Two Way Hard Three | Las Vegas Casino & Design Blog

Do you know what room rates are going for right now at Encore?

Mid april Sun thru Wed starts at $329 for resort room.Add $50 for pool view,add $90 for the tower side

I made tentative reservations for opening weekend at $529 per night. Compare with WLV charging $399 for the same dates. Ouch. One thing that upset me is that even when I offered to change my dates to the weekdays after the opening, they claimed all "Tower Suites" were unavailable. Maybe some will open up later, but as of now, Casino Marketing has control.

A little more information:

-Yes, bathroom TVs will be relatively large at 19 inches.
-Stores will include Rock & Republic as well as Hermes (their second outlet with the Bellagio store being the first).
-The nicest reservable room will be a Salon suite. As of now, those poolside and Sky Villas aren't available to us peons.
-Panoramic room types are not only on higher floors, but nearly 50 square feet larger.
-(Rant) The resort was described as "casual elegance." Eff that! I want "uncomfortably over-the-top elegance."

Okay, I'm really indecisive. Considering that there won't be nearly as much hype on opening and that I'm not crazy about the Super Bowl and crowds, I went ahead and booked February 8-11 instead at $379 per night for a Panoramic room.

thats it. There is no chance of the Bellagio becoming the best resort on the strip anymore. No
matter what, Encore, Wynn and the golf coarse redevelopment will beat all places in Vegas. It would have to take a miracle for bellagio to beat wynn. And bellagio sits between City Center and Caesars bunched up in that small land. Its a sad time for me right now.:(

Does anybody know what kind of restaurants they'll have besides Tableau? If they have anything that can top the filet mignon I had at SW Steakhouse then I'm sold. I was recommended to try it with the Jalapeno Tropical Fruit Sauce, and now I always recommend it to everyone else. I wish I didn't have to wait until February to visit Encore. I haven't been back to Las Vegas in far too long.

There'll be a restaurant much in line with Renoir and Picasso paying homage to Fernando Botero that supposed to be in the center of the pool.

A friend of mine got the numbers on "resort tower" availabilities. They are as follows:

1119 Resort Kings
266 Resort Doubles
311 Panoramic Kings
17 Panoramic Doubles
1 Panoramic Accessible

That leaves a suite side with about half as many rooms as WLV's Tower Suites and fewer rooms than Four Seasons Las Vegas.

So to make a res you are just calling the regular WLV res line and saying I want encore...I am looking to book a trip for April of next year thats open for Encore but not for WLV?...according to the online res thingy for WLV (I know encore isn't up yet)

The Bellagio's been my favorite for years, but it looks like that might all change soon. It all sounds really impressive. I wanted to be there for the opening but the $500 + price tag's got me thinking differently.

Posted by mike_ch

Joe: Bellagio is on small land? It's a pretty sprawling place. The whole hotel sits on what was once a golf course because of that lake. If anything, Bellagio can be accused of using too much land unwisely.

That said, I wouldn't be shedding tears at the MGM offices just yet. CityCenter is likely to knock both the Bellagio and Wynn down a peg or two, and I have yet to see anything being done at Encore that convinces me it can keep up.

Some recent photos of Encore's pool area posted today on VT&T:

http://www.vegastodayandtomorrow.com/wynn.htm#const

Aww, man! You beat me to it. Just talked to Wynn marketing today (6/19) to take advantage of a summer offer. I think it's Marketing you'd have to talk to, not the Reservations folks. Chatting with the lady on the phone, she offered the following, much of which you guys already know. But FWIW:

Although they are striving to have the casino open in December to take advantage of New Year's traffic, no firm opening date has yet been set. They are taking room reservations for Feb. 9 as of today (6/19).

Nightclub will be called "XS." Hmm.

Although all rooms are called "Suites," Hunter and Mike_E mentioned the division of Resort and Tower sides like WLV, with the Tower subdivided into similar Tower Suite Room, Parlor Suite, and Salon Suite room product. (You guys knew that. ;-) No mention of the endcap view suites, sorry.

