CLOSING
Credit
Unlike most slot machines, SlotZilla doesn’t accept coins.
The 120-foot-tall (37-meter-tall) steel truss tower is the start of a zip line ride in Las
Vegas, Nevada, USA designed to look like a slot machine. Brave visitors can glide 77 feet
( 23. 5 meters) in the air along 850 feet (259 meters) of zip line through the Fremont Street
Experience, an outdoor pedestrian mall covered by a canopy of LED displays and speakers.
For a little more excitement, patrons can fly farther on a higher line, zipping 1,700 feet (518.2
meters) across the mall at a height of 114 feet ( 34. 7 meters).
Lonnie Reed, principal of Themed Development Management LLC, Simi Valley, California,
USA, told the Las Vegas Sun that getting construction right the first time was paramount.
Project managers ensured the safety of patrons by sending 175-pound test dummies down the
lines. The ride needed to function perfectly 50 times in a row before customers could get on. When
they discovered two trusses from the old canopy—built in December 1995—were too close to
some of the lines, the canopy had to be re-engineered and the trusses shifted.
Mr. Reed, who has worked in the theme park business for 47 years, told the Sun that the
ride’s testing was among the most stringent he has seen. “Even if a tiny light somewhere goes
out, we stop there, fix it and start it all over again,” he said.
PROJECT: SlotZilla zip lines
BUDGET: US$12 million
TIMELINE: March 2013-April 2014
SPEED: Up to 40 miles ( 64. 4 kilometers) per hour
“Here you’re always on stage.
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What’s the business driving Las Vegas? Tourism.”
—Lonnie Reed, principal, Themed Development Management
LLC, Simi Valley, California, USA, to the Las Vegas Sun
