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"And I thought Worlds of Fun was a lot of walking..."
Green River, UT is a town about four miles long and two blocks wide. The main drag runs in a big loop between two exits on IR-70, and there are about a half-dozen motels. It's about 80 miles from Grand Junction, and I actually got in kind of early. But Mean Mr. McNally suggested that there literally wasn't anything else for another hundred miles or more, and that would have put me in the next town after Midnight, something I really didn't want to risk. So I spent the night in scenic Green River (Is this the town that John Fogerty sang about? If so, then WHY?). The next morning, I got back on the National Road Replacement and drove for miles and miles and miles until the road ended. Then I turned left onto IR-15 and kept driving. I'm not sure that there was even an exit in Arizona. I watched as the outside air temperature gauge climbed well past 100 degrees. I kept an eye on the engine temperature. And I kept driving.
I did stop in St. George, UT. for a hamburger at Carl's Jr, a place that I know better as Hardee's. There, a pickup truck had disabled the restaurant's "drive thru" by overheating and stalling in the middle of the service lane. I wanted to go inside, into the air conditioning anyway. It was 115 degrees in the shade...and I didn't see any shade. The computer kept going blank, and I wasn't sure if it was shutting down from the heat, or what. It turns out that it was "or what". The computer was fine, but the AC power inverter was overheating and shutting off. That left the computer running on battery power, so it kept putting the display to sleep. It was so hot... (How hot was it?) It was so hot that I actually drove part of the day with the roof up just so that I could have a little bit of shade. I cussed at the air conditioner which seems capable only of blowing hot air onto my feet. The day dragged on. Late in the afternoon, I turned on the radio. Surely Las Vegas would have an NPR affiliate and I could listen to All Things Considered...
As I approached Las Vegas, I did get some useful information on the radio. There was a fatal accident on Southbound IR-15 at Tropicana, which is where I had planned to get off. So I bailed off just before I got to the back of the back-up. That took me right through the driveway of one of the major hotels, and dumped me off onto Las Vegas Boulevard, where I sat. And sat. And sat. And sat. It took more than a half hour to go the half mile down the strip to where I had hoped to find an inexpensive motel. Perhaps I should have stayed on the expressway. Anyway, I got to see some of the sights of the Strip in daylight, sort of, stuck as I was behind a bus and caught in non-moving traffic. With temperatures in the 120's I really did appreciate the gigantic fountains and waterfalls in front of some of the hotels. Those water features really do lower the air temperature in the surrounding area. Sitting in the car I could feel the difference as I crawled past.
I finally got a room in a not-very-nice motel where the air conditioner was noisy and the free wireless internet service was worth every penny. I parked my suitcase, put on a slightly better looking shirt, and set off for a night on the town. I discovered that my hotel was literally right next door to McCarran Airport. I also discovered that the Monorail gets ridiculously close, and I wonder what kind of political insanity kept the monorail off the airport grounds. Anyway, I drove down a back street and parked the car at the Hilton; that seemed to be as good of a place as anywhere. Inside, I looked briefly at the shops at the Star Trek: The Experience. Now remember, this was not a trip to Las Vegas, instead it was a trip to Los Angeles with a stopover in Las Vegas. So this time around, there was a lot that I didn't do, and this attraction was one of those things. Instead, I found the monorail station and bought a 24-hour ticket ($15), studied the route, and rode to the closest end of the line, to the Sahara.
Once past the casino, in the back of the Sahara there is a whole section devoted to NASCAR. There is a whole row of motion base simulators, either one or two seats, set up presumably as interactive units with little race cars as the motion bases. Signs suggest that there is also a larger motion theater tucked away somewhere, and at the end of the hall and up the stairs is the loading platform for Speed. I bought my ticket ($10) and went up the stairs. I noticed that there were signs which explicitly told me that it was OK to wear my glasses (I'd heard that some people had trouble with this in the past) so long as I had a cord to secure them, so I attached the neck cord as I approached the top of the stairs. There was a few minutes' wait for riders to approach the platform, and I picked a seat at the front of the last car. I noticed that this Premier train still has its shoulder bars, but that the bars do not have any of the various layers of padding that The Outer LIMits: Flight of Fear had before they finally came to their senses and put lap bars on the @#$! thing. The attendant took my ticket, the gates opened, I sat down in the train and pulled down the shoulder bar. The bars were checked, and with a WHOOSH! we were off. The train blasts out of the station, out of the building into the 120 degree heat, and into a pretty simple sequence. It's a twisting curve, a dive, a vertical loop, then more acceleration to blast through the sign and up the tower spike, Mr. Freeze style, only without the booster LIMs on the tower. Then the train falls back down the tower and does the whole ride backward. Strong braking into the station, and the ride is over. Probably not worth $10, but it is a decent ride, and a good way to start my evening.
