THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607260064
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
DATELINE: LAS VEGAS LENGTH: 197 lines
I AM REPORTING to you LIVE no, let me emphasize this: ALIVE - from high above the city of Las Vegas, where just moments ago I rode a particularly discombobulating and death-defying rocket-launch thrill ride called the Big Shot . . . and SURVIVED.
Talk about a high.
Well, yes, let's talk about high. I am on, or near, the top of the Stratosphere Tower, America's tallest free-standing observation tower. Newly opened as part of a hotel-casino complex, it already has become what it was designed to be: an architectural icon of this city of glitz.
And an attractor of great crowds.
The elevator ride up costs $7, the two daredevil rides on top $5 each, and there seem to be lines to buy tickets every time I look.
I am drawn to tall buildings, like a moth to the light, to see what I can see despite a little-known corollary to Newtown's Law, which is: On tall buildings, gravity gets out of control. The government will not tell you about this, but maybe you have experienced it. There is suction from the ground trying to pull you off. You do NOT get very close to the edge.
So it is scary up here because I am actually standing outside in the open air, nearly 1,000 feet up, on the top of a 12-story, cone-shaped glass and steel pod cradled atop the bowed concrete tower pillars. The pod contains, among other things, a revolving restaurant and lounge, an observation deck and three wedding chapels (for starting married life on a high note, heh-heh).
There is also a roller coaster called the High Roller which zooms around 865 feet of track on the OUTSIDE of this pod, 100 stories above the Strip. That I would call the penultimate thrill ride. I was pleased to learn, minutes ago, it will not be running today because of work on the engine.
The ultimate is the Big Shot, which I have just experienced, lending further credence to the notion that I probably shouldn't even BE in a place like this without adult supervision.
Look at the picture of the Stratosphere Tower. The thing you see on top that looks like a needle is a 228-foot rectangular, steel-girdered mast large enough to hold four outward-facing seats on each of its four sides.
This is the Big Shot.
By pneumatic pressure, like an aircraft carrier launching mechanism, it shoots riders from the 921-foot level to the 1,081-foot level in about two seconds. You go from 0 to 45 miles an hour quicker than you just read ``0 to 45 miles an hour.'' Upward forces reach four Gs.
I have done a number of pretty risky things in my life - I have shot through the ultimate Class 5 rapids of the Zambezi River Gorge and I have eaten snails, to name two - but in stepping from the launching pad into one of these Big Shot chairs I may have maxed out, bravery-wise.
A padded restraining device like an ox yoke folds down over my shoulders and against my chest and buckles to the seat at the crotch. (Women really should wear slacks for this ride, definitely not short skirts.) My feet dangle below. People who are wearing loose shoes like loafers are told to remove them. Or the Big Shot will.
I look straight out. The view is spectacular. From here, high above this city of illusions, I can see Egypt, or at least the Luxor hotel-casino pyramid and the Sphinx standing guard outside. I can see the French Riviera, or at least the newly opened Monte Carlo hotel-casino modeled after a famous Monaco landmark. I can see New York, or at least a reasonable facsimile of its skyline in the soon-to-open New York New York hotel-casino.
I can even see the Land of Oz in the form of the massive emerald-tinted MGM Grand hotel-casino and theme park. And Camelot, too, in the form of the nearly as massive Excalibur hotel-casino across the street.
Everybody is buckled up now.
I begin to think: What if, when we stop - IF we stop - my shoulders collapse from this G force and I just keep going . . . what if I shoot through this gap where my head is, shoot through like Elastic Man, about 20 feet long and as thin as a drainpipe, maybe blasting out like a Sparrow missile, and end up in orbit around Uranus? What if . . .
God, please make this mechanism malfunction so that someone will announce - RIGHT NOW - ``Sorry, folks, but you're not going to be able. . . .''
WHOOOSH!
I think that is the sound I heard, but I cannot be sure. Ask one of the few Navy pilots who has been forced to eject from a plane if he can remember what that sounds like.
That's what this is most like, I suppose, ejecting from an FA-18.
Everything before my eyes becomes a blur. Or maybe I can't see at all. Maybe my eyeballs are down in my jaw.
The first sound I can remember for sure was Uungh! That was me, when we did stop. From four Gs to zero Gs in nothing flat will do that to you.
Descending is slower and has the negative force of one G. As you shoot up and down like a yo-yo three times more times, though much less violently in gradual descent, you experience a strange weightlessness.
The whole thing, from blastoff to touchdown, takes just under 30 seconds.
God, it's me again. I'm OK now. Sorry about that rush request. I imagine you didn't recognize my voice anyway.
Can you top that? The Stratosphere people may try.
They have beyond-bizarre plans for a 70-foot animatronic gorilla, carrying 48 passengers seated in its belly, to scale the legs of the Tower. It is supposed to climb about 630 feet while growling and moving its head, arms and legs. At one point this modern King Kong will shudder and drop several feet.
The only holdup: ``Structurally, we don't know if we can do it,'' a Stratosphere official told me.
The $550 million Stratosphere's theme is ``World's Fair.'' Like the Crystal Palace in London, site of the first World's Fair in 1851, nothing like the Stratosphere had ever been built before in Las Vegas.
