Talk about luxury: It's another big Wynn for Las Vegas

This hotel-casino has just about everything.
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
The price tag of $2.7 billion qualifies Wynn Las Vegas as the most expensive hotel-casino ever built. So what do you get for a few billion?
Fake grass, for one thing.
While Steve Wynn's previous Las Vegas resorts -- Mirage, Treasure Island and Bellagio -- had wondrous features out front for the pedestrians on the Strip to gawk at, Wynn Las Vegas is hidden behind a mountain landscaped with pine trees, flowering shrubs and perfect grass that will never need mowing.
Walk into the front entrance and you're immediately struck by a barrage of color in the paintings behind the registration desk, in the floral mosaics in the marble floor, and on the spheres of flowers that hang in the trees like giant Christmas ornaments. The trees, by the way, also will never need watering.
Wynn explains his love for color in the self-narrated audio tour of the hotel's art gallery, which is filled with its owner's collection of Impressionist masterpieces.
Quotable
"They're all very colorful," he says. "I love the richness of color and it's obvious around the hotel, and it's certainly evident in my preference for different painters and their works."
There may be another reason for Wynn's predilection for bold colors and patterns. He suffers from an incurable genetic disease that gradually is robbing him of his eyesight.
Carpeting with bold free-form flowers on a red background led to my room, which had walls covered in a fabric that I call orange and they call apricotta. The room had a king-sized bed facing the window, which looked out onto the pool. The room was nice-sized, but the bathroom was huge, with a double sink, glass shower enclosure, tub and separate commode cubicle. The bathroom had a flat-screen TV and a telephone.
Another telephone and flat-screen TV in the room had my name on the LCD displays, so I knew I was in the right place. There was a fax machine and high-speed Internet ports. A tray on top of the minibar had candy, nuts and Fiji bottled water; lift an item off the tray and if you don't return it within 60 seconds it will be magically charged to your room.
The room-service offerings included afternoon tea served with scones and salmon finger sandwiches for $35 per person. Appetizers ranged from shrimp cocktail for $16 to shellfish on ice for $110.
The bed -- ah, the bed -- had five fluffy pillows, a pillow-top mattress and Egyptian cotton sheets with a 310 thread count. But who was counting?
While the pool area seemed cramped even when it wasn't overly crowded, the spa earned rave reviews and was said to be a sanctuary of tranquility. The Esplanade shopping arcade has two dozen boutiques with all the pricey names -- Chanel, Dior, Vuitton, Cartier, de la Renta. If you have anything left, head to the Ferrari-Maserati dealership on the other side of the building.
Gorgeous
Overall, the hotel was gorgeous, with every nook and tabletop filled with art, much of it with an Oriental theme.
But Wynn had established a high-water mark with the sumptuous Bellagio, and the enormous expectations for Wynn Las Vegas left some visitors with a been-there, done-that response.
There is one aspect of Wynn Las Vegas that sets the bar higher than any other hotel, anywhere, has yet to clear.
Wynn is a foodie, and for his new endeavor he gathered some of America's finest chefs -- Stephen Kalt, Daniel Boulud, Mark LoRusso, Alessandro Stratta -- and created perfect settings for them to display their wares. And while celebrity chefs are nothing new in Las Vegas, Wynn demanded that his stars actually be in the kitchen cooking, not merely lending their names.
Wynn claims to have the finest collection of chefs under one roof in the country.
"It's a roundtable," he says, "and all the knights are here."
Wynn is not the only new luxury offering on the Strip. MGM Grand has opened a 700-room, boutique-style West Wing and also added the Skylofts, two-story suites that start at $800 a night. Bellagio has a new 928-room Spa Tower and the hotel at Mandalay Bay has 1,117 sleek suites. And the construction cranes are still going strong along Las Vegas Boulevard.