I made my way back through the casino and hotel lobby and returned to the monorail, this time riding it to the other end of the line, the MGM Grand Hotel. That place proved to be an opulent maze, where the main lobby didn't provide me with any access to Las Vegas Blvd. Instead, there is another exit near a display where a couple of lions were preparing to return to their out-of-town residence for the evening. By "lions" I am referring to furry things with sharp teeth, not to members of the community service organization. Anyway, I finally found the bridge that would allow me to cross the street (apparently there is enough public inebriation in Las Vegas that there are no pedestrian crossings on Las Vegas Blvd.) and I proceeded to my second coaster of the evening, at New York, New York.
Tucked away in the back of the casino at New York, New York is a large arcade. You can tell that it is an arcade because the video games do not pay out anything if you win. The whole area is themed to New York City, and the arcade is specifically themed to Coney Island. There is even a Nathan's restaurant overlooking the casino floor. I checked the signs, then tried to figure out where to get a ticket. Finally I figured out that to ride the coaster, one has to get in the long line first, and buy the ticket at the base of the stairs leading to the boarding platform. I thought it particularly interesting that there is a pre-ride video presentation which says that riders shouldn't be carrying stuff in their pockets such as loose change. Then, the price per ride is $12.50, meaning that any single rider who pays cash is going to be carrying two quarters.
The ride in this case is Manhattan Express, a sit-down looping coaster built by Togo, a Japanese company, although I noticed that the data plate in the station lists a Cincinnati address. A bit of trivia: At one time, there was a deal in the works for Americana Amusement Park in Middletown to become a US show park for Togo. Nothing ever became of that deal, and that was probably a good thing. But I am getting ahead of myself. As I waited for the train to arrive, the attendant handed me a coupon good for a free hot dog at Nathan's with the purchase of a soft drink. I sat in the train and pulled down the shoulder bar and the lap bar. Togo's shoulder bar goes straight up and down, kind of like the setup that Schwarzkopf used on the Mindbender retrofit and on later coasters, except that on this ride the shoulder bar positively locks in place. The lap bar is mostly conventional. The train exits the building and goes up a lift that is just over 200 feet tall. Instead of bringing the ride all the way down to street level similar to what the Sahara did with Speed, Manhattan Express is almost entirely contained on the roof of the casino building, between layers of the New York skyline facade. So the maximum drop on the ride is under 150 feet, into the vertical loop and then an inline twist that is something of a late-model Togo signature maneuver. The other Togo signatures are also present, such as the screeching and wailing of the wheel assemblies, the shuffle and bounce, and the general lack of attention paid to such things as curve banking. The inline twist literally dumps you from the seat, and for the remainder of the ride there is a lot of those oddly profiled humps reminiscent of the old King Cobra from Kings Island. For the most part, the layout is uninspired, the execution is fair to poor, the ride represents a horrible waste of about 50' of potential energy, and the back side of the front facade on the building is unfinished so there isn't even anything to look at while you're riding. Overall, the ride is dull, rough, and certainly not worth the $12.50. At the exit platform, there is an offer for a discounted re-ride. I got off thinking that I wanted my half-hour back, I certainly didn't want to ride again! "Try Once Get Off" [Footnote 1] indeed! I'd been on a few coasters that were decent rides but not running very well. This ride was running great, it was just a lousy ride.
