Mandalay Play

A thick coating of Death Valley dust clung to my skin and clothes as I approached the polished-wood-and-marble check-in counter at tropically themed Mandalay Bay, the latest mega-resort to open on the Vegas Strip. Behind the counter, a riot of ersatz jungle roots and vines engulfed a wall of ersatz stone ruins--a Vegas vision of Angkor Wat--while streams of water fell into small basins bordered by palms, ferns and philodendrons.

Out in the vast lobby, crowds roamed the inlaid marble floor, gawking at a huge aquarium and coaxing shrill squawks from brilliantly colored parrots housed in 12-foot-high bamboo cages. A mural of gracefully arching banana leaves stretched overhead, its tropical effect diminished by the piped-in voice of Celine Dion and the roar of slot machines from the adjacent casino. Welcome to Raffles on steroids, I thought, and say goodbye to the desert.

It was late Sunday afternoon, and three of us--Mac and I from San Francisco, and Chas from L.A.--had just arrived in Las Vegas after spending a couple of days exploring the harsh, spare beauty of Death Valley. We’d decided to extend our weekend desert reunion so we could have some fun checking out Mandalay Bay, which had opened to the public a week earlier.

There would be plenty to check out. The $950-million resort and casino--built by Circus Circus Enterprises, which also owns the nearby Luxor and Excalibur--sprawls across 60 acres and includes three 43-story hotel towers clad in gold glass; a 30,000-square-foot spa; a 12,000-seat arena; a 1,700-seat theater now hosting the musical “Chicago”; a House of Blues; any number of shops; an 11-acre water park with a sand-and-surf beach, three pools and a river; and 15 restaurants, 13 of which are open. (Wolfgang Puck’s Trattoria del Lupo is scheduled to open April 10; the gourmet Mexican eatery Border Grill will start serving sometime later in the spring.)

After checking in, we headed to our 11th-floor room, which had floor-to-ceiling windows looking across the casino roof toward the Spring Mountains in the distance. The sand- and cream-colored walls of the spacious room were hung with tropically inspired watercolors and original prints, and the wooden furniture was stained a deep teak shade. Side chairs upholstered in leopard print and the wide-slat, louvered doors of the bathroom and the two built-in closets lent the room a vaguely equatorial air.

Although we could have had the room for $129 per night if I’d booked when I first called the hotel, my delay of three days had allowed the price of a triple to rise to $159, presumably because of high demand. Given the quality of the room, however, even the higher price seemed like a good deal.

While I cleaned up in our opulent marble bathroom, which had a soaking tub, glassed-in shower and separate toilet with phone, Mac and Chas called the House of Blues only to be told that their stage would be dark that week--we were in a lull between scheduled performers. They hung on the phone long enough to learn that reserved seats for a future Sheryl Crow concert cost a cool $150, making tickets for an upcoming Los Lobos appearance ($27.50) a comparative steal.

We decided to start our evening out with a visit to rumjungle, a Caribbean-themed restaurant and nightclub that boasts an open fire pit, a “dancing firewall” and “volcanic mountains of rum and spirits.” Who could resist? Unfortunately, we arrived to find the place closed tight, a condition that persisted throughout our two-day visit. (Whatever technical glitches there were seem to have been fixed; it’s now open.)

We drifted over to the China Grill Cafe and Zen Sum, a futuristic pan-Asian eatery whose decor--a blend of Japanese and the Jetsons--featured lots of stainless steel and frosted, colored plastic. A small army of white-coated chefs furiously manned the woks and grill below an enormous kitchen hood, onto which Zen-esque video messages were beamed--such as “The purpose of Zen is the perfection of character.”

High-energy bartenders chatted up patrons sitting at the bar, around which small plates of dim sum dishes moved on a conveyor belt. The crowd was hip and distinctly un-Vegas--not a single pair of Sansabelt slacks in the entire place.

