Encore steals the show

But here's a question more suited to the time and place: What's in it for me?

The answer at Encore is plenty. With its big rooms, top-notch service, Asian influences and playful design (I'll tell you later about the radioactive red licorice chandeliers), Encore is a casino-resort that was designed to grab up the wealthiest, most sophisticated visitors in town and charge them top dollar.

In the face of the recession, however, Wynn and company have slashed nightly rates to as low as $159.

I'm trying to think of a $159 hotel room in California that could match my opening-night room at Encore, and I'm coming up blank. The room was about 745 square feet (that's as small as they get), the television was 42 inches and sat on a 180-degree rotating base so I could watch from bed or from the sitting area near the floor-to-ceiling windows. Thanks to remote controls, I could open and close the drapes and dim the lights (and activate a "do not disturb" warning) without leaving bed. (Many of these features are also found next door at the Wynn Hotel, which opened in 2005.)

And because I landed on the east side of the alleged 52nd floor (that, too, I can explain later), I had a drop-dead view of snow-dappled mountains, the pulsating lights of the Strip below and only the forlorn former site of the Frontier (where most recent projects have stalled) to remind me of the money trouble that stalks Las Vegas and the rest of the country.

In the public rooms below, you see a lot of red (including those gaming-area chandeliers), and a lot of quasi-paisley butterflies, a many-colored motif by designer Roger P. Thomas that subtly connects with the flower motif at the Wynn.

You also see an unusually large amount of the outside world. In an advance on tactics Wynn used at the Wynn, the Encore has a lot of big windows, neighbored by thick greenery, that allow filtered natural light to wash into places that old-school casino folk won't expect.

XS, the Victor Drai nightclub that is to open on New Year's Eve, has room for 3,000 revelers, its space spilling out into a broad pool-and-patio area where 29 cabanas can be rented by day or night. Gold-tiled columns jut beneath golden chandeliers and a trio of sculpted golden female torsos loom over one bar, ample bosoms forever dangling above the Campari and Frangelico.

The opening last week was a study in optimism. With temperatures outside dipping into the 40s, hundreds of visitors and locals nevertheless lined up in the cold on Monday night to await admission. Inside, the jewelry shop played blazing lights on the prune-sized Wynn Diamond, a 231-carat marvel that is billed as "the largest cut pear-shaped diamond in the world."

At the gaming tables, Wynn schmoozed the invited high-rollers -- and gave them a few million dollars to open the betting with -- then set it all in motion by taking the microphone to declare, "Let the games begin!"

Cue Frank Sinatra on the sound system, crooning "Luck Be a Lady Tonight."

This resort is such a sidekick to the Wynn next door, with shared resources and connecting arcade, that some may be tempted to see Encore as a hotel-expansion masquerading as a new property. Whatever. More of a good thing is better.

The Wynn, where rates have lately fallen as low as $149, is bigger all around: Apart from its own golf course (the only one on the Strip), it has 2,716 rooms (which average 640 square feet), 111,000 feet of casino space, 22 food outlets and 47,000 square feet of retail, including Ferrari and Maserati dealerships.

By the numbers

Encore, a bronzed skyscraper like its older sibling, has 2,034 rooms, 72,000 feet of casino space and 27,000 square feet of retail space (the Esplanade) -- its 11 boutiques stretched along an indoor walkway that connects it to the Wynn. Maybe you've seen the TV ad with Steve Wynn perched on top.

But just how high is he? As with many skyscrapers, the elevator buttons are designed without a 13th floor. And here, there are no floors numbered in the 40s, either, because the number four is considered bad luck in Chinese culture. (It sounds like the Mandarin word for death. Since opening a casino in Macao two years ago, Wynn's people have brought back several Asian touches.)

So did I lose at the slots because my 52nd-floor room, once you do the math, was really on the 41st?

Even without white tigers, dancing waters or a volcano or a pirate ship -- features that Wynn's previous projects have included -- the more restrained Encore took 2 1/2 years and an estimated $2.3 billion to build. It has five restaurants, seven bars, a nightclub, 11 retail outlets and a big spa done up in soothing celadon hues.