included, to date, 10 new towers, a new cableway and new bottom and top gondola terminals, not to mention tree-felling on the hillside.

Skyline’s construction project manager Paul Embleton-Muir said he was delighted, due to the "massive efforts" of the construction crew, which had been latterly working around the clock, they were reopening a day ahead of schedule, "which is somewhat unprecedented at the moment".

"We’ve got [Doppelmayr staff] over from Austria commissioning it, we’ve got people in Austria wired in, just checking it all."

Skyline Queenstown construction manager Paul Embleton-Muir tries one of the new 10-seater cabins for size. PHOTO: RHYVA VAN ONSELEN

Testing included running the cableway with wheelie bins filled with water in the cabins, and an evacuation exercise earlier this week.

Mr Embleton-Muir said people would be amazed at how smooth the cabins were to ride — "it’s like going from a clapped-out Toyota to a nice Mercedes, it’s really something".

Capacity was increasing from 1000 people an hour to 3000 in both directions.

There would be a temporary ticketing facility until a new one was ready by the end of October.

Work would now start on a new top restaurant-terminal building, which would be built over two stages, while a 400-space carpark, by the bottom terminal, would be complete by the end of next March.