Taller than the Eiffel Tower, a reminder of the 1889 Exposition in Paris, taller than Seattle's Space Needle, built for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, taller than San Antonio's Tower of the Americas, part of the HemisFair in 1968, Stratosphere has taken its place as one of the most compelling tourist attractions in this city of mega-attractions.
Already it has generated a mile-high stack of jokes.
Said Gov. Bob Miller during opening night ceremonies in April: ``I'm sure there have not been so many people this high since the last Grateful Dead concert.''
There's more to the Stratosphere complex than the Tower.
There are 10 restaurants and a 140,000-square-foot shopping mall designed to take visitors to four different parts of the world and, of course, three casinos with ``World's Fair'' themes - Pavilion of the World, featuring mural scenes from New York, Paris, Hong Hong, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro and Rome; a Pavilion of Fun, with giant animated figures from a circus big top; and Pavilion of Imagination, with murals of great moments in transportation, exploration, architecture (Stratosphere Tower, naturally), art and invention.
But to be frank, these casinos are like almost all others throughout this city. They are designed for disorientation, with no clear path to the exits, no daylight, no clocks. And there is always that pulsating, tootling C chord from the slot machines, great banks of them (Stratosphere has 2,400), punctuated by the ka-chink, ka-chink clatter of coins into the payoff pan.
Large crowds fill these casinos most of the day and night. Even at 5 o'clock in the morning you will see the occasional sallow-faced troll hunkered down on a stool, plastic coin cup in hand, faithfully feeding the melodious spellbinders.
I don't think one person in 20 looks up at these murals and says, ``Hey, there's the Arc de Triomphe, Doris - I think we must be in Paris.''
No, people walk around in a semi-daze, looking neither up nor down - and certainly not looking where they are going - but apparently looking for a sign above some single slot machine, visible only to them, that says, ``Sit right down here, my friend, and feed me. The next coin in will purge me and make you rich!''
That is the Great American Dream.
And that is why some people have enough money to build places like these . derelicts sit beside the street sipping something out of a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag so that no one will know they've hit bottom, not even them.
Stratosphere is part of an on-going building boom reminiscent of 1993 when Luxor, MGM Grand and Treasure Island opened amid great fanfare and added more than 10,000 hotel rooms. Las Vegas has more than 90,000 hotel and motel rooms (and 13 of the 20 largest hotels in the world), and the total may hit the 100,000 mark by the end of the year in the wake of the current boom.
Other recent additions include:
Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino opened a month ago with restrained (for Las Vegas) fanfare in keeping with the grandeur and opulence that surrounds its namesake on the French Rivera.
It is a $344 million joint venture of Circus Circus Enterprises and Mirage Resorts, two of the gaming (a Vegas euphemism for gambling) industry's most powerful and influential companies. It is modeled after the famous Place du Casino in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
It is truly elegant in the Belle Epoque style of 19th century Europe. There are chandeliered domes, marble floors, ornate fountains, gas-lit promenades and a Gothic glass and marble registration area overlooking a water park. The 1,200-seat Lance Burton Theater, designed for the world-famous illusionist, is turn-of-the-century spectacular. And there is a 90,000-square- foot casino with 2,214 slot machines and 95 table games, with a separate plush poker room and a 550-seat bingo hall.
The biggest draw may turn out to be the 450-seat microbrewery and beer hall.
Best of all, there are no Monaco price tags. For all this Monte Carlo elegance, the 3,000 spacious and well-appointed hotel rooms will start at a reasonable $59 during the week, $99 on weekends.
New York New York will open late this year - ``It will open when it's ready,'' says MGM Grand chairman Terry Lanni, whose company is building the complex with Primadonna Resorts.
The $350 million, 2,100-room hotel-casino venture will re-create some of New York City's best known landmarks and traditions in slightly scaled-down form. The complex, across the street from the MGM Grand and the Excalibur, will include 12 New York-style towers featuring replicas of the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, AT&T Building and the Century Building, a 150-foot Statue of Liberty, a 300-foot Brooklyn Bridge, a Little Italy-style food court, Park Avenue shopping and a Coney Island-style roller coaster that streaks around the complex.
Freemont Street Experience. Freemont Street in old downtown is where Las Vegas was born - it was the town's first paved street, where the first Nevada gambling license was issued.
Like many downtowns across the United States, it went into decline. This development, a $70 million joint public-private partnership that opened in December, has rejuvenated part of the area called Glitter Gulch with a casino-lined pedestrian mall covered over with a sky vault.
Every hour, from dark until midnight, the 90-foot-high canopy becomes an overhead stage for a six-minute, computer-generated, sound-and-light show featuring 2.1 million lights, implanted in the metal grid, capable of producing 65,536 color combinations.
There are alternating shows: Country and Western, featuring cowboys and horses, and Odyssey, which features jets streaking down the sky vault.
It IS an experience. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo courtesy of Stratosphere Hotel and Casino
[photo of the Stratosphere]
B\W Photo by STEVE HARRIMAN\The Virginian-Pilot
The $350 million, 2,100-room New York New York will open late this
year. It will re-create some of New York City's best-known landmarks
and traditions in slightly scaled-down form.
The view from the top of the Stratosphere Tower.
KEYWORDS: LAS VEGAS by CNB