FlyOver experience to open on Las Vegas Strip this fall

A flight simulation attraction opening this fall on the Strip will offer visitors the experience of flying over some of the most well-known tourist destinations in the West.

FlyOver Las Vegas is described as an “immersive flight-ride experience” by Pursuit, the company that operates the attraction. Tickets will cost $34 for adults and $24 for children 12 and under.

Attraction riders will soar in front of a 52-foot spherical screen, watching helicopter shots via a state-of-the-art moving platform with six degrees of motion.

On Wednesday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal toured the flight simulation attraction as construction workers were putting finishing touches on FlyOver’s facility, located next to the Hard Rock Cafe on Las Vegas Boulevard South.

The Las Vegas location marks the third for the company, which also operates FlyOvers in Vancouver and Reykjavík, Iceland.

The Strip location will be larger, with two 40-person theaters, while the others have one apiece. It will be the only one with a full-service bar. The attraction, a $40 million to $45 million investment, is expected to employ about 100 people.

Multisensory experience and more

The attraction will feature FlyOver’s newest experience, The Real Wild West, which will transport riders with scents, sounds, mist and winds through the West’s most popular destinations including Oregon’s Cascade Volcanic Arc, Washington’s Stehekin Mountain, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Arizona’s Goldfield Ghost Town, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Las Vegas Strip.

Jack Kenn, general manager of FlyOver in Las Vegas, said visitors “will be able to see the American West in a way they never have before.”

Riders will also be able to experience FlyOver’s Legends of Iceland, which showcases the country’s glaciers, waterfalls and other scenic attractions.

FlyOver’s Las Vegas location will feature a pre-show entertainment experience from Montreal-based Moment Factory and multimedia director Julian Demers-Arsenault. Both the Wild West and Iceland experience each will have its own pre-show. The full show will last about eight minutes and 40 seconds.

The Wild West pre-show will “chronicle the booms and busts of the American West, from the Cambrian explosion to Gold Rush ghost towns and Silicon Valley startups,” according to a news release from FlyOver.

The site will operate a full-service bar area, which will serve as the heart of the experience, Kenn said. The room will resemble a canyon with stars above and a river running through the middle, guiding guests where to go.

Creating a connection

The flight ride experience and pre-show will combine to create a story, said Rick Rothschild, the creative director of FlyOver Las Vegas.

Rothschild, a former Disney Imagineer and director of Soarin’ Over California in Disneyland’s California Adventure, said he wants FlyOver in Las Vegas to be much more than a visual and sensory experience.

“(We’re) trying to share a bit of culture, (we’re) trying to share a bit of geology and geography, sort of a sense of people and land in a particular part of the world,” Rothschild said. “To just have people fly over it with no context — that’s great, it’s pretty, it’s fun — but we want them to have some context and some understanding and connection.”

Rothschild also cited differences between FlyOver and the Soarin’ concept.

Unlike Soarin’, FlyOver Las Vegas will include mist when riders move through wet areas. FlyOver has more range of motion too, Rothschild said. FlyOver’s platform can roll and sway with its six points of axis compared with Soarin’s two points of axis, only moving up and down.

FlyOver has “way more of a flight feeling,” he said.

Contact Dylan Svoboda at dsvoboda@reviewjournal.com. Follow @dylanksvoboda on Twitter.