The High Roller roller coaster circled the observation deck of the Stratosphere at the 900-foot level from the day the place opened (4/29/96) till December 30, 2005.
From the very beginning, it was tame (some said lame), reaching a top speed of 30 miles per hour. More than a million people paid to ride it in its nearly 10 years of existence, but after a decade of use, it needed a facelift. The hydraulics were worn out, it required constant maintenance, and even after spending a half-million to repair it, it still would have been a mild ride, especially compared to the ferocious Big Shot, the frightening X Scream, and the nauseating Insanity.
So the decision was made to close it, take it down, and replace it with something else.
Though the whole roller coaster had been lifted up to the observation deck by a crane when the tower was being built, the only way to get it down was by the elevator. So it had to be dismantled into small enough pieces.
A specialized Thern Davit crane was hooked onto the frame of one of the roller coaster cars. The car was rolled into place, then the crane was attached to the roller coaster track just above the section to be removed. Finally, the section -- three feet long and 300 pounds -- was cut away with a plasma welding torch (which cut through the quarter-inch and five-eighths-inch rails, ties, and backbone in half the time, and with twice the safety, of oxyfuel torches).
A total of 367 sections were cut between 2 and 8 a.m., the only time the Tower wasn’t open to visitors.
Finally, the whole High Roller was dismantled, taken down from the observation deck, and scrapped. Well, some of it was scrapped. The rest ended up, as do so many old bits of Las Vegas, in the yard of Dr Lonnie Hammargren, that onetime Lt. Governor, former neurosurgeon, and long-time collector of the weird, wonderful, and unwanted (see QoD 10/8/2006). If you drive past his house (4318 Ridgecrest Drive), as we did recently when we took a wrong turn on the way to a Super Bowl party, you can see it.
