The STRAT

The tower is 1,149 feet — about 350 metres — and is the tallest freestanding observation tower in the United States, and the second tallest in the western hemisphere after the CN Tower. It is visible from most of the valley and it is the only thing in Las Vegas that cannot be mistaken for anything else.

The name changed. It opened in 1996 as the Stratosphere, was rebranded The STRAT from 2019, and the renaming was formally celebrated in January 2020 — so the hotel and the tower now carry a name that no older account uses.

Why it is where it is

The STRAT sits at the northern tip of the Strip, and it is the only one of the big Strip casinos actually inside the city of Las Vegas. The others stand in unincorporated Clark County, in the townships of Paradise and Winchester. That is a piece of trivia with a practical edge: it puts the hotel roughly midway between the Strip and Fremont Street, which is awkward for the Strip and convenient for seeing both.

It opened on 30 April 1996, on the site of a casino called Vegas World, and it struggled commercially for years — partly because of the location, partly because a great many visitors assumed from the outside that it was an observation tower with no resort attached. Correcting that impression was one of the stated reasons for the rebrand.

The top

Indoor and outdoor observation decks, with windows that rake inwards at the base so it is possible to look straight down. The lift reaches the top in about thirty seconds, which is three floors a second. There is a revolving restaurant, and a wedding chapel — the Chapel in the Clouds — for anyone who wants the view in the photographs.

The rides, including the one older accounts miss

  • Big Shot, from 1996, which fires riders up the needle at the very top of the tower and drops them. At around 1,080 feet it has long been billed as the highest thrill ride in the world.
  • X-Scream, from 2003 — a see-saw arm that tips riders out over the edge of the building and holds them there.
  • Insanity, from 2005, which swings riders out beyond the tower wall and spins them facing the ground.
  • SkyJump, from 2010, which is the one missing from every older description: a controlled descent on a guide wire from the tower deck to the ground. It is not a bungee — the fall is guided and braked — and it is the closest thing in the city to jumping off a building on purpose.

An earlier roller coaster that ran around the top of the tower, the High Roller, closed at the end of 2005 and is not to be confused with the observation wheel of the same name that opened at the LINQ in 2014.

The hotel

Around 2,400 rooms and a casino of some 80,000 square feet — modest by Strip standards, and priced accordingly. It is consistently among the cheapest places to stay with a Las Vegas Boulevard address, and the trade-off is the walk: the next resort south is a considerable distance, and in summer that distance is not walkable in the afternoon.

Several of the entertainments listed in older accounts have closed, including the vampire revue and the celebrity-impersonator show that ran here for years. The tower, the rides and the view are what the place is for.

The other resorts are under Las Vegas hotels; Fremont Street is a short way further north.

Changed