A company called U.S. Thrill Rides has designed an amusement park ride based upon a roulette wheel and it’s absolutely glorious.
The ride is “Unicoaster Roulette,” billed as “The Game You Can Ride.”
This thrill ride is presumably being pitched to Las Vegas casinos, as all the renderings have the Unicoaster smack dab in the middle of casino floors, surrounded by table games and slot machines.
Casinos don’t typically have splash zones, but there’s a first time for everything.
Isn’t it interesting how we use a phrase like “smack dab” all the time and never really think about what it actually means? Apparently, “dab” is a British term meaning skilled. “Smack” means to slap.” So, “smack dab” could be taken to mean “a skilled slap.” Which is awkward.
Moving on.
Here’s a sweet video of the roulette-themed Unicoaster in action, a skilled slap on a casino floor. Or something.
Unicoaster is sort of the umbrella term for this ride, as it can be “skinned” or themed in any number of ways. That means it could also be craps-themed or blackjack-themed. Or even thong-themed. Just a personal preference.
While it seems wild to imagine a thrill ride on a casino floor, it does address a major challenge for casinos, namely, “How do you get the young people into casinos?”
Fewer people are gambling in Las Vegas casinos in recent years overall, and the youths are being especially difficult because for some reason they don’t find sitting in front of a slot machine for hours mindlessly pushing a button “entertaining.”
Rude.
Thrill rides make a ton of money in Las Vegas. The rides atop Strat are a huge revenue driver, and the SlotZilla zipline has changed the economic landscape of downtown forever.
A few years ago, casinos would never have considered giving up precious floor space for a thrill ride, but this one’s fairly compact and casinos have given up large swaths of space for much less lucrative ventures. (Rio devoted a large portion of its casino floor to timeshare sales.)
The ride is 57 feet wide and 18 feet tall.
It’s a single zero roulette wheel. We know how you are.
The ride can accommodate 16-24 people (it’s configurable), several of them not nauseated. (Note: We are not a thrill ride person.) The ride can handle up to 240 riders an hour.
The ride lasts about two minutes, or about the same period of time involved in making love to this blog.
The Unicoaster Roulette machine is touted as having a “$900 per square foot revenue potential.” Not too shabby. The last time we looked, the average slot machine makes about $400.
The roulette thrill ride would cost a casino $1.6 million, and the manufacturer says it would “return $930,000 in the first year at only 35 percent utilization.”
Those are some juicy numbers for casino executives. So, never say never.
Was there a post scheduling error? Today is not April 1st! I don’t get it. Is it actually a gaming device as well as a thrill ride?
Its real, its testing at the factory now. I am the Inventor Bill
It’s just a thrill ride.
At the end of the video, it does say Copyright April 1, 2020. Really.
It’s legit. The first of these rides opened at the Mall of America in 2010. (Obviously, it’s not the roulette version.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X_bE_Uj-bU
And, you’ll find it listed on the manufacturer’s website here:
https://www.usthrillrides.com/unicoaster
Okay, then. ‘Unfortunate coincidence on the copyright date.!
Its real…see our website
http://www.usthrillrides
Thanks for stopping by. Lots of great conversation around this, and lots of casino folks read my blog, despite my best efforts.
If you want to vomit badly, I believe sticking your fingers down your throat will do the trick with much less monetary investment…
It’s going to take more than a spinning chair to get someone to pay for the ride.
Bad idea. Might have worked in the 1990’s.
This is obviously a hoax. The wheel doesn’t have 3 green 0’s
I Hope it does very well, Everyone needs as much business as they can. I got sick on the ride they call the scrambler at a carnival one time so I won’t be riideing it . But I Would love to see it in action in person. I LOVE SLOTS.
It’s all fun and games until somebody hurls. Then, it’s just awesome entertainment. 🤣
When I am sitting at a table game or slot machine I enjoy hearing the sounds of music, other slot machines, or people getting loud and excited while playing. What I don’t want to hear is the sound of metal against metal grinding and gears turning. I could see this possibly happening, but not in the middle of the casino floor. The other Las Vegas rides are set away from the gaming action for a reason.
How about a craps game using those Bubble Suits shaped like dice and get shot out of a chute and flip around to get your numbers. Truthfully, I’m all for the strange and crazy, make my home town what is it.
Casino Living Large where everything is super sized and strange. Looking forward to the gaming control lab team doing the testing. Bet we could sell tickets to that. Yup, everytime I say this will never work … it does ! ONLY VEGAS ! Oh yeah … passing the dice suit to the two young ladies on the hook. hard eight hopping !