Vegas: The Stratosphere Thrill Rides

This past weekend I was in Vegas with my mom, dad, sister, and roommate, Aimee. As always in Vegas, I had an awesome weekend.

On Sunday morning, after two very late nights we were wondering what to do with our afternoon and I had the idea to head over to the Stratosphere Hotel and ride the rides at the top of the building.

I have to preface this by saying that whoever thought of putting thrill rides on top of a 900' building was absolutely INSANE and brilliant. This is really the craziest thing I have ever seen... only in Vegas, huh?

The first ride we went on is called Insanity. You basically sit in some seats attached to an arm and the arm moves you out into the open so you are just sitting there above the tallest building west of the Mississippi with nothing underneath you. Then they spin you around so that you're at a 45 degree angle to the ground just looking at the pavement below you praying to god that you don't fall out and squash your brains on the ground!

I was terrified. For some reason this was was my idea, but unfortunately once I was up there I discovered that I inherited my father's fear of heights. I seriously almost cried and almost threw up on this first ride. I had to hold Aimee's hand on this one and my mom's on the other two, and on the Insanity I was sweating so bad that there was a little puddle in my shoe when we got off the ride (and that is not an exaggeration!).

The second ride was called the XScream. This lovely little ride is basically a see-saw with a car on top of it that moves with the motion of the see-saw. The car is literally hanging off of the track over the edge of the building (again with nothing below you) and they just let you sit there a little bit to absorb how extremely terrifying it is before suddenly dropping you down farther. This video gives you a nice idea of what its like.... This was probably the least enjoyable of the three for me.





After that, my nerves were shot. I was absolutely freaking out at this point and we still had one more ride to go: The Big Shot.


For this ride, you just sit in some seats attached to the bottom of a big shaft and they shoot you 160 feet in the air at 45 miles per hour before you come plummeting down to earth. (Keep in mind this is 160 feet in the air on top of a 912 foot building! putting you at a total of 1,081 feet above the strip!). By the time we got to this ride, I was basically having a panic attack. I absolutely did not want to do this, as is evidenced by my face in this picture:
My mom did way better than I did on these rides and I was the one who made her do it! It is amazing that I have been skydiving and bungee jumping, but these things are what really scared the bejesus out of me. (OK OK, they had to push me over the edge for the bungee jump...but this was definitely scarier!)
In spite of being completely terrified, I really did enjoy the day and I think I would recommend for anyone to try these rides while in Vegas.

But, I can tell you this: It is something which I will never do again!

Vacation

Good times this week in Sarasota, FL.

My mom, dad, sister, and I went down to my grandparent's condo for a week of beach time. we got two perfect days, two decent days, and two not so good beach days. Buddy wasn't able to come, so that was a bummer but all in all, it was a good trip. Here are some highlights:

QT with the family: lots of time playing cards and cranium and other family-bonding activities as evidenced by this picture. Ha Ha. Good Times!

Allison Goodson: my roommate from Semester at Sea. She lives in Tampa, and I had to go to Tampa a day before my family because I had a super early flight out on Wednesday morning, so Allison picked me up from Sarasota and we went out to dinner and then she took me to the airport in the morning. I haven't seen her since 2004, so it was awesome to catch up.

Islands of Adventure: on day two it was rainy in Sarasota so we decided to make the two hour drive to Orlando to go to Universal's parks: Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios. It was an awesome day. Islands of Adventure has some really awesome rides, including one of my all time favorite roller coasters, The Hulk. The park is divided up into different areas with various themes (Marvel Comics, Jurassic Park, etc.) and the best one is Dr. Seuss. The whole thing looks like your in a Dr. Seuss book. Its freeking awesome.

So that was super fun, except for two things.

(1) it was $90 / person to get in!!! WTF!!! that's for one day! its freeking RIDICULOUS!

and

(2) we spent $10 extra so that we could go to both Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios. the two parks are distinct and located walking distance from each other. We bought the tickets at the Islands park so it was obvious that we were going to be spending our time there first. So we spend about 5 hours there and then head over to the other park with 2 hours remaining in the day. and what happens!? THE FREEKING PARK IS CLOSED!!!

Universal closed two hours earlier than Islands because they had a Halloween thing going on and NO ONE TOLD US!!! A waste of $40, but more importantly, a major let down! My parent's were awesome when I was growing up and we went to Universal and Disney a lot when I was younger. All day I was looking forward to going on some rides that I have really fond memories of from those vacations and if we knew that the thing closed early, we would have went over there first.

Everything in Orlando is a ripoff. (How about $1 / hour for a locker!!!) I was LIVID. How could they sell us a pass to two parks and then not even tell us that one closed two hours before the other one. What a bunch of assholes.

And to top it off, I didn't bring my ID into the park and after being locked out of Universal Studios, I couldn't even get a margarita to settle myself down!

Anyway, thats all for now. It was a good week and I feel nice and refreshed... and lazy! good thing its almost the weekend.