Las Vegas Sun – Slotzilla’s downtown invasion is nigh. No one is saying exactly when it will open, but project managers and engineers are this week testing 175-pound dummies on each of the four lower lines of Slotzilla, the Disney-esque zipline attraction at the Fremont Street Experience.
Lonnie Reed, principal of Themed Development Management LLC, out of Simi Valley, Calif., categorized the ride’s testing as some of the most stringent he’s seen in 47 years in the theme park business. But with good reason.
“We’re building in the safest city, the safest county in the world with the most stringent standards of any place in the world,” he said. “But here you’re always on stage and what’s the business driving Las Vegas? Tourism.”
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If drawing people to your city drives the economy, you can’t afford any mishaps, he added. In addition, with the speed that social media spreads news, “You’re only five seconds from having something broadcast around the world. The Fremont Street Experience people really understand this.”
The testing has been going on for a while. About three weeks ago, Reed said, it revealed that two of the dozens of trusses — they call them celery stalks because of their appearance — holding up the Fremont Street Experience electric canopy/screen were too close to the outside lines.
Those trusses had to be shifted more vertically. Then another brace was put into place that extends up and over a horizontal truss across the canopy. From the ground, the brace casts a shadow on the canopy.
Complicating the truss issue, Reed also said, was the fact that the canopy was so old, the engineering firm that designed it is no longer in business. It was completed in December 1995.
So new calculations had to be made — in essence, the canopy had to be re-engineered — so project managers could determine how to move the old trusses and how to put new ones in safely.