I went over to Nathan's and got my free hot dog. Just under $3 is way too much to pay for a cup of pop (especially Pepsi), but for a drink and a Nathan's hot dog it's pretty reasonable. I went back out to Las Vegas Blvd. and started walking back towards the Hilton. That put me on the opposite side of the street from the monorail line, but a couple of blocks down is the Bellagio hotel and casino. That's the place with the massive pond out front and the impressive fountain show. I kind of wonder about the wisdom of putting in an attraction like that. Does anybody ever go into that place? Everybody knows about the fountain show out front, but that puts the door a long way from the street, and the big thing that everybody goes there for is outside. I dunno; maybe they have a nice casino in there or something. After the show I kept walking down the street, hoping that eventually I would come to a place where I could cross over again. That didn't happen until I got down to Caesar's Palace, where I crossed on a pedestrian walkway to...er, I think it was the Flamingo, where I walked and walked and walked through to get to the monorail station. I took the monorail to the Hilton, then made my biggest mistake of the night. I actually believed the monorail guide that suggested that the Hilton station offered good access to Circus Circus. I walked through the hotel, crossed the street, and kept going towards Circus Circus.
That's a long walk. And it was stupid. Remember, parking in Las Vegas is generally free. And remember where I parked my car. Why didn't I just get in the car and drive to Circus Circus? I guess I just wasn't thinking. Anyway, I got to Circus Circus, and I learned something important. You know that advertising slogan about how Vegas is "Open 24 Hours"? Well, guess what: That doesn't apply to the Adventuredome at Circus Circus. When I got there, the Adventuredome was still open, but the ticket booths were not. I had just enough time to walk around the park before they shut it down for the night. So I hiked back to the Hilton (this time cutting through the Riviera as much as I could) and returned to the hotel for the night.
When I got back to the hotel, I plunked five quarters into a machine and pressed the green button. With almost no fanfare, the machine paid off with a jackpot. I reached into the tray and pulled out not just the bottle of Sprite™ but also the bottle of Dr. Pepper™ that had come out with it. "Gee," I thought. "Maybe I should have tried that with a slot machine!" That's the only machine I played in Las Vegas, and it paid off 2:1.
Saturday morning, I started by day with a return visit to the Adventuredome at Circus Circus. This time I drove to the casino. I parked in the parking garage, where I noticed something interesting. It appears that gravity, at times, does not operate in the conventional way in the Circus Circus parking garage: The building is constructed of concrete posts and concrete beams, all of which are painted white. For some reason every one of the beams is covered with dirty black sneaker prints, various sizes and tread patterns. This isn't painted or anything like that, this just looks like lots of people have been walking all over the beams. Walking parallel to the floor, that is to say, perpendicular to the normal orientation for perambulation, but walking all over the beams just the same. I had a photo, but somehow lost that one in a camera/computer problem.
At the Adventuredome, I paid my $7 and bought my ticket. The Canyon Blaster is a double-loop and Corkscrew, much like the Demon at Six Flags Great America, or Dragon Fyre at Canada's Wonderland. The critical difference between the rides, apart from the age and the location, is that Canyon Blaster uses the updated-style trains similar to those that ran on Drachen Fire at Busch Gardens in Virginia [Footnote 2]. The ride runs nice and smooth, and the rock work and the dome structure provide some good added visuals. The ride also benefits from having real seat cushions, making for an unusually comfortable ride for an Arrow coaster. The ride is in great shape, runs very nicely, and kind of epitomizes the way that a small looping coaster should be. It's a shame that Arrow didn't get to build more of these in their later years, as the Canyon Blaster is not just the cheapest coaster in Las Vegas, it's also the best running. I think I have to give a slight edge to Speed as a slightly better ride, but Canyon Blaster only loses out because it is strictly conventional, and is a standard layout. Speed would command a longer lead if it had been updated with lap bars, but both of the coasters at this end of the Strip absolutely put Manhattan Express to shame.
With my ride on Canyon Blaster I completed my Las Vegas tour. I never made it to the Stratosphere, since there is no working coaster there anymore. Next time I am in town I'll ride those other rides up there, but this time I wanted to concentrate on the coasters. Besides, next time I can skip New York, New York, as I have ridden that coaster and don't have to ride it again. For the rest of the day, I took a detour in the wrong direction to visit the Hoover Dam, then went back down IR-15 to Los Angeles.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: Google Groups credits that expansion to Janis Moore in message <19990822143220.03678.00003015@ng-da1.aol.com>. [Return to text]
Footnote 2: Whatever they're calling it now. [Return to text]
--DCAjr
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