Room square footage:
Resort and Tower Suite room: 712
Parlor Suite: 1385
Salon Suite: 2216 (!!)
...and of course Villas, too exclusive to discuss over the phone.... ;-)

At the Encore website you can sign up for email alerts. That's about all they have at the site for now. By going this summer, we should be getting a Winter offer that will cover the (soft) opening date of the Encore casino. Can't wait....

Does anyone know how many sky villas there will be? And what exactly would be a "1 Panoramic Accessible" be? TIA

Moto, did you get any more information on pricing for the suites?

TC, you can simply call WLV's rooms reservations as well as marketing.

Pikes, I would assume that's meant to be a handicap accessible room.

Yeah, I wouldn't write the deathknell for Bellagio just yet. Encore, no matter how nice it is, won't soon recover from its poor location. There's nothing across the street from Encore, and with the economy.....that land could sit vacant for many years. Actually, on both sides of Encore you have dead space. Once there is redevelopment...including a few years worth of construction noise.... There could be many years till Wynn/Encore realizes its full potential.

Well generally, "accessible" would mean wheelchair-friendly with a bathroom equipped with grab bars & roll-in shower. Not sure the exact ADA requirements.... Someone correct me if it refers to something else here.

"1" means they only have one such room available??

Skip, to be fair, the Echelon complex is going to be on the other side of the intersection.....and should be open sometime in 2010.

Just a few comments. First City Center will not "knock Encore down a peg or two" City Center will be big, but it won't be the best. Hiring the worlds best architects to design a beautiful building on the outside, does not equal having the nicest hotel in town. Good architecture only gets you so far, but its the interior space and interior design, that really make a good property great. Wynn excels at this, and Wynn has always exceled at this. It is the powerful team of Wynn and Roger Thomas, that make these places to wonderfully amazing inside. They design hotels you never want to leave. I don't think for a second that City Center will have this look or feel. MGM just does not have a team as powerful as that of Wynn. More and More people are less impressed with Bellagio every single day. Over and over I keep hearing the same two things. People thing the service level has dropped. And Secondly, overall they don't like the design changes MGM has made to Bellagio, ie color, patterns, etc. For that matter, most people don't care for most of the changes they've made at Mirage or TI either. MGM can buy Steve's buildings, but they couldn't buy his customers. And that is becoming more and more clear with each passing quarter. Look at Wynn with its bad location, and less trafficed casino, and what do you have? You have the casino with the most drop of any casino in the country. Why? Because MGM might have the tourist, but most all the major players that matter are back with Wynn. And they are back with Wynn, because he knows how to design hotels, and he knows how to run them at a service level that cannot be matched anywhere else in town.

So this brings me to my second point for Skip. You can see how important I think location is, when you read what I stated above. But I predict that Encore will command the highest average room rate in Vegas, and Encore will have the highest REVPAR in Las Vegas. Yes I agree, that Encore and Wynn will only get stronger, once Echelon and Plaza (or whatever goes there) open. But trust me, Encore does not need to be surrounded by great and busy hotels to do and be great. Encore will do fantastic. If Steve did his homework, and if Steve delivered another world class hotel, then the business will come, it always does. City Center might do more overall business due to its 7000 rooms its connected to, many of which have no casino, so by default, they will play at City Center, but Encore I predict will do more business per room, than any other hotel in Las Vegas.

Mike_E, thanks for the correction on Encore reservations. I forgot to mention that the lady I spoke with was unable to give me a rate quote today for Encore (computer glitch). I just finished catching up here on the blog and see you guys have covered much of what I mentioned. The concerns with FF&E Hunter mentioned make sense and would be much more solvable than something infrastructure-related.

(Incidentally, and I hope this doesn't cause her any trouble, the agent said she'd also opened WLV and claimed not all the rooms were available on Opening Day. I hadn't heard that before.)

