This Exists: Life-Sized Sandbox for Adults in (Where Else?) Las Vegas
- Posted on September 4, 2011 at 6:43am by
Madeleine Morgenstern
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Heavy equipment instructor Ruben Segura directs a visitor at picking up a basketball with an excavator, Monday, Aug. 29, 2011 in Las Vegas. For a few hundred dollars, tourists spend a few hours at Dig This pushing around dirt, 1-ton tires and rocks that don’t move when you kick them. All it takes is a 10-minute classroom lesson and guidance from trainers through headsets. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas has seen its share of heavy construction equipment as it bulldozed its way through one giant casino project after another. But with the recession having gutted the construction industry, excavators and bulldozers near the Strip are being put to use as toys for thrill-seeking visitors.
A business owner has created what amounts to a life-sized sandbox for adults who pay up to $750 each to push around dirt, rock and huge tires with the earth-moving construction equipment. All it takes is a 10-minute classroom lesson and guidance from trainers through headsets.
“I thought it would be much clunkier, and the lighter you are with the controls, the easier it worked,” said Mary Fitzsimons, an emergency room doctor from Walnut Creek, Calif., who spent roughly two hours digging a trench, moving tires and using the machine’s bucket to scoop basketballs atop cones.
“I thought I wouldn’t pick it up, I thought I would totally futz it up,” Fitzsimons said.
Ed Mumm said he started Dig This after renting and operating an excavator for himself for two days while building a house in Steamboat Springs, Colo. He quickly realized that toying with heavy construction equipment is a diversion that takes participants completely out of their everyday lives.
“I thought to myself: If I’m having this much fun, imagine the amount of people that don’t get to do this stuff that would love to do this,” he said.
Grayson Cox, of Austin, Texas, takes a turn on the excavator at Las Vegas' Dig This. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
“When they’re in those machines, everything else doesn’t mean anything,” added Mumm, 45. “They’ve forgotten about all the stresses in their lives because the fact is, they’ve got to focus on that piece of equipment. When they get in there and they rev up that engine, they know they’ve got a serious program on their hands.”
The play sandbox sits just across the freeway from the Las Vegas Strip, near remnants of an actual construction industry that nosedived in 2008 and hasn’t recovered. Major projects, including the Fontainebleau Las Vegas and Boyd Gaming Corp.’s Echelon, were started and partially financed but never completed as the Great Recession walloped the gambling industry and made it clear that steady casino construction seen over the past 20 years was over.
State figures showed just over 54,000 construction workers employed in Nevada in July, down 8.6 percent compared with July 2010. There are no new major hotel or casino developments scheduled to open through the end of next year, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Travis Mills, a trainer at Dig This who has worked construction, said he hopes to never go back to the industry.
“A lot of my construction friends are just sitting at home and there’s nothing going on,” the 24-year-old said as he watched Fitzsimons digging dirt.
“This is a lot more fun — I don’t get yelled at by my superintendent all day,” Mills said. “I like being around equipment, so that’s a plus.”
Fitzsimons said she was surprised by how delicate the machines can be, even as they lift objects that would be very difficult to maneuver manually. But she said her short lesson doesn‘t mean she’d be able to pitch in on a worksite if they need an extra hand.
“I don‘t think I could jump in and do it but at least I have a better understanding of what they’re doing,” she said. “No, I’m not ready yet.”
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Comments (42)
MARCH4HIM
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 3:47pmHEY!!! ( bobodu )
Report Post »Does your mommy know your on her commputer ?
MAN I JUST HATE KIDS LEFT UNATTENDED …
timej31
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 2:39pmI’ve always wanted to do this! I am going to learn to do this since we’re going to uses these to get rid of all the vacated houses of former progressives that flea for their safety to Canada and Mexico.
Report Post »Snidely
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 11:32pmThe company I work for sells construction equipment. As part of new employee orientation, we got to spend a day moving dirt around. It was a blast! I’ve always said that if I win the lottery, I’m going to buy an excavator and dozer and just move dirt around.
Report Post »Boola519
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 2:19pmMY GOD we wish a certain person in our family had thought of this, we would have retired as millionaires instead of buildng and digging highways and feed roads and stock ponds and basements and subdivision underground lines all day for 45 years.
Report Post »Joan Of Argghh
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 2:00pmHmmm. Go to college for four years and sit around waiting for some miserable admin job or go to Vegas for two hours and learn how to do a job that offers high pay and benefits. Plus, pushing big things around as a bonus!
Report Post »MikeMurray
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 12:32pmEntrepreneurship at its best. Unleash us POTUS.
Report Post »Sheepdog911
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 1:46pm@ Mike. Not a chance. Think of all the carbon. EPA will close them down. I now have a reason to go to Vegas – what fun!!
Report Post »hi
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 11:33amIt looks so fun. I’m going to go do it.
Report Post »Rational Man
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 11:32amNevada has to do something with all the equipment they have. Since it’s not working on a real job!!
Report Post »M100Spiral
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 2:15pmOn April 18, this year, Groupon had a 63% discount for that day at Dig This Heavy Equipment Playground. This construction playground is at another address, and I do not believe it is close to the strip. On that day, “three hours of annihilation in a sandbox for grownups” would have only cost $149. This was a $251 savings on a $400 session.
