Columnist Susan Snyder: Crowd marks midnight at the oasis

Thursday, April 28, 2005 | 8:39 a.m.

The next time Steve Wynn opens a resort -- and there is always a next time -- he needs to hire Sandy for security.

The sturdy, middle-age woman clad in plaid bermudas, a navy blazer, black Converse tennis shoes and a black beret, sucked on a cigar and shouted commands to those standing in line -- and those who tried to cut.

I didn't ask her last name. I was afraid of her.

"Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! That's not a second line, people," she bellowed at a knot of late-comers who crowded to the front of a block-long queue of people waiting for today's 12:01 a.m. opening of Wynn Las Vegas.

"That's bull! What do you think we came here for?!" Sandy said, following them a few steps, then getting back in line. "We've been standing here for four hours, and they're going to come here 20 minutes before it opens and get in? I don't think so!"

"Woohoo! All right Sandy!" others standing behind her shouted.

Four hours? Amateurs. Marco and Jackie Montoya, of Dallas, stepped into line at 6 p.m. Wednesday. They were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, and hoped to get a glimpse of more than Wynn glitz once inside.

"We know it's full of celebrities in there -- everybody who's anybody," Jackie Montoya said. "We'll do whatever it takes to get into the nightclub and see somebody."

It wasn't all visitors. Nick Ceryance, a Las Vegas day-trader, said he couldn't resist seeing what Wynn had cooked up this time.

"His hotels have always gotten better," Ceryance said. "The Mirage broke the mold. And they said he was crazy when he opened Bellagio. He paid $40 million for the fountain, and people are watching it for free.

"It's so massive, yet so delicate with all that glass," he added, looking up at the Wynn's gleaming copper wedge. "You can go six or seven miles from the Strip and see this hotel."

By 10 p.m., the line stretched south to the Venetian and north beyond the Wynn's massive expanse. Security guards held the crowds at bay with large metal gates and passed along tidbits of information to pass the time.

All the rooms are suites. Some cost $1,500 a night. All of the marble is real.

"And the marble goes all the way through," one of them said. "It's not just a cover over something else."

Michele and Tim Kearns, of Canada, said they came to the opening on a whim but obviously came too late.

"We didn't even know an opening was a 'thing,' " Michele Kearns said.

"It's huge, eh?" her husband added, analyzing their options.

As with most of what the couple had witnessed on the Strip, they said the scene at Wynn was pretty unbelievable.

"Of course, that's why people come here, right? No reality," Michele Kearns said. "We've got 13-month-old twins throwing up on us at home. That's reality. That's not going to happen here."

"Well," her husband added, "it's early yet."

They wandered off to find a taxi, hoping to avoid the lines by arriving in a hired car.

Then, the voice that could part a sea bellowed from the line's depths.

"Whoa! The line's here, babe!" Sandy said. "You're going to have a riot on your hands. We're not going to take this lightly!"

Soon, the crowd was chanting with her.

"The line is in the back! The line is in the back! We were here first! We were here first!"

Suddenly the Wynn billboard stopped moving and went black. Bright white numbers flashed on the screen for a 30-second countdown. The crowd surged forward as the sign announced, "We're open!"

Wynn's latest attempt to outdo himself was official.

"It takes guts to put your name on a hotel," Ceryance said. "It better be good."