Encore steals the show

LAS VEGAS — Is this the worst moment ever to open a fancy new casino?

You're entitled to wonder that, given that Steve Wynn's 2,034-room, $2.3-billion Encore took its first bets Monday in the middle of a national financial nervous breakdown.

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.