Skip, not to pile on, but besides Echelon there's Fontainbleu taking shape up north at something like a similar pace. It's only been 5 years since Wynn (according to the press, not this admitted Wynn fanboi) kicked off the latest wave of construction, and not even 20 since Mirage set off the previous wave. You're right, it'll be a few years, but all that vacant land north-Strip is very valuable and spoken for, whatever becomes of Plaza, or MGM's "city center north" surrounding CircusCircus.

Brian & mike_ch, as far as room pricing, my summer offer seemed unusually generous given my level of play. Friends' less-generous offers had some blackout dates lifted. I'd expect this to be a way they can keep rooms full and (listed) rates high. The agent told me they have 30 different offers pending right now.

And let's face it, it sure feels good to be getting a "special" deal at a place like WLV....

One addtional advantage Encore has is Elaine Wynn who evidently is listened to more carefully. She has proven right on many occasions when it comes to lighting, fabrics, placement of elevators. One detail they went to enormous trouble with is the lighting and color scheme inside Wynn to make sure it is always flattering to women at every time of the day.

Have the "Wynn" touch present everywhere means women "trust" Wynn the way classic Hollywood actresses trusted certain directors who were careful how the lighting and camera angles were used for a lot of actresses.

I do know that Elaine and Steve have talked about that - it even was part of the decision for the color of the glass in the hotel since some window colors made people look strange inside...

But... to play devil's advocate - do you think the average person/customer has *any idea* about these sorts of details? Are they really choosing based on this or more just because they generally trust the 'Wynn' brand to deliver a quality experience? Sort of like (I'm scared to even say this) - some people trust 'Trump' as a brand as well?

Thoughts?

Hunter, this goes back to the discussion on Public Radio you linked here, with one of Wynn's designers describing the scale models with laser pointers to design views within the resort, and the whole "feng shui" thing that acts at a totally subconscious level.

My brother and friends do not follow this blog or give one whit about the subject, yet we were all floored by our first stay. Even the old Wynn fans here who were underwhelmed after lining up for Opening Day realized the place grew on them, and that is the opposite of "brand identity."

That's a good point - and I don't disagree... While I've certainly come to really see a brilliance in WYNN's design over all these years, my first love (apologies to my wife and dog) has always been Apple and they are all about working better, easier and more logically, even if they aren't yelling about all the finesse on a bumper sticker.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, I think in both cases - the two Steve's aren't all that different and maybe you even throw a Walt in there, though I know mike_ch will correct me on my Disney association.

Well I'd certainly like to hear more folks' discussion on this Wynn "design vs. brand" topic. The point about window glass was especially interesting. As great as Skyloft was, I had a hard time imagining what MGM's green windows would do to the complexion. Same goes for the gold elsewhere around town.

(But since you mention Apple: I did bring up the Two Steves analogy awhile back only to have the thread shut down -- so I've stayed away from that.... ;-)

I'm much more willing to let things drift in and out of a strict topic in our current, 'L Stern-less' world. :-)

And yes, I think I do recall that thread.

At last, a recent overhead shot of Encore.

As mentioned some time ago, the pool area looks small with little room for lounge chairs. It seems evident that it's meant to complement the ambiance of the casino and nightclub rather than act as an actual pool people immerse themselves in.

Treasure Island was an descent hotel, but the pool made what should have been a good hotel, a horrible place to stay. And as if it weren't small enough already, they stole pool space, took out the waterslide, to expand the check in area. I realize many of you are not pool people. And I know many of you live in areas when you very likely have your very own pool at home to use every day. If this is the case, they you could care a less about the pool, but for many people, the pool experience is a major part of the vacation. If there are any doubters about that, you don't have to look any further than Mirage or Mandalay Bay to see what I am talking about. Even with Mirage having more pool chairs than the eye can possibly take in, you had to be in line at 8AM on a weekend to even find a chair. I would never stay at TI expept the winter, when I couldn't use the pool anyway. The bottom line is, Wynn had a inferior product with TI, mostly due to the pool. I've seen TI have higher room rates in the winter than Mirage, but you won't see that in the summertime, because 9 out of 10 people would rather pay up to stay at the Mirage. This has been Wynn's biggest design flaw to date IMO. (2nd being not enough elevators on the Resort side of Wynn Las Vegas). I just really really hope, Wynn is not making this huge mistake again. I am very concerned about Encore's pool area. It might be nice, and it might have a great night club attached to it, but I don't club, I do love to spend time at great pools. I just hope the Encore pool is large enough to satisfy 2050 rooms properly. Its very hard to tell the size of these pool from the distance at which we are viewing them, so I will reserve judgement until I visit the finished product in person. But I would be lying, to say I am not very sceptical, from what I have seen to date. If the pool is tiny and crampt, I'll just save my money and keep staying at Wynn. We shall see what Mr. Wynn has in store for us.

