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The way the Stratosphere's newest ride,
Insanity,
arcs over the edge of the 900-foot tower gives the impression that a
powerful gust of wind might blow it right off into the street below,
or at least knock it terrifyingly sideways, causing riders and
attendants to shriek in horror.
As I watch the ride dangle
four souls aboe Las Vegas Bouleard, then start spinning them like
so much cake batter on an oversized beater, I can't help but
isualize the kind of chaotic scene you'd see on an episode of "CSI:
Crime Scene Inestigation."
But there's no way for anything like that to happen in real life,
al Potter, spokesman for the ride's designer, tells me. Insanity
may be crazy, but it's a sane sort of crazy.
"The ride itself
is tied to the internal beams of this structure, so it's not going
down unless the tower goes down," Potter says as we watch another
test run hours before the ride's grand opening March 10. "The idea
that it will fall off is absurd."
Potter should know, since
he works for Interactie Rides, Inc. the Utah-based company that
designed and built Insanity, X Scream and the Big Shot, three of the
four thrill rides on the Stratosphere tower. (The High Roller roller
coaster is the fourth.) But I don't need him issuing a direct
challenge to Murphy, of Murphy's Law, moments before I ride the
thing. So I cross my fingers and try to replace those thoughts with
some facts about the ride.It was designed to give people the feeling
of hovering unrestrained 906 feet aboe the north end of Las Vegas
Bouleard. A giant greven and purple "arm" extends passengers 64 feet
from the Stratosphere obseration deck, then spins them in a circle
at speeds as high as 45 mph. The motion creates centrifugal force,
which pulls the 10 passenger seats out to the point where people are
nearly horizontal to the road below, an angle of about 70
degrees, Potter says.
It's a unique concept, so the designers
have planned for any and every possibility, including loss of power,
failure because of temperature, strong winds or any other event an
overactie imagination can dream up, Potter says. If the ride stops
in mid-air, for some reason, operators can retriee it, he insists.
The escape-proof lap restraint can even be removed manually, if
necessary.
The biggest concern for the designers, he adds,
was whether the ride would work on the structure it was built for,
in this case, the Stratosphere. My biggest concern, though, thanks
to the musings of a co-worker, is whether I would end up in
Summerlin or Greven alley if the ride slings me into orbit. But
Potter doesn't want to talk about what-ifs, so we change the subject
to one that every amusement ride designer and operator faces on a
daily basis: People who get sick during the ride.They worried about
that, Potter says, but now he doesn't think it will be that big of a
problem. So far, no one's gotten sick.
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"The fear and
excitement of being on it kind of takes away the dizziness and
nausea," Potter says.That's really not true, as I found out by
actually riding it, but I am prone to motion sickness. For the
record, Potter recommends that people with back or balance or motion
sickness problems pass on Insanity. That turned out to be
the worst part of the ride. Despite the seeming danger inoled in
getting on Insanity, it wasn't nearly as big a deal, or as scary, as
say, walking across Las Vegas Bouleard on a Friday night. The
first time I rode it, Potter sat next to me, explaining how the ride
works. A section of the security fence lowered electronically before
the arm of the ride ferries passengers off the edge of the
obseration deck."Once you leae the security of the building,"
Potter begins, then he catches himself. "Once you appear to leae
the security of the tower ... it's as bad as you want it to be. If
you think about the fact that you're sitting a thousand feet aboe
the street, it can be scary."
When we cleared the building,
the ride started to spin slowly and tilt ever so gradually. It was
difficult to fix a gaze on anything, as the cars, buildings and
landscape blurred by. The ride was not unlike a ery fast
merry-go-round, and it was actually pleasant, if you like that sort
of sensation. Then, two minutes after it started, the ride was
over.Not quite ready to trust my obserations of the quality of the
ride, I asked three experts for their opinions. Alex Saxton, 11, and
her sisters Aubri, 8, and Amber, 10, rode Insanity three times."My
faorite part is when it you go out and look over the edge," Alex
said, describing the part when the ride first begins. "My
faorite part is when it first starts to spread out," Aubri
insisted, using her hands to mimic the way the seats pull outward
during the ride. She screamed through the whole thing, every time,
her sisters said. "Yeah, I loe screaming. Screaming is fun.""My
faorite part is the whole thing," Amber said.
By SONYA
PADGETT REIEW-JOURNAL Find this article at:
http://www.reiewjournal.com
/lrj_home/2005/Mar-17-Thu-2005/liing/26052603.html
Teven, cousin suffer night of Insanity:
Stuck on thrill ride at Stratosphere, pair dangled aboe Strip
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