Las Vegas knows how to throw a party, even for an old rundown building in its last few seconds on Earth. The city can’t just demolish a historic casino with some boring old explosives, they have to put on an epic fireworks show beforehand with a 10 seconds countdown made out of fireworks. That’s right, there’s so much entertainment in that city that a normal implosion isn’t good enough for them. We don’t mind though, the video below had our eyes peeled for 5 minutes.
A couple weeks ago we claimed this bridge demolition was better than a fireworks show. Well, it turns out that a fireworks show combined with a building implosion is even better than that. In case you’re keeping track at home, the official order of demolition awesomeness, from awesome to awesome-est, is: implosion, implosion that looks like fireworks, fireworks plus implosion.
The 24 story Monaco Tower at the Riviera Casino was built in 1955 and became the first high rise building on the Las Vegas strip. On opening day, the casino hosted Liberace, who became its first resident performer. Not only was it a signature piece to the Las Vegas skyline in its heyday, it was also featured in many beloved movies, such as the original Ocean’s 11 starring the Rat Pack, Martin Scorsese’s Casino, Showgirls, and The Hangover.
The casino and its towers are being demolished in order to expand the Las Vegas Convention Center. The casino officially closed its doors on May 4, 2015.
Enjoy the video below, uploaded to Youtube by Vince Espinosa.
In November of last year, the 546 foot tall Mina Plaza in Abu Dhabi officially broke the world record for tallest demolition by explosion, supplanting Hudson Department Store in Detroit, Michigan, which held the record for 22 years.