My In Business Las Vegas story on Encore is available online at:
http://www.inbusinesslasvegas.com/2008/06/20/feature3.html

Wynn's stock fell almost 5 percent today solely based on Brian's comment that he wouldn't pony up the extra $90 to stay at Encore because of the dinky pool :)

Seriously, I agree.....the area looks better than TI's, but will it be ample to accomodate 2K guests. I'm assuming the structure in the pool in the lower part of the picture is the club....I have to question whether another club is necessary, since WLV has, what, two of its own? Maybe it'd only mean a little more water area, but every little bit helps.

I just checked the Encore website and now you can make reservations online. They have floorplans of the various rooms as well. Don't know if this is news, but I couldn't access this info yesterday.

Just to let everyone know, Encorelasvegas.com has gone live accepting reservations. It looks like the lowest possible rate for a resort room will run at $279. In addition to that little piece, the website is featuring a flash video of flying butterflies and blooming flowers, followed by the resort's apparent tagline: "Curious? Good."

Also, the reservation site features the floorplans of the available rooms/suites as well as one, single picture of a king resort room. As a note on the floorplans, I have to say they aren't quite what I was expecting. I guess, in my mind, I pictured something similar to the product at The Hotel. However, this product is going to be something that no one has really seen before.

You can clearly see the 'partition/TV/slider' thing that we talked about previously - interesting.

The room photo, in a way, looks a bit like the bedrooms in the apartment villas, with its boxy appearance. That's what I was reminded of when viewing it.

Posted by mike_ch

Brian: I disagree. The product is service. Once upon a time, Wynn knew how to deliver that product like no one else in town. Over time, people who have worked around Steve and understood his vision have taken up jobs elsewhere.

There's only so much you can do for what's considered five-star service, short of giving things away I guess. Steve used to be playing chess three moves ahead of the competition. I'd say the playing field has leveled.

I see some fairly reasonable rates as low as $239 and no casino control over Tower Suites thankfully. I see Parlors now have the pointless massage rooms as well.

I wonder if Encore has Executive suites that they're simply not listing. For those of us who book through Amex Platinum/Centurion, when Encore begins working with them (as I predict they will), a Tower Suite upgrade to a Parlor will be a huge and highly feasible score.

At least we agree that the massage bed rooms are pointless - if I want a massage I want to go to the spa to get *all* the services... Of course, I did almost pass out in that massage room when hanging with Mike (after calling downstairs for the President) so I guess it does have a purpose.

Damn - the Encore site seems to want to pre-load almost 5MB of Flash crap before I can view it, at least on Safari. That's bad news in Web land. Come on guys, not everyone has FIOS.

You know what? you are absolutly right. Besides the comment i put up earlier was a bit to exagerated. Thanks!!!

I've compared the floorplans of Encore to Wynn, and other than Encore's Resort Suite (700-745 sq ft), I was somewhat disappointed. The Resort Suite is a great looking room and is at least 15% larger than a Resort Room at Wynn. I don't understand the indentations in the side walls of the Resort Suite.

Encore's Parlor Suite is 10% larger than Wynn's Parlor, but it looks chopped up with the addition of the wasted-space massage room. Also, the bath is smaller than at Wynn, and I'm mildly troubled by the angled side walls of Encore's Parlor Suite. I'll be interested in seeing it, but based on the floorplan, I prefer the one at Wynn.

