Residing at Buffalo Bill's Resort and Casino of Primm, Nevada, Desperado rises 21 stories above the dry landscape to form a skyline of yellow track. When Buffalo Bill's asked Arrow Dynamics to create a record-breaking ride for 1994, they didn't fool around. Desperado opened as the world's tallest, fastest and longest steel coaster, also tying Kennywood Park's Steel Phantom hyper-coaster [now known as Phantom's Revenge] for drop length at 225 feet. With nearly 6,000 feet of tubular steel track twisting, climbing and dropping riders along for nearly three minutes of hypercoaster extremity, Desperado is also one of the longest coasters in the world.

Passengers board the coaster's train inside of Buffalo Bill's Hotel and Casino building, then dip out into the Nevada air and engage on the two-hundred-and-nine-foot chain lift. Before long, the 225 foot drop has begun and the ride wastes no time in fitting to it's name, traveling at 80 miles per hour and diving through in a pitch black 16-foot deep subterranean tunnel. Heading back up into the sky, a twisted hill sends the train up and reversing, then around a banked curve, getting back up to speed again. Back around, the coaster twists up over another hill, then follows a second airtime maneuver into the mid-course block brakes. Riders leave their seats for several seconds as the airtime lifts them airborne over a hump. The grand finale is up next, which takes the track into the beginning of a cavern tunneling around a helix, then the brakes end off the Desperado and lead riders back into the building.