Manhattan Express at New York-New York has two major drops, a 360-degree loop, a unique heartline twist (like a barrel roll in an airplane), and a corkscrew -- in short, lots of spills and thrills. However, it's pretty jerky, which means that unless you hold your neck stiff, your head gets banged between the two hard-rubber restraints as if Mohammed Ali is popping you on one side of your noggin and Evander Holyfield is punching you on the other. Headache central.
The High Roller atop Stratosphere is about as tame a roller coaster as you'll ever ride, but being 900 feet off the ground, it's still pretty exciting.
You can ride the world's largest indoor roller coaster, the Canyon Blaster, which is also the world's only double-loop double-corkscrew coaster, in Adventuredome at Circus Circus. Like Manhattan Express, it's a pretty rough ride unless you sit very tall or very still.
But for sheer ferocity and downright strangeness, try Speed the Ride at the Sahara. This bad boy uses electromagnetic "sling-shot" technology to accelerate you from zero to 35 in two seconds flat. You burst out of the building and take a sharp left, then plunge through a tunnel and do a 360. From there, you accelerate again from 35 to 55 in two seconds and climb a 222-foot pole straight up. Then you do the entire trip in reverse, acceleration and all. The whole thing takes slightly more than one minute, though you won't know what hit you till an hour later.