Encore's Salon Suite, at 2261 sq ft, is 24% larger than its counterpart at Wynn yet, like the Parlor Suite, I like the one at Wynn better. This may change when we see photos or the real thing, but somehow, I was expecting more.

Encore's Resort Suite is so nice, I can see why Steve didn't include any Executive Suites at Encore. It is basically one room, but it has two baths which didn't seem necessary to me.

Hunter, I agree with you on Steve Wynn's websites. I much prefer Bellagio's which is fast and no-nonsense. I was hoping Steve would re-do both sites with Encore. He tries too hard to be "cute".

In my opinion, I think that the Wynn is one of the tackiest hotels I know and whats with the brown everywhere? Im hoping that Encore will be less" wonderland"

Hopefully they will address some of the Web site issues as they did with the WLV site.

kenny, it's been mentioned that Wynn's look is so extreme that it could become dated relatively quickly, and I don't disagree. (If you don't like brown, consider that the Resort side tends toward bright orange!) Especially after seeing THEHotel's and Mandalay's updated rooms. (BTW, Mandalay has a really cool virtual walk-thru of the many room types on their website.)

And Joe, I don't think there's been much doubt that Bellagio was probably Wynn's most extravagant creation, to the extent that it may have even cost him the company. "Bellagio Lite" I think was one less-kind description of WLV when it opened. Encore, we'll have to see....

then why is everyone talking about how great the wynn is and how encore is going to blow vegas away, and they ALWAYS say that MGMMIRAGE is making the bellagio worse and worse everytime because of the renovations.

Kenny, here's my two cents. Bellagio's physical plant can't be duplicated, by Steve Wynn or anyone else. It wouldn't be cost effective. Bellagio outshines Wynn in terms of construction quality and detail. For example, the mosaic floors, quality of marble, crown moldings, etc at Bellagio are far superior to that at Wynn. However, just as Steve improved upon The Mirage with Bellagio, he improved upon Bellagio at Wynn in many areas. This may all sound snobbish, but when one leaves Le Cirque at Bellagio, the slot machines are right outside the door. At Wynn, Alex, Wing Lei, Country Club, etc are far from the casino floor. Wynn's Tower Suites are truly a hotel within a hotel. The closest thing at Bellagio is the VIP check-in with private elevators to the suite floors.

I agree with Motoman. Bellagio was a primary reason Steve lost Mirage Resorts. It took MGM Mirage's superior operating philosophy to make Bellagio hugely profitable. That profit came at a cost, in my opinion. Although Bellagio is still a beautiful property, it looks and feels much more commercial to me than when Steve Wynn operated it.

The differences between MGM and WYNN are exemplified by the addition of the Spa Tower and increased meeting space. If you walk from Bellagio's hotel elevators past the pool and meeting areas, through the conference and ballroom areas, through the Spa Tower and back to the Conservatory, the differences in style and quality are striking where the old and the new meet.

It's more of a feeling than anything tangible. Having said that, I like both properties and would like to stay at Bellagio and Wynn again.

I don't know what to expect from Encore. Will it feel like a totally separate hotel/resort or an extension of Wynn Las Vegas? If I stay at Encore, will it be a reasonable walk to have dinner at SW or sit outside at Parasol Down? After two years, I'm planning a trip to Encore in early '09.

I dont really think that MGM MIRAGE makes bellagio feel like a commercial place now. They could have replaced the conservitory with retail and replace the 8 acre lake with some even more profitable use. I see the molding and decor etc. in the spa tower and looks high quality. And today I knocked on both moldings in the spa and original towers and both are made exactly the same and has high quality. MGM cares a lot about the quality and service only at the Bellagio (because its their flag resort hotel) but Wynn cares about his a little more.

I actually *do* think I could show you specific examples of some of the newer materials used at Bellagio not being quite up to the same level but there wouldn't be that many examples...

I've stayed at Bellagio a few times recently and have always been very happy with the experience.

