‘I think we’ve achieved something completely unique this season’

Tom Donoghue/www.donoghuephotography.com

2010 Miss USA Rima Fakih’s visit at the Luxor included President Felix Rappaport, Angelica Bridges, Criss Angel, Tournament of Kings, Menopause: The Musical, blackjack and Robin Leach on June 24, 2010.

By Robin Leach (contact)

Thursday, July 1, 2010 | 3:06 p.m.

Mindfreak/A&E

Criss Angel's Mindfreak.

Richard Brian

Criss Angel with his Magician of the Century award.

The premiere of Criss Angel’s sixth season of the top-rated Mindfreak on A&E is set for Aug. 4, and the Magician of the Century told me yesterday, “There will be six one-hour specials this year, 12 half-hours in a sense. I’m very proud of what we are accomplishing. We really have some incredible challenges this season, which totally raise the bar.”

The episodes, syndicated in 90 countries and watched by 100 million viewers, will include an astonishing attempt to earn a Guinness World Record for the most people vanished simultaneously. Criss plans to assemble 100 volunteers for that illusion. In the past six years, he has shot more than 100 episodes of Mindfreak with 1,000 escapes, illusions and brain, body and spirit demonstrations of the power of the mind.

Tomorrow, we’ll run down with Criss many of the all-new Mindfreak demonstrations, including his walk right up the side of the Luxor, where he headlines in Cirque du Soleil’s Believe, in full view of spectators, and in a tribute to Evil Knievel, his attempt to race a three-wheel hybrid motorcycle off the side of the Grand Canyon wall and vanish -- only to be discovered dangling inside a cage from a helicopter hovering 4,200 feet above the canyon floor.

“It will all have to be accomplished in one continuous shot,” he told me over lunch and an all-encompassing four-hour interview and photo shoot at his new, sprawling, 22,000-square-foot home Serenity. “Can it be done? Is it possible?” he asked me. “I think we have achieved something completely unique this season. My dream team in the art of magic and escape are all working back together again.”

Will Criss call it quits with Mindfreak? What are the illusions Criss is adding to Believe in time for its second anniversary this October? What secrets will he reveal in advance of the new A&E Biography about his life? What surprise is he launching Aug. 14, and what is the new project getting underway before the end of the year? Just what is inside his new, magnificent, medieval-themed castle home?

We’ll have all the answers in exclusive stories and photos starting tomorrow and all weekend long right here at VegasDeLuxe.com -- and nowhere else!

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.