I keep intending, and forgetting to post a couple of videos from our US holiday last April. I suppose I was hoping to get round to writing up my paper notes from the holiday, but it’s becoming apparent that won’t happen anytime soon, so let’s skip forward to the funny bits:
We spent a couple of nights at the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas, which is the tallest observation tower in the United States. Atop the tower are three “thrill rides”, and I foolishly tried all of them whilst Jocelyn videoed proceedings from a safe distance.
The Big Shot, at 329m high is the highest ride in the world. This is essentially a big pole with seats around the side that flings you straight up, quickly, and drops you down again. You’ve probably seen these elsewhere, this is much the same except it happens to be on the top of a very tall building and hence offers mighty fine views over the Las Vegas desert. We don’t have any video of this as it all happened a bit too quickly for Joce to catch.
X-Scream, at 264m high is the third highest ride in the world. This is basically a glorified bench that dangles off the edge of the building, and it is one of the scariest things I’ve ever experienced! From inside the building Jocelyn captured the video below – turn up the volume to hear some Aussie tourists laughing at my predicament!
Insanity, at 274m high is the second highest ride in the world. According to Wikipedia, “it dangles riders over the edge of the tower and then spins in a circular pattern at approximately forty miles per hour”. This was also pretty scary, though the constant circular motion made it less terrifying than the X-Scream (with its stop-start “aha, you thought you were going to continue falling for another 100+ storeys” shenanigans). Here’s a video of me on the Insanity – can’t think why I’m the only partipant…