There are some things that Bellagio simply can't change - the size of their standard rooms, lack of floor to ceiling windows, lack of power outlets (well they could fix this), etc... The standard room design at WLV is, IMHO, far superior to Bellagio.

kenny, fwiw I think Bellagio is still the class of strip hotels. We've been spending 9 or 10 weeks a year in Vegas the last few years split mostly among Wynn, Bellagio, and LVS properties.

Bellagio has had its ups and downs, but right now their customer service is as good as I've ever seen it and they really hit a home run with their suite remodel last year. I expect it's going to be our Vegas home for the next 14 months or so. I get offers from LVS, and Venetian/Palazzo standard rooms are the only ones on the strip my wife considers acceptable, so we'll stay there too on occasion.

Out of probably idle curiosity, has anyone seen floor plans of Encore's hotel tower? I'm specifically wondering if Parlor suites are going to be on one side and Salon suites the other like at Wynn. If we stay at a Wynn property again we're going to insist on a room facing away from the podium, which at Wynn would mean booking a Parlor suite.

By the way my wife actually liked having a massage room in Wynn's Salon suites, at least at first. Her favorite massage therapist there was happy to do in room massages, but she left for Red Rock and her next favorite wouldn't do them in room.

Yes, I've seen them but I honestly can't recall - at the time I saw them we didn't know what the room configurations were.

Let me see if I can dig up that info... I might have it.

A friend of mine works at the b as a bellhop and I talked to him recently and he said that some of the assistant manager etc. Have had the idea to put floor to celeine windows in the standard rooms and going to try to make it possible. They got the idea from the floor to celiene window renovation at the mirage. I hope they do it!

Posted by mike_ch

The thing about Spa Tower development that weirds me out at Bellagio is the hallways. The dark browns and peusdo-3D of the wallpaper with the dim lighting that I saw once, I expected to meet those twin girls at the end of the hall.

Decor wise, I would take MGM Bellagio over Wynn resort side anytime, but I would take Tower Suites over either. Going into Tower Suites for the first time is like discovering where all the money went. If the entire hotel was designed with the kind of work that they put into Tower Suites, it would have been pretty incredible. Instead, it just stands as an example of what people were expecting to see all over.

If you had a hotel that was just Tower Suites with, say, three restaurants and a snack bar, a private pool, and a small very expensive and very quiet casino, I would probably call it the best in town. And they would probably also name it "The Mike E at Wynn" but that's neither here nor there.

Mike_ch, you had me chuckling from beginning to end with that last reply. Bellagio's Spa Tower will always give me the creeps now after that "twin girls" comment.

For the record, yes, my standard room at Mirage did have floor to ceiling windows, but no, that's not part of the renovations. That's impossible to do without altering the exterior facade. It's just an extra perk to the rooms at the very center of the tower with continuous gold glass adjacent to the hospitality suites.

Mike P, it says on Encore's site that Parlors will have a view of downtown, so yes, that's the one you're going to want.

Kenny Kenny, what are you talking about? Mirage has always had floor to ceiling windows in some rooms, the rooms on the top floors are that way, as are the rooms at the center of the building, which are mostly or all suites. I don't think that Mirage changed any window configurations in their recent remodel, or ever have for that matter? I can't see Bellagio doing this, as it would require a full refacing of the building, and then each room would have to be modified as well. If I am mistaken, someone please correct me.

Mike P, someone earlier in this thread mentioned the floorplans on the Encore website. They actually show the tapered walls based on which side of the arc the Salon or Parlor Suites are on, so you can sort of guess the direction they face -- assuming those represent all the rooms of each type.

Yoops! I geez sorry about that. The friend who told me this was making a joke. I feel so stupid.

I'm not sure if what I'm going to say make any sense. But what I feel is that Bellagio building, even though has 36 floors, looks smaller because the way they set up the windows. Each square of most of the building has 4 windows (4 rooms). If they decide to change it to floor to ceiling windows, it would change the facade and the building would look much higher, I think. I believe that they decided to have those big squares so the building would look smaller, more cozy. And I'm happy they didn't do what Monte Carlo did. MC looks like a prision building.

ha thats a good one!