LOOKING IN ON: TOURISM

Saturday, Sept. 23, 2006 | 7:37 a.m.

After seeing so many wacky proposals come and go in Southern Nevada, it's easy to get cynical when companies with no track record say they're going to build the biggest, tallest, grandest, coolest, whatever resort anybody has ever seen.

But there have been a handful of success stories mixed in with the dreamers and schemers. Time will tell whether Las Vegas WET LLC's $1.1 billion proposal for a massive indoor-outdoor water park, an indoor ski slope, a pair of 600-room hotels and a tropical-themed casino will be fact or folly.

Steven Dooner, co-founder of Proteus Creative, which is developing the Las Vegas WET project, understands the skepticism. But he says he can't discuss all the details yet.

And there are a few details missing: the exact location (Dooner says it will be on Las Vegas Boulevard South, south of Interstate 215, but he still has to acquire one piece of land to have the site.) and the financing (He says five banks and hedge funds are lined up to finance the deal, but they haven't determined which will be the lead lender.).

But Dooner said ground could be broken next year with completion by mid-2009.

He knows the business. He has 30 years of development experience with Disney, Universal, Paramount Parks and Raging Waters, and had his hand in the development of Chuck E. Cheese, Club Disney, ESPNZone and Universal Studios Japan.

Dooner envisions a 30-acre water park with 250,000 square feet indoors, making it the nation's largest. Renderings show tropical grottos and a casino with a South Seas theme.

But wait! Throw on a parka and grab the ski gear and you could be schussing at the ski dome near the Swiss chalet-themed Alpine Haus hotel. A desert ski facility isn't unique - there's a six-acre, five-run resort maintained at 28 degrees in Dubai, which opened in December.

The project also includes a dining, retail and entertainment complex, a 5,000-seat arena for concerts and sporting events, and a multiplex cinema with high-end reserved seating.

Dooner said he initially sought out Las Vegas when Wet 'n Wild - a water park his company once owned south of the Sahara - closed its slides and wave machines in 2004.

When Dooner and his partners penciled out the finances, he found that it needed the casino income to be profitable, and the dream grew.

Dooner said he has met with county officials to troubleshoot his plans. Clark County's planning department says because nothing officially has been filed with them, there is nothing yet to share publicly. Dooner considers Las Vegas to be the ideal location, with the biggest obstacle to development being the cost of land.

"You simply have to have a casino to make it work," he said.

When Korean Air's inaugural 11-hour flight to Las Vegas touched down at McCarran International Airport on Friday afternoon, passengers were well fed and caught up on their movie viewing.

Korean's Flight 009 left Seoul's Incheon International Airport about midnight Friday .

After reaching cruising altitude, flight attendants rolled out dinner. First-class passengers had four choices for dinner, business-class passengers had three, and in the economy class, two. Everyone was offered a traditional Korean dish called bibimbap, a mixture of vegetables and rice spiced with a hot pepper paste, traditionally served in stone pots.

In first class, passengers could choose another Korean dish, hanjeongsik (a traditional Korean meal that includes seasonal wild vegetables and greens), Chinese-style beef tenderloin or a Western-style seafood medley.

Business class offered a braised chicken Basquaise style or Chinese-style mixed seafood. The second choice in the economy seats was beef with oyster sauce.

For movie fare, passengers will get to watch either "Mission: Impossible III" with Tom Cruise or "Nacho Libre" starring Jack Black. (On Friday's flight, which used a Boeing 747 to accommodate all the fliers, passengers could call up multiple movie choices on their back-seat entertainment stations.)

Tired of movies? Passengers can flip through the in-flight Morning Calm magazine, with articles in English and in Korean.

Five hours into the flight, the crew served beverages - water and fruit juices - as a second movie was shown.

At Hour 9, beverages were rolled out again, along with breakfast.

On Friday's flight, first-class fliers got to choose from Korean-style soup with beef rib and cabbage, or scrambled eggs and waffles. In business class, traditional Korean rice porridge was offered as well as a vegetable potato cake or continental breakfast. In the economy class, travelers got Korean-style gruel with pumpkin or an omelette.

One more round of beverages was served after the 10th hour of the flight. By that time, the plane was over the Nevada desert, coming in from the northwest.