Blogger Reviews Rides at The Stratosphere in Las Vegas

Growing up, Blogger had a secret. He hates heights. Carefully hiding signs of fear (sometimes even successfully, sometimes) he would take the challenge of traversing heights while at the same time frustrated at his own "heightened" sense of fear.

To this day, Blogger still does not like heights. But he finds it a very psychologically useful to experiment. So in the interests of science and character development he rode the highest rides in the world this weekend at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas.

For the advancement of knowledge in the year 2005, to further an understanding of the human mind and body, and just in case some crazy reader of Blogger's scientific work would like a review before they undertook to try it for themselves, Blogger reviews the four rides of The Stratosphere.

High Roller

On the 109th floor of the Stratosphere lies "High Roller." It's a roller coaster. Where you go around in circles. with no railing separating yourself from a dramatic entrance on the Las Vegas strip.

For those in the early stages of fear experimentation, this is the ride for you! Other than the dizzying feeling of going around in circles rapidly and having nothing to your left except helicopter fumes, this is an extremely tame ride.

Blogger enjoyed it.

His dinner stayed with him throughout the whole exercise.

Insanity

Six extensions containing four chairs a piece. A crane takes you 63 feet out away from the building, with nothing between you and the afterlife but God's grace.

It's a great witnessing tool.

After having you sit out there in the open air for a bit thinking about your sins, dwelling on the fragile nature of man, trying to comfort the teenage girl sitting next you who thinks she is going to die ("well, I know you think you're going to die, but let me assure you, if you actually do die your parents are going to be set for life and the insurance company that thought the designer of this thing knew what he was doing will be really mad"), it starts spinning around in small circles very rapidly. About 25 Miles Per Hour. If a bolt comes lose somewhere you could end up at Lake Mead.

A very well recommended experiment.

As a sanity note, clean up crews do occasionally go over the roof of the building 104 stories below.

X-Scream

Imagine you're in a car overlooking a cliff the equivalent of 109 stories up. Imagine that the car suddenly lurches toward the edge of the cliff and goes over the edge. Imagine dropping two stories front first. Then abruptly getting snagged by something and being held in by your seatbelt.

Repeat imagination sequence.

Be reminded to wear your seatbelt and remember in the actual event of going off of a cliff, the car is unlikely to actually catch on anything to allow you to avoid dismemberment or death.

Last Ride (name forgotten. Breathe gone)

You get strapped into a seat and without warning, launched approximately two hundred feet (I don't remember) into the air in about two seconds. This generates 4 G's.

You reach the peak over looking all of Nevada. Without pause, you are dropped 200 feet so that you have zero G's.

Repeat.

Biblical Analysis: The Tower Of Babel

There are more hotel rooms in Las Vegas than in anyplace in the world. People from all over are here to do all sorts of completely unorthodox things. This is a tower that seemingly reaches to the heavens.

One asks themself (normally at somepoint during a ride), why them and not us?

Ahem.

Blogger highly recommends this spiritually invigorating journey through the recesses of fear in the human mind.

When you go to Las Vegas, be above it all.