Five things to know about the gargantuan carnival ride
The Las Vegas Strip is getting the world’s largest Ferris wheel, dubbed the High Roller. Workers hoisted the final 60-foot piece of the 55-story outer wheel into place Tuesday. Here are five things to know about the gargantuan carnival ride:
1. BIG WHEEL
At 550 feet, the High Roller is 9 feet taller than its closest competitor, the Singapore Flyer, and 100 feet taller than the London Eye. It’s a hair taller than the Bellagio hotel, though not as tall as the Wynn Las Vegas. But it won’t be the looking down on the rest for long. The 625-foot New York Wheel is expected to steal its tallest-in-the-world thunder in 2016. And a rival company is building SkyVue, a 500-foot observation wheel at the southern end of the Strip.
2. STEEL DEAL
The wheel, being built between the Flamingo and Harrah’s hotel-casino as part of the outdoor Linq project by Caesars Entertainment Corp., will carry 3.5 million pounds of steel. That’s more than the weight of 200 Hummers.
3. THAT’S NOT PEANUTS
Each cable holding the wheel in place has a breaking force equal to 550 tons, the weight of nearly 100 elephants.
4. MADE IN …
Workers have assembled parts of the wheel over the course of two years in China, Japan, France, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Colorado.
5. LOTS OF WINDEX
Each of the ride’s 28 enclosed cabins will be made from four sheets of laminated glass covering 300 square feet each. And each cabin will have the capacity to carry up to 40 passengers for a revolution that will take 30 minutes to complete.