Once in a while, you may get a little bored with the gambling and partying in Las Vegas. If that’s the case, you may wish to try driving a dune buggy across the Nevada desert. Before you take the plunge and do this, please read this post as there are a couple of things you should note before you go ahead and do it.
Verdict: Give this a miss
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To be very honest, the ride didn’t really meet my expectations. When I first read the marketing materials for the Mini Baja Chase, I thought this would be a chance to tear across the desert at full speed in a dune buggy race with my friends. It was described as “fast-paced and not tailored for the weak at heart” and “Sin City’s Best Near Death Experience”.
This ended up to be a tour where we had to follow the footsteps of our tour guide. As you can imagine, you don’t really get to race against your friends in this situation. You end up following the guide and driving around the desert in circles.
In the beginning, driving a dune buggy in the desert feels a little bit like a Max Max adventure. The ride is an intensely bumpy one, going up and down the dunes. If you go fast enough your dune buggy might jump a little as you approach the peak of a large sand dune. Speeding down one large dune, in particular, felt like a roller coaster ride.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much else positive to say apart from this. Things become fairly repetitive after 10 or so minutes in the desert. To add insult to injury, the top speed of the dune buggy is roughly 40 miles per hour, meaning that the excitement level is quite low for all those speed lovers out there.
Last but not least, the dune buggy ride isn’t cheap either. A half hour ride on a one seater will cost you around USD150 and a one hour ride on a one seater will cost you around USD250. Unsurprisingly, my friends never paid me back for this activity – perhaps because they felt I conned them into it.
Anyhow, if you’re still really keen on doing this after reading my post, a half hour session should be more than enough. Any longer and you’ll start getting bored.
Additional information
| When to do the activity? | All year round. |
| How to book? | Book and pay online at the Sun Buggy website http://www.sunbuggy.com/lasvegas. |
| How much does it cost? | For the Mini Baja chase, a 1 seater buggy costs around USD200 for a 30 minutes session and USD300 for a 60 minutes session. Please see the Sun Buggy website for further details. |
| How to get there?
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Sun Buggy will arrange transportation from your hotel in Las Vegas to the desert. |
| How long is it?
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There are various options such as the 30 minutes options, 60 minutes option and the 120 minutes option. Transport from Las Vegas is around an hour to an hour and a half. |
| Is it safe?
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Yes, there’s a pre-set speed limit to the buggy. |
| What to wear? | No particular dress code. |
Photo credits: Tom Hart. Licence conditions. No changes were made to original photographs.