WhatBrianThinksAboutLasVegas.com

Encore!

by Brian on Mon Jan 05, 2009 4:15 pm

Steve Wynn and I are not exactly close friends. I've stayed at Bellagio, Mirage, Treasure Island, and The Frontier, but not while he owned any of them... I think I spent $10 in a slot machine at Wynn once, and I've had a couple of drinks in Parasol Up (those waitress outfits sure are cute, ain't they?). So, imagine my surprise when I got an email offer for a room at Encore for $130/night, with $150 in free slot credits!

I can only assume Steve started at the top of his list, and when the "Whopper Virgins" from Thailand couldn't make it he eventually worked his way down past his garbage man to my name. Needless to say, I loved the chance to stay in a hotel where the room is so new, there's a chance nobody with a disease has had sex on the bed yet. We packed, hopped in the car, and wound our way to Las Vegas. We were at Encore from 1/1/09 through 1/4/09.

You'll find a video of the room HERE.

If you've been to Wynn, you have a pretty decent idea of what Encore looks like. Steve loves his moldings on the walls, and tassels abound. Unlike Wynn, which is decorated in a dark, somewhat dreary brown, the color scheme at Encore is mostly cream and a bright, cheery firetruck red. I found it upbeat and cheerful, very pleasing.

The casino is smaller then Wynn's, but is divided into bite-sized "rooms" by curtains, columns, and other visual blocks. Some people find this warm and comforting, but I found myself constantly getting turned around and lost, as if I was in a maze. I'm not sure what it says about me that I prefer the really disorganized casinos like Aladdin and Venetian...

The checkin area is small, intimate, and unobstructed by velvet ropes, line guides, or signage.

The waitresses dress very similarly to Wynn, in a little brown dress. There doesn't seem to be as much variety to the outfits as their is at Wynn, most outfits here seem very much the same. For some reason, the outfit just doesn't seem as sexy here as it did at Wynn. Seeing the girls at Wynn makes me think of terms like "willowy", "lithe", and "slender". Seeing the similar outfit at Encore brings to mind terms like "scrawny", "hungry", and "child protective services". There isn't much cloth there, so the issue might just be the girls themselves. Perhaps when they get some steady income they can buy some food and fill the dresses out a bit better

One huge improvement over Wynn in the decor area: Wynn is decorated with what I'm told are floral patterns in the carpet and ceiling. To me, they've always looked like 10,000x magnifications of bacteria. Here, they went with butterflies instead, and it's a very pleasant change.

The video shows you the room pretty well, but I'd like to point out a couple of things. First off, there is some kind of sex toy in the shower:

I always thought women did that kind of thing in the bathtub. ;-)

Second, all the lights in the room are connected to a control panel at the bedside. It's very handy to be able to open/shut the curtains or turn out the lights from your bed:

Third, pretty much all the furniture in the room is available for sale. Here's what a $200 trash can looks like:

The place was really crowded, so I didn't get a chance to try the food at Encore, other then room service. Room service was pretty good, but absurdly expensive. Also, the bagel was the absolute worst I've had in a long long time. (I'm a New Yorker by birth and heritage. Bagels are important!)

The thing is, for all of it's classyness and style, Encore looked to me like more thought was needed all around. For instance, the lovely open check-in desk, which is nice and small and intimate, becomes utter chaos when people show up en-masse to check in. Lines are disorganized, service is slow, luggage is left randomly about, and I saw more then one person simply forgotten about as their staff member got pulled away to help on something else. God help you at checkout time, too. The automated checkout system didn't work, which means the entire hotel was trying to get into 8 lines, mixed in with people checking in at the same time. And, that very helpful person in the grey suit who offered you the speedy-checkout, who you told "no", because you wanted a copy of your bill? You'll be asked that 10 more times, and you'll want to strangle somebody.

Along the same lines, after you check in, to get to your elevator you'll need to walk all the way around the lobby bar, about a 300 degree circle. When you get to the elevator, you'll see that they could have made your walk VERY quick and easy by just putting an opening between the elevator and the checkin desk. You could quite literally shake hands with your checkin agent from the elevator, but you can't walk there.

The lighting control panel is nice, and looks good, but when the room is dark and you want to turn the lights on in the living area so your wife can sleep in bed, don't. You can't turn the living room lights on by themselves, you have to turn ALL the lights on, then turn the bedroom lights off, at which point your wife is smacking you with pillows.

Two related complaints, the television rotates, so you can watch it from either room. However, the audio is louder BEHIND the TV then in front, which means, again, your wife is wondering why you woke her up with ESPN. Also, because of the TV, that lovely view out your room's massive windows simply can't be seen from the bed:

Maid service was sketchy. Let me compare to a cheaper hotel, like Treasure Island. At TI I would leave the room about lunchtime, put the little sign on the door, come back a couple hours later, and the room would be done, new towels installed, new soaps set up, and I'd be good. At Encore, despite an absolute army of maids on the floor at all times, I could be gone 5 or 6 hours and the room might not be done at all. If it was done, it was usually only half done, either we needed towels or soap or the trash wasn't empty.

Finish construction, as well, could use some polishing up. The shower fixtures in my room were installed in a very half-ass manner. I carry a wrench with me "just in case", but I never expect to use it in a room at a 1-billion-dollar resort (or whatever the hell this building cost).

The organizational problems might be understandable, but it's not like this is Wynn's first hotel. The image, and the politeness of the staff are obviously more important then having the building be functional, and the staff doing their tasks well and efficiently. That's not a good thing.

It is a beautiful hotel, the rooms are wonderful, and I even saw some $10.00 blackjack tables. I just wish Steve had taken some of the money he spent on having a giant statue of a fat person sculpted for his poolside dining room and hired an architect or an engineer to check the efficiency of the designs, instead of just going for more "wow" at first glance.

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