Suspended Animation

By Patrick E. Cole/Las Vegas

Your mission from the gods, should you choose to accept it, is to fly a hurtling chariot past crashing boulders and evil goblins to win the Race for Atlantis. It may be just an optical illusion, but the new attraction at Las Vegas' Caesars Palace is a real breakthrough, the first ride to marry the computer-generated gyrations of a state-of-the-art motion simulator with the immersive wide-screen splendor of an IMAX film. For $9.50, racers wearing 3-D headsets are enveloped in fog and 14,000 watts of digital sound for 6 min. of stomach-churning visceral reality that puts to shame its crosstown rival, Star Trek: The Experience. Even the gods would be impressed.

--By Patrick E. Cole/Las Vegas