HotelChatter's video from Encore Las Vegas, taken in January 2009.

It’s always fun to read someone else’s first take of a place that you’ve covered, well, quite intimately. Like the Encore in Vegas, Steve Wynn’s almost one-year-old 2,034-room luxe tower, which this past weekend (finally!) got the official New York Times treatment.

“If Steve Wynn’s last two Sin City resorts — Wynn Las Vegas in 2005 and the Bellagio in 1998 — were about bringing a whiff of Park Avenue to the Strip, the Encore is about the hotelier’s loosening his pearls and swinging a little,” writes the Times’ Brooks Barnes. And though the Times says the

We regularly cover Sin City happenings on our sister site VegasChatter, where the X-to-G-rated ratio often tips in favor of lascivious activities. This isn't to say that there aren't perfectly innocent things to do in Las Vegas—we reported on gelato last Friday, for Chrissakes—but finding them may take more work than wandering into any one of the Strip's neon-lighted strip joints.

Just in time for proverbial "list checking" season, The Signature at MGM Grand is offering a "Nice" alternative for those of a prim persuasion. Deviant travelers will have their requisite "Naughty" option, so fear not.

If you're one of the many people who are still bummed that the raunchy pool party, Rehab at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas is over for the season, we think we have some news that will cheer you up.

The Hard Rock will will open up their Tower Suites in their newest HRH Tower on December 28, giving you a new reason to visit the most sinful hotel in SIn City. The opening rates start at an incredibly affordable $109 a night for a Supreme City King suite that has 704-square-feet of space. Here's the official room description:

Dark wood floors give way to luxurious carpet, as the foyer enters the living space. Hi-tech rules

No plans for Halloween? Lucky for you we know how to get on the guest list for this year's hottest Halloween party in Las Vegas:

Ashley Greene and Kellan Lutz, a.k.a Alice and Emmett Cullen in the Twilight movies, are hosting the Veuve Clicquot Yelloween at the Venetian's TAO and LAVO nightclubs on October 31st. You can add yourself to the guest list for the event via TAO's website. The party begins at 10:00 P.M. and one ticket gets you into both TAO and LAVO. Ashley and Kellen will also be joined by True Blood's Rutina Wesley, who plays Tara Thornton, and Sam Trammell, who plays shapeshifter Sam Merlotte.

Apparently the folks at the Wynn Las Vegas had some unused jets lying around the tarmac - the recession's been rough on everyone that way - and decided to try to do something with them. For the next two months they'll be flying travelers between Los Angeles and Vegas as part of a broader vacation package:

The package begins at $780 per person for double occupancy and $1,193 for single occupancy. The price includes roundtrip airfare on a 50-person jet from Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport or John Wayne Airport in Orange County and a three-night stay in a standard room at Encore or Wynn. On board the private jet, a Wynn concierge will have room keys on

To save some bucks and see some great desert scenery, road trip it to Las Vegas from California. It's a great last-minute-getaway option instead of paying pricey plane tickets and bag fees, and another perk is that hotels like the Luxor and the MGM Grand offer free self-parking for guests. We recently made the six-hour trek from San Diego and came out better for it, thanks to some tips.

Jaunted's Top Three Tips For Road Tripping To Vegas:

While JetBlue finally began service out of LAX at the start of the summer, it still pays to fly out of Long Beach. TravelZoo alerted us to a one-day only JetBlue "sample sale" from Long Beach to Vegas for $24 outbound and $29 for the return. The sale is good for Tuesday and Wednesday flights from October 6 to December 16 but you must book by tonight at 11:59pm MDT. Also included in the sale? One way tickets out of Vegas to New York or Boston for $99 a piece.

Speaking of Las Vegas and JetBlue, recently ousted star of "Jersey Boys" at The Palazzo, Erich Bergen, was Twittering from the JFK JetBlue terminal this morning. Now that's he's out of a job, he just may move into the terminal because it has Borders, Jamba Juice, Lacoste and free WiFi. And so much more. But sorry, no stage yet.

Related Stories:
· Sample Sale [JetBlue]
· JetBlue coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: VegasMichael/VegasChatter]

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority hasn't had the easiest time in the recession, even accounting for their frustrating ability to hijack international tourism in the name of short-term profits. So the Authority reached out to ad agency R&R Partners for some TV spots, and the agency responded with a strategy built around office drones using a fake holiday to get Mondays off. A fake holiday about rage-filled chinchillas. Chinchilli Day.

The second spot just dropped and has the office worker spinning a Three Musketeers tale of French heroism. It builds on the first spot, where Chinchilli Day had an exactly opposite background and the animals were cast as the villains. Sin City is in the midst of a rebranding campaign highlighting angry rodents, and by all accounts it seems to be working. Terrific.

Check out the following two commercials after the jump.

Talk about a major party foul. An electrical fire yesterday at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas sent guests scrambling from all parts of the hotel, including the sportsbook during the opening day of the NFL and from Rehab, the hotel's infamous pool party. KTNV reports:

The fire was started by an air conditioning unit overheating in a wall between the existing resort and a new building being built on site. There were no fire alarms in the area where the fire flared up, but the heavy smoke alerted security and guests.

We've sung the praises of the free airport WiFi at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas before but now that we're sitting pretty in the airport's B Terminal surfing the incredibly fast network, we realize just how much this service means to us.

We spent the past two nights at Encore Las Vegas where, despite the use of a Verizon Wireless Card, we found our signal extremely slow in the rooms. We were able to find a great place to work in the hotel's Lobby Bar and Cafe but the whole point of working from a hotel during a trip is to be able to hide away in your pajamas while you work.

So today, we're extremely grateful that McCarran has continued to offer free WiFi. This new B terminal also rocks. It's bright, airy, clean and has plenty of Wheel of Fortune slots. There's also a 360 Burritto shop, a Fox Sports Bar and a Starbucks. Kinda makes the inevitable Leaving Las Vegas hangover a little more bearable.

Related Stories:
· Airport WiFi Map [Jaunted]
· McCarran Airport coverage [Jaunted]