美国赌城开挖掘机游乐公园

美国赌城拉斯维加斯上月开了一家全世界最大的挖土机主题游乐公园，14岁以上的消费者在支付400美元的门票后就可以在专业人员指导下驾驶大型推土机或挖土机进行游艺项目。

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Slam dunk: One of the excavator exercises that people can do at the park to get used to the diggers before being let loose involves plucking basketballs form the tops of cones.
It's first glance it looks like a sprawling²（蔓生的） building site.

But this is actually the world's biggest digger playground - allowing grown-ups to take the controls of giant trucks in gambling³ capital Las Vegas.

Ed Mumm dreamed up the idea while he was using one of the enormous machines in 2004 to renovate⁴（更新，修复） his house in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

The developer became so distracted by playing with the digger that after several days he realised that he had not done any work on the building.

But although the property took longer to finish than expected, last month Mr Mumm opened the world's largest and the U.S's first digger theme park called 'Dig This' in the glamorous⁵（迷人的） city.

The attraction, around five miles west of Las Vegas Boulevard, includes among others a pair of Caterpillar⁶ D5 track-type bulldozers and three Caterpillar 315CL hydraulic⁷ excavators（液压挖掘机） .

Visitors can buy three-hour packages that consist of a 30-minute safety and operation orientation⁸ followed by two hours of maneuvering⁹ either a bulldozer（推土机） or excavator.

Guests can either dig a trench¹⁰ up to 10ft deep or build an earthen mound¹¹; there are also skill tests like picking and moving 2,000-lb tires or scooping¹²（捞球） basketballs from atop safety cones.

Mr Mumm said: 'I wasn't making much progress on the house, but I was having great time. I felt that it was something everyone could enjoy, and there was nothing like it out there.'

Mr Mumm opened a pilot version of Dig This in 2007 near his home in northwest Colorado. It was built on 10 acres and ran for three years before he decided¹³ to move to Las Vegas.

The $1-million theme park is on more than five acres of land with 10 employees, a 2,850-sq-ft office, gift shop and training facility. It costs $400 to play in the dirt with the diggers.

Guests must be at least 14 years old and can use headsets to communicate with each other and an instructor¹⁴.

A small number of digger parks have opened in the UK in recent years but their equipment is not at large as that which is used in Las Vegas.

'The previous park was limited by weather and its remote location, but it gave us a chance to perfect our business model. From the start I always wanted to be in Vegas,' Mr Mumm told the Engineering News-Record.

'Las Vegas is one of the most visited destinations in the U.S., with up to 40-million visitors and 5,000 conventions a year.'

Company spokeswoman Cathy Wiedemer added: 'Half of our customers are females, including housewives and grandmothers. Throttling¹⁵（节流） up a powerful engine and moving mounds¹⁶ of earth is very empowering.'

Ms Wiedemer said they were hoping to open digger parks in Atlanta and New York as well as Tokyo and Australia.