Las Vegas

Mandarin Oriental

The bigger the project, the more crucial it is to bring in the foremost experts in the field -- if a comet's hurtling toward Earth, you'd better bring in Bruce Willis, unless of course you look out your window and say, "Oh, there's Jon Favreau wiping slime off day-old pastries". Bringing in the big guns, the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas.

Opening in December as a City Center centerpiece, this 47-story non-gaming hotel was designed by the architectural firm responsible for Beijing's Museum of China (located just off Tian'an Men Square, so you know it's historically accurate); meanwhile, the 392 floor-to-ceiling-windowed rooms are steez'd by Israeli-American hotel pimp Adam D. Tihany, including 3200sqft presidential suites optimistically equipped with cutting-edge fitness equipment (located in your room, so you know you'll use it). For gourmet scarfing, there's the US debut of a French chef with two entries in Restaurant mag's world Top 50, a 23rd-floor operation made staggering with enormous Strip-viewing windows, a dramatic glass staircase climbing to a suspended wine loft, and 300 floating golden globes, whose glamorous illumination will make everybody look like Meryl Streep. Also on the 23rd floor "Sky Lobby": the quietly stunning Mandarin Bar, with individually crafted cocktail glasses, deep leather armchairs, and silk-upholstered walls, and the Tea Lounge, which'll offer all sorts of tea-related rituals, hopefully including stately matches of "Whatever Happened to Tee Martin?".

To recharge from all the eating, drinking, and elevator-riding, head to the dual-level, 1930s Shanghai-inspired spa, with 17 couples-friendly treatment rooms, and a co-ed, Ottoman-style "Hammam" -- in which even the fattest can become Swingers.

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