I was driving down Circus Circus Dr. between the Travelodge and Circus Circus and saw on the north side of the drive what looked like a bungee jump. It didn’t appear operational. What’s the story on this?
That was, as you surmised, a bungee-jump tower. It was called A.J. Hackett Bungee.
A.J. Hackett is an international bungee-jumping company. Its first operation was the world’s first year-round commercial public bungee site, which opened in Queenstown, New Zealand, in 1988.
Over the next five years, it expanded to France, Australia, U.K., and Florida. It arrived in Las Vegas in 1994, opening at the site you saw next to Circus Circus. Jumpers, including Anthony Curtis, flung themselves off the 170-foot tower; they could also opt for a little dip in the Circus Circus pool at the bottom.
Anthony jumped in 1996. Here's what he wrote in the LVA.
“I’m pretty big on thrills and I handled the Stratosphere’s Big Shot and Buffalo Bill’s Desperado without much trouble. But this bungee deal is something else entirely. It’s scary. I’m talking flat-out, unadulterated, no-way-home-but-down scary. You’re attached to cables rather than a rubber band, but sheesh! The no-frills tower resembles a white construction crane. Up top, the lights of the city unfold in every direction. The floor of the jump platform is a grate, so you can look straight down to the ground below. If you want to try it, it costs $100, or $149 for two jumps."
A.J. Hackett shut down at the end of July 2005. We heard that Hackett sold the land to a real-estate developer, who was supposed to dismantle the tower mere months after closing it. That didn't happen. Noises were made over the next year or two to reopen it. That didn't happen either and the tower, obviously, was never dismantled.
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O2bnVegas
Aug-06-2024
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