The Strat has a history as a property of being one to make statements that many times don’t quite work out. There’s been conversations of everything from a roller coaster going down the side of the building to a King Kong type attraction that would see riders climb the building.
Then there was the original High Roller in Vegas, a roller coaster that twisted around the top of the Strat tower that, like other thrill rides at the top, uses the height to add some additional fear to the attraction, even though its speed and pace wasn’t particularly fast.
YouTube channel Expedition Theme Park focuses on various stories about amusement rides and theme parks, and so the Strat’s thrill rides is fair game for their series on Extinct attractions. And with a colorful history of various proposals and attempts for the Strat to stand out, it makes for a good episode of the series.
If you aren’t familiar with the Strat’s history of constructing the tower, its evolution from Vegas World (itself a property full of unusual history of leveraging various promotional elements to gain attention), and the rides that were considered for the tower vs. what’s around today, this video is a great primer on many aspects of that, but its primary focus is on the High Roller roller coaster.
The last proposed ride featured in this video is intriguing enough that another YouTube channel took a further look at this project specifically.
Another great video, from Airtime Thrills, a roller coaster enthusiast channel, specifically reviews the proposed 700 foot roller coaster by Arrow Dynamics that would have been attached to the tower, but never came to pass.
This is such a weird and quirky idea that fits right in to the Strat model in its early years of drawing attention with various proposals, but like many of them the proposal wasn’t really all that viable (leading to a refined proposal that wasn’t as tall), alongside it being caught up in the downfall of Arrow Dynamics in its final years. It was ultimately abandoned as a concept.
For Vegas fans, these two videos share some fun stories of what could have been in a different moment, if the Strat tower wasn’t built in the middle of a city anyway where noise and space weren’t issues.