Report Post »I got a laugh and had to send it to some friends, especially the one who introduced me to Groupon. She got a laugh as well!
Rational Man
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 1:48amWhen I attended Operating Engineers school, they had an area where we practiced and learned how to run equipment. We called it the sand box. Thats what the union training grounds are called too.
Report Post »Old Youth
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 11:02amPaying to work. Hilarious
Report Post »SamIamTwo
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 11:01amTheme park for the wealthy, who want to say, “I have worked with heavy equipment”, eh?
Real men need not play. Real men are holding onto their cash.
Kool, eh? I don’t think so. Just another sand box that most can’t play in…nothing new under the sun.
Report Post »bobodu
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 3:36pmMy guess is that you have never ridden a motorcycle.Real men don’t need to permission from some Glenn Beck whacko to spend their money any way they wish.
Report Post »vtxphantom
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 9:55amI was a tad destructive in the sandbox. I would pick up worker in a cat. bucket, crash into other earth moving equipment, ect. I see some buildings in the distance that need removal. I would prefer military equipment in the sandbox. Tanks, howitzers, the big stuff. Let my creative mind really go to work!
Report Post »Enuff Zenuff
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 9:37amI remember Tim Allen proposing this idea on his Home Improvement TV show many years ago – I think he called it “Man World”.
Report Post »Texas Hills Patriot
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 2:55pmOne of the first things I thought of … was there a Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor sighting?
Report Post »Brents Torts
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 9:14amThat’s awesome.
Report Post »Paleo2k
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 9:11amCrap! I thought of this twenty years ago!!! Who do I sue?
Report Post »Indymaverick
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 9:05amIf the head wimp catches wind of this (Harry Reid) he will have his SEIU thugs shut this down.
Report Post »banjarmon
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 8:53amThat shows card pushers what a real job is like!!
Report Post »Enuff Zenuff
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 9:33amThe “real” job was done by the engineers and scientists who made it possible for any kid with ten minutes training to move tons of dirt per minute with a flick of his wrist while sitting in air-conditioned comfort listening to rap music.
From Ayn Rand‘s ’money speech’ in Atlas Shrugged: “Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you‘ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.”
Report Post »AE
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 8:30amA friend of mine worked for a couple with a pair of matching purple metal-flake painted earth movers. They leased land to the state as long as they were allowed to go out and play on it from time to time.
Report Post »WesleyFlynt
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 8:29amGreat idea
Report Post »MARCH4HIM
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 8:29amNow that I had My mornig cup of coffee, It just realized digging around Las Vegas might have
Report Post »unexpected ressult, after all, the Mob ran that town for a long time…
We might find out where “ JIMMY HOFFA ” has been for the last 36 years..
Lesterp
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 10:48amGood one!
Report Post »Welcome Black Carter
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 1:37pmHe’s in Florida. Trust me…
Report Post »DagneyT
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 8:19amI love America’s entrepreneurial spirit! It’s what makes America GREAT!
Report Post »wrazzlin1
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 8:11amBig mistake this company allowing this business to be in this article. Transportation Sec ,Obama and the Unions will shut em down for sure
Report Post »Jenny Lind
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 8:08amVery clever, way to go! Taking a simple idea of what could be fun through work, and giving people a chance to try something different. We used a skip loader from my husband’s work to do decorative rock(really big ones too) in our yard and he was wearing a serious grin the whole time. This kind of thinking will get our economy going, not D.C. Congrats on a great idea and job.
Report Post »Rayblue
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 7:52amOne of the most fun rides I’ve ever had was riding a cage, hooked up to a crane,up and down from the ground to the top of the caps during construction of Beltway 8 at I-10 intersection. Houston.
Report Post »It’s probably the highest structure I was involved with. A swift ride up and the plummet afterward were exhilarating and the view was once in a lifetime.
And being around heavy equipment, you have to yell to be heard so screaming at the top of your lungs all day was an exercise in itself.
I think that a crane with a wreaking ball would attract more tourists to this business.
Destroying stuff is always hilarious.
MARCH4HIM
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 7:37ammaking lemonaid out of lemons,well done…
Report Post »twofoot_trucker
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 7:07amFirst job I had when I got out of the Marine Corps was running heavy equipment. As far as pure fun on the job, it doesn’t get much better.
Report Post »okie6n2
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 7:06amthinking outside the box to create a company and jobs,lets see how long till obamas epa or osha shuts them down,endangered habitat for sand fleas
Report Post »YepImaConservative
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 8:00amOr on the flip side… BO will try to take credit and call it one of HIS “shovel” ready projects for the training of County and State road builders. The training will be realistic too because as we all know, most County and State work of this type consists of driving around in circles, digging holes, moving dirt while one worker is being supervised by 6 and the project drags on for years and years.
Report Post »Bonnieblue2A
Posted on September 4, 2011 at 12:30pmI wonder how long people pay to be allowed to raze some of those foreclosed Las Vegas homes? Take this idea to the next level………people pay to demolish crack houses, etc…. .
Report Post »