Zip line set to zing tourists

LAS VEGAS, Dec 2, (Agencies): Tourists will soon have a new way to see the lights of Las Vegas: By being spit out of the mouth of an 11-story slot machine and zinged down a five-block zip line past some of the city’s oldest casinos.

Officials on Tuesday unveiled plans for a permanent zip line on the downtown Las Vegas promenade known as the Fremont Street Experience.

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said the thrill ride dubbed SlotZilla was destined to become an iconic city landmark.

“This is going to be known around the world: Come ride our Slotzilla,” she said, standing beside showgirls and a scale model at the unveiling.

The monster zip line will cost $11 million to build and between $20 and $30 to ride. Construction is expected to start in January.

The attraction, expected to open in June, is an expansion of a much smaller, temporary zip line that has for two years scooted families, newlyweds and Elvis impersonators beneath a long metal canopy that displays an hourly light show.

That ride was intended to be a 30-day novelty, but it proved such a crowd pleaser the business community began working to make it permanent.

Currently, riders launch four at a time from a 67-foot (20-meter) metal scaffolding and land 800 feet (244 meters) away near the Four Queens casino, halfway across the pedestrian mall that features the world’s largest video screen.

The new tower will be twice as tall, feature twice as many lines, and will look like a giant slot machine spitting out disoriented tourists.

With each new batch of zip-liners, the handle will dip, the wheels will spin, and the doors will open, revealing the course to the tourists on top.

“If you’re going to do something here, you have to do it bigger and better than anywhere else,” said Fremont Street Experience marketing director Thomas Bruney.

Officials are betting the new attraction will lure more visitors the downtown area, which has struggled to compete with the flashier Strip three miles (less than five kilometers) away.

It is intended to reflect the “vintage Vegas” vibe that characterizes the promenade, nicknamed “Glitter Gulch” for the classic casino signs that glow amid the souvenir shops and buffet signs.

Riders will be able to stop halfway, or continue to the end of the 1,700 course, landing near the Golden Gate casino. They will have the option of flying along the lines in a horizontal “superman” position, and accelerating their ride using a new “power launch” system.

Bootleg Canyon Flightlines operates the current ride. The new structure will be built by the Hawaii-based company Skyline, better known for zip lines that span waterfalls and forests.

Czech Republic, a regal 19thcentury horse-drawn hearse believed to be the world’s largest has become a crowd magnet for a Czech museum built single-handedly by a plumber with a passion for historic vehicles.

Czech master craftsman Vaclav Brozik built the massive eighthorse hearse around 1895. It is over four metres (yards) high, 6.5 metres long and weighs in at almost three tonnes.

Vaclav Obr, a 45-year-old Czech plumber, recently spent two years restoring the hearse for his museum, featuring 60 historic carriages and built with European Union funding to the tune of 174,000 euros ($225,000).

He opened the museum in 2009 in Cechy pod Kosirem, a town of about 1,000 people some 220 kilometres (140 miles) southeast of the Czech capital, Prague.

This year, the hefty hearse became the museum’s star attraction. Obr found it badly damaged in a nearby town about two years ago. He was then able to identify it with the help of a photograph hanging in a Prague museum.

“When I saw the picture in Prague, I almost fell off my chair,” Obr told AFP.

Many details, including carvings and sculptures of angels, had vanished from the wreck he had found.

With the help of local craftsmen he managed to restore the hearse to its former glory, using the single photograph as a model.

Obr, who repaired his first carriage 18 years ago, collected them from all over the Czech Republic for years.

His labour of love is a public service mission of sorts to salvage the country’s remaining transport artifacts.