What's going on with Desperado and Stratosphere's Insanity?

I’ve never been to Primm/Stateline but once on a red eye from Honolulu to Las Vegas I was staring out the window as we started a slow descent. There was nothing but inky blackness for miles until I saw a bright twinkling dot in the distance. As we got closer I could see what looked like a tall, Vegas-style sign in the middle of nowhere and to my delight I finally figured out it had to be Stateline. We wound up flying directly over and I could see the sign, the huge hotel, and the outline of Desperado. It’s the closest I ever got, but it was a great view.
I always thought Desperado had the coolest of all the Arrow trains. The colors were great and the bullet-nosed lightning bolt fronts had a great retro look. Should we be sad about missing a ride forever? Even if it’s not that great and hard to get to? I suppose if nothing else this one made a little mark in coaster history, filed under “unique”.

Only reason I think I'd want to go to Vegas again is for the F1 Grand Prix this November.

But then I remember that Vegas was cool when I was 30 and I don't have a burning desire to ever return, I hate crowds, I'd have to take out a second mortgage, and my family has less than zero interest in auto racing. Nope, I'm good.

My friend was a sound engineer at NPR for decades and got to work the Tiny Desk concert with Bono and The Edge in March.

That was kind of cool. They seem to like working with kids.

And yeah, Vegas in the aughts you could get a 5-star room under $200, good shows for under a hundred and free drinks indefinitely if you put a $20 into a video poker machine. Those days are apparently long gone.

In 2009 my wife and I got our flight, 3 nights at nice hotel, and 2 Cirque shows for sub $900 total. If it was still that cheap I would go back.

I drove by Desparado last summer, Buffalo Bills was closed and the coaster looked terrible, not sure I would trust riding it now. The ride wasn’t good when I rode it in 1995.

For anyone who doesn’t want a typical Vegas experience, and wants something more relaxed, take a look at the MGM signature. It’s a set of three towers a block back but connected to the MGM complex with no smoking, no casino in the towers and it’s own pool (but you can use the main MGM pools too.) I believe it sits on part of the land that the theme park used to be a part of. It’s actually closer to the main pools than the normal tower. More importantly, it’s also super close to the monorail. Stayed there in fall 2018.

The Venetian is also really nice and the base rooms are mini suites and the largest base rooms on the strip (it’s where I stayed last summer.). Vegas is not my “thing” a trip every 5-10 years is enough for me. U2 is great though, they came to my college in 2001 and we were their first show post 9/11, I essentially saw the more extended set they did for the Super Bowl.

I always loved Venetian/Palazzo and there are still sub-$200 deals there sometimes, but show nights, seeing as how The Sphere is their venue, it's $700+.

Getting a bit off topic now, but U2's super bowl halftime show was definitely the best of my life time (small bias, but still...). Bono's "love will always win" schtick is admittedly kind of insufferable sometimes, but a few months after 9/11, it was exactly what our country needed.

I'm looking into going to one of these shows too. Unfortunately this thread is the first I'd heard of it and it appears to be left to either overpriced resale tickets or overpriced 2-night hotel/concert packages from the Venetian. Good chance I'll bite the bullet though and go.

Well, for better or worse, even the people that did know about the shows and prepared had a hard time getting "reasonably priced" tickets.

I don't have any memory whatsoever of U2's Super Bowl performance. Prince's, on the other hand, will likely never be topped, in my opinion.

U2 is a weird band. I really like some of their albums, while others are absolutely forgettable (The Unforgettable Fire, pun intended, is my personal favorite). The last album I actually liked was Pop, and even that had just a handful of good songs, most of which didn't age too well.

Being a fan in the 80s, I actually hated Achtung Baby for years, it was such a departure from their sound to that point. And everyone who didn't give a crap about them before then fawned all over that album when radio and MTV overplayed Mysterious Ways. It took me a while to appreciate more electronic elements in music (especially percussion), so now I recognize it as a solid album, but most of their stuff since has been really uninteresting.

Things certainly have gone downhill in recent years. I think "All That You Can't Leave Behind" is just as good as any of the 80's and 90's albums, but with the exception of a few singles here and there ("Vertigo" and "Every Breaking Wave"), nothing since has really come close. I have a very strong affinity to "Songs of Innocence" but I understand that it's not a very common opinion, even without the Apple debacle. All said, "not quite as good" as "the greatest album ever recorded" is still worth buying and listening to for me.

As a die hard metalhead, I used to hate U2 and dismissed them as pop garbage. At some point in my early 20's I realized that Sunday Blood Sunday is metal af. I bought a used copy of War and it dawned on me that The Edge is actually a metal guitarist trapped in a rock band. Listen to Under A Blood Red Sky EP and tell me I'm wrong.

I quickly amassed all their albums to date, (This was right before Pop came out,) and am a fan of all their varying styles, even discovered Passengers a few years later.

FWIW, I also think that Innocence and Experience are among their worst albums.

I rode Desperado back in 2000 on a Vegas trip. If I remember correctly the Log Flume was not operating and the only ride operating was pretty much Desperado! The place was kind of empty and I rode it with 3 or 4 people max on the train. The coaster looks impressive (although you can see different flaws in the track just looking at it!!) and being located where it is makes it stand out quite a bit. The ride feels kind of like a big Arrow in a way that it does not transition well, does not ride very smoothly. You can tell the engineering is not at its best (I guess they did what they could back when they designed it) but it is no B&M or Intamin hyper! It didn't seem very popular 20 years ago so I would not be surprised if it never reopens. The cost of maintaing it for very little if not at all profits makes me thing it will just sit there as a statue to attract travellers on the highway!

There was a trip where I got to ride the log flume with the guns. The only part I remember was when I hit a target and the mannequin guy on the side's gun shot me with water. It was pretty clever. And the only part of the Desperado I remember is when I had an itch in my foot or something and I bent down to scratch, got to the bottom of the hill, and I smacked my face with the lap bar. Ouch, I think there was even a little blood.

Resurrecting this Desperado thread because I got U2 tickets! They've added many more dates and great seats are still available in December.

Still not sure what I'm gonna do with my kid the weekend of our show. Parenting is hard.

Let him run loose and parentless at Circus Circus. That's what everyone else does.

I'm not bringing my kid four hours to Vegas.

I’ll come sit with him. We’d have a blast.

So, I'm going back to Vegas to see U2 again (this time with my kids) and I missed the Adventure Dome coasters the first time because they are completely closed on Wed and Thurs apparently.

Does anyone know if I have to buy the $60 wristband for the 2 credits or if there's a way to buy individual ride tickets? Their website is an absolute mess (shows the calendar from April '22).