Sure thing. Construction of the observation wheel took slightly over two years, with the lights turning on in February 2014 and rides commencing late the following month. (Initial designs for the wheel showed a giant "Harrah's" logo at its center, a tacky touch that was quickly eliminated.) Project manager Randy Printz, responsible for the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, said the High Roller was the most difficult project he'd ever been involved with: "This is the cutting edge right now."
The High Roller rotates upon a pair of 19,400 bearings, manufactured by Swedish firm SKF, and was assembled in 28, 56-foot-long sections, each fastened to the axis by four cables. In addition to the machinery that slowly rotates the wheel, each gondola has its own electric motor to ensure a stable ride. The High Roller is designed to withstand 50 years of use.
Although nighttime rides are premium-priced, at $36.95 per passenger, the $26.95 daytime excursion is the better deal and not simply because of the lower price. Due to exigencies of real estate, Caesars built the High Roller behind The LINQ hotel (formerly Imperial Palace) and a Hilton Grand Vacations timeshare high-rise. This compromises the view from the High Roller, particularly at night, when the view to the east is swathed in darkness and the Strip perspective to the west is masked for half the ride by the timeshare and Linq. (We've ridden the High Roller twice and timed it.) Children 12 and under ride free, and locals enjoy preferential rates of $13 (day) and $18 (night), with bargain rates for teenagers and freebie rides for those 12 and younger.
Some of what takes place on the High Roller, however, isn't suitable for family viewing. High Roller marketing encourages a party atmosphere and on eight occasions riders were subjected to views of couples trysting at high altitude. The most notorious of these actually got a man killed. Phlilip Panzica, visiting Vegas without his fiancée, picked up Chloe Scordianos. Once aboard the High Roller, they disrobed and pleasured each other in full view of passengers in adjacent gondolas, an incident captured on video (as everything seems to be nowadays). Panzica copped to a misdemeanor plea – as Scordianos would later do – but when he got back to Texas, he and his fiancée were carjacked by two men who told Panzica, "You have to come clean," before pumping him full of lead. (The fiancée was miraculously spared.)
Linq Executive Project Director David Codiga originally had a more romantic future in mind for the High Roller. "I'd love to imagine a Valentine's Day when all of the cabins have weddings going in them simultaneously," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The High Roller sits at the terminus of Caesars' Linq Promenade. It's an indoor-outdoor mall that Forbes Larry Olmsted described as aiming "to become an open-air social hub of the Las Vegas Strip akin to [Los Angeles'] Grove or Austin’s Sixth Street, and is already diverting pedestrian traffic off the main drag with its newfound curiosity." A couple of years into its career, the Linq mall is still a major pedestrian draw, even if the curiosity factor has probably abated.
Yahoo News reported that there are plans afoot in Moscow to build an even taller Ferris wheel but, for the foreseeable future, the High Roller is tops.
