Wynn Las Vegas makes splash

LAS VEGAS — Gambling impresario Steve Wynn has finally delivered.

His $2.7 billion Wynn Las Vegas debuted early Thursday morning to hundreds of eager people clamoring to get the first glimpse of this city's newest attraction and the most expensive megaresort ever built here.

They fanned out everywhere after the doors opened, swarming the rows of slot machines and gambling tables. They came with cameras and video recorders intent on capturing this slice of Las Vegas history.

"People were pushing and shoving," said Kathie Anderson of Las Vegas, who stood in line several hours. "I'm just excited to be inside."

For many, Wynn's latest creation — and the first major hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip to go online in the past five years — didn't disappoint.

"There is nobody in the world who creates such entertaining and beautiful casinos," said British billionaire Richard Branson as he strolled across the casino floor. "I would say every other casino must be nervous. He's lifted the bar dramatically."

Wynn put his curvy 2,700-room property on 217 acres. A tour reveals an intriguing design that differs in many ways from his previous hotel-casinos such as the Bellagio, The Mirage and Treasure Island.

"I think it's an evolution of what he has done," said professor David Schwartz, who directs the Gaming Studies Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "I think the theme is Wynn, which says luxury, sophistication, style."

Wynn lost control of those properties when Mirage Resorts was acquired by billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian in 2000, creating MGM Mirage Inc.

Along with Wynn Las Vegas, the gambling tycoon is building Encore, an adjacent $1.4 billion hotel-casino scheduled to open in 2008. Wynn is also erecting a $700 million casino in Macau and is bidding on one in Singapore.

Shortly before the casino allowed the public to enter, Wynn told a crowd attending a dress rehearsal of Le Reve, a water-themed production, that Wynn Las Vegas was built on design risks.

There was a reason why he didn't release many details about the project when he first conceived it five years ago.

"We would have been accused of shameless overstatement . . . so we kept quiet," he said. "Talk small, build big."