Vegas with Kids

Is Vegas a good travel destination for children? Our travel expert is spending the holidays there and shares his experience of visiting the city with his family.

“Look, it’s the Grand Canyon,” 10-year-old Ella squeals from beside me, as we soar over the famous landmark far below our dangling legs. “We were there the other day!”

I glance across and see that her face, and that of her 12-year-old brother, Harrison, are lit up in pure delight.
A few moments later we’re soaring over the Las Vegas strip. “The Stratosphere!” they both yell, pointing toward the tallest building on the strip, far below us.
The ride tilts left, and we soar further across America, reaching San Francisco a few moments later. Harrison and Ella point out the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, two other highlights from our two-week road trip through California, Arizona and Nevada.

It feels like a dream, flying above all these iconic places, with the wind, and even spray from the ocean in our faces. But it’s not a dream, it’s the innovative Flyover experience on the Las Vegas strip, where riders get to feel as though they’re soaring over a variety of landscapes and cities, including Iceland, the Canadian Rockies, Chicago and the American West.

Ten minutes later we’re back outside into the sunshine of the strip. The kids can’t stop talking about our “flight”, and how fantastic it was.
“Was it as good as actually being in those places?” I ask.
“Kind of, but kind of not,” Harrison tells me. Ella agrees.

After a spot of lunch in the Hard Rock Café, we cross the road to New York-New York, and watch riders zooming on the roller-coaster past mock-ups of the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty. Then we ride the free monorail to the Bellagio and watch the famous fountains dancing to an Elvis song, with the replica Eiffel Tower of Paris just across the road from us.
Half an hour later we’re watching the Gondoliers singing to passengers and spectators on Venice’s Grand Canal. In a way, being at fake versions of all these places – which also happen to be places we’ve been to – feels more surreal than being on the Flyover ride.

So, it almost feels grounding to get back to The STRAT hotel – short for stratosphere – at the northern end of the strip, although the words grounding and stratosphere aren’t exactly synonyms of one another. But at least The STRAT isn’t pretending to be something else, it’s claim to Las Vegas fame is that it’s the tallest building on a strip packed with tall buildings. It also happens to have some terrifying rides at the top of its 1,149 ft tower.

We ride the ear-popping elevator to the summit in just a few seconds and exit into the observation to find the most remarkable view of the strip and surrounding landscape imaginable.
“Woah,” Harrison exclaims. “It’s like the mountains are popping out of the desert.”
“Look,” Ella adds. “A helicopter.”

I instinctively look up out the window, only to realise that the helicopter is directly across from us, flying along the strip at what looks like the same height we are at.
We walk around the observation deck, finding a bar and a closed-off glass room. We’re not sure what the glass room is at first, but then three people all arrive in jumpsuits, and I realise that it’s the launch area for Sky Jump, a freefall experience that holds the Guinness World Record for being the highest commercial decelerator descent.

“Are they actually going to jump?” Ella asks.
One of the participants hears her and smiles at us.
“Are you?” I ask.
He tells us that he hopes so, but since he’s going last, he’ll have more time to work up his nerves.

We watch, in awe, as the first two participants launch themselves toward the landing pad 879 ft below us. Then the man who spoke to us gives the thumbs up at the other side of the glass room to Ella as he heads onto the platform to jump, and a minute or so later he’s zooming at 40mph into the abyss.

As nice as it would be to have the kids admire their dad pulling off such a daring feat, it’s just not going to happen. But after a drink in the bar at the observation deck, I work up enough courage to take on Big Shot, a drop tower ride that catapults me up the tower’s mast to a height of 1,081 ft, and then down again. I’m the only rider on Big Shot, despite it being in the price of our tower admission.

Watching all the adrenaline activities has made Harrison and Ella eager to try a few rides themselves, but they’re not ready to take on anything as scary as Big Shot or Sky Jump just yet. Instead, we head next door to Circus Circus, where we’ve been enjoying the free circus acts for the last two days. We’ve paid for wristbands to Adventuredome – a huge five-acre indoor amusement park that houses a massive retro video arcade, indoor rock climbing, bungee trampolines, VR rooms, 4D cinema and laser maze challenges. But it’s the rides that Harrison and Ella are looking forward to, with carousels, go-carts, a Ferris wheel, dodgems and many more. Our wristbands allow unlimited riding and – since there are literally no queues – they’ll been riding to their heart’s content.

And me, after building courage on Big Shot, I might even take on the world’s only indoor double-loop, double-corkscrew roller coaster in Adventuredome.

Or maybe not.