Staying long enough to have a drink and sample the tasty gyoza and crispy chicken dumplings, we switched to yet another restaurant--The Noodle Shop--for bowls of noodles in broth, each topped with roast duck or spicy Mandarin beef stew. After that, I set off on my own to have a peek at the Four Seasons Hotel, which occupies the five upper floors, the 35th through 39th, of the Mandalay Bay hotel towers. It’s owned by Circus but managed as a separate hotel, with its own entrance, restaurants, hushed lobby and private elevators to whisk guests to their rooms. I was shown a guest room, which looked to be the same size as ours but was furnished more elegantly (rates start at $200 weekdays, $350 weekends), and I made a mental note to return to the Four Seasons’ dark, quiet bar if I needed a respite from the tumult of the casino.

The next morning, after a few cups of very good coffee from room service, we enjoyed “breakfast parfaits” of yogurt, fresh fruit and granola at the Surf Cafe, one of two poolside eateries. Afterward I investigated the water park, an 11-acre complex done up like a set from an Indiana Jones movie--groves of palm trees, massive temple “ruins” and sculpted elephant heads whose trunks spout streams of water.

I saw a few kids floating along the Lazy River, an undulating watercourse with a current that takes you under two waterfalls. And even though the air temperature was in the mid-60s, a scattering of college students on spring break were sunning themselves on lounges. At the sandy beach, where swells up to 6 feet allow for surfing, it was strange and pleasant to hear waves breaking hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. Due to unplanned erosion of the sand, however, the waves were turned off a few minutes after I arrived and still had not resumed when I returned that afternoon to have a sandwich at the Beach Grill Cafe and a catnap on the beach. (The waves are now up and running.)

That night, the three of us donned jackets and rendezvoused for drinks at Red Square, another of Mandalay Bay’s high-concept theme restaurants. Outfitted like the ruined interior of a czarist-era palace and bathed in an eerie crimson light, Red Square features a bar whose surface is made of ice--the better to keep the house specialties, vodka and caviar, properly chilled.

For dinner, we went upscale and ate at Aureole, the Mandalay Bay offspring of Charlie Palmer’s highly praised Manhattan restaurant of the same name. Aureole has two dining areas, one a handsome, modernist space with high ceilings and frosted glass partitions, the other a more intimate, wood-paneled room--but the restaurant’s showstopper is a four-story wine tower that stores up to 10,000 bottles. To get at the wine, a lithe woman in a black cat suit is artfully hoisted on cables and plucks the chosen vintage from its niche. In a bit of Cirque du Soleil theatrics, she then arches her back, points her toes and holds the wine aloft for the slow descent.

After we ordered from the $65 three-course prix-fixe menu and added a bottle of Oregon pinot noir, the highly professional staff commenced the parade of dishes. We all started with a tomato terrine and then moved on to individual appetizers of tuna tartare, an excellent crab cake and delicate slices of smoked salmon. After main courses of thick veal steak with oyster mushrooms, pheasant with chanterelles and caramelized onions, and fruitwood-grilled salmon with sage ratatouille, desserts were an unqualified hit, with an individual torte full of warm, oozing chocolate taking top honors. A small Shaker box containing tiny cookies and candies arrived with coffee.

The next day’s plan for a quick lunch at the House of Blues was foiled when we arrived to find a 45-minute wait. Instead, we returned to the China Grill Cafe and Zen Sum to share a couple of orders of savory Singapore-style curry noodles and a very good Asian take on the classic Caesar salad, with crispy, thin noodles substituting for croutons.

As she cleared the dishes, our waitress asked if we’d checked out the space-age bathrooms, 10 individual steel and frosted-glass pods. “The pods were a total hit during the opening party,” she reported. “Sylvester Stallone and his wife and Shania Twain hung out around them practically the entire time.”

But, we wondered, had they been able to get drinks served back there? The waitress smiled and shrugged.

“Sure,” she said. “This is Vegas.”

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Budget for Three

Mandalay Bay, 2 nights: $346.62

Lunch, drinks, China Grill Cafe: 52.77

Noodle Shop dinner: 41.65

6 breakfasts, Surf Cafe: 74.68

2 lunches, Beach Grill Cafe: 16.68

Drinks, Red Square: 24.13

Dinner, Aureole: 326.95

FINAL TAB: $883.48

Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Las Vegas, NV 89119; telephone (877) 632-7000.