High Roller (Ferris wheel)

High Roller is a 550-foot tall (167.6 m), 520-foot (158.5 m) diameter giant Ferris wheel on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States of America. Owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment Corporation, it opened to the public on March 31, 2014 and is currently the world's tallest Ferris wheel. It is 9 ft (2.7 m) taller than its predecessor, the 541-foot (165 m) Singapore Flyer, which had held the record since 2008.

Design

High Roller was announced in August 2011 as the centerpiece of Caesars Entertainment Corporation's $550 million The LINQ.Arup Engineering, which previously consulted on the Singapore Flyer, acted as the structural engineer.

The wheel rotates on a pair of custom-designed spherical roller bearings, each weighing approximately 19,400 lb (8,800 kg). Each bearing has an outer diameter of 7.55 feet (2.30 m), an inner bore of 5.25 feet (1.60 m), and a width of 2.07 feet (0.63 m).

The outer rim comprises 28 sections, each 56 feet (17 m) long, which were temporarily held in place during construction by a pair of 275-foot (84 m) radial struts, prior to being permanently secured by four cables.

The passenger cabins (or capsules) are mounted on the wheel's outboard rim and are individually rotated by electric motors to smoothly maintain a horizontal cabin floor throughout each full rotation. Preliminary designs anticipated 32 passenger cabins, each with a 40-passenger capacity —with the final design accommodating 28 40-person cabins and a total capacity of 1,120 passengers.

Each 225-square-foot (20.9 m2) cabin weighs approximately 44,000 pounds (20,000 kg), has a diameter of 22 feet (6.7 m), includes 300 square feet (28 m2) of glass, and is equipped with eight flat-screen televisions.

At night the wheel is illuminated by a 2,000-LED system which can display a single solid color, differently colored sections, multiple colors moving around the rim, and custom displays for special events and holidays.

Construction

Located on Las Vegas Boulevard, across from Caesars Palace, construction was originally scheduled to begin in September 2011...