FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Park Hyatt Maldives REVIEW - MASTER THREAD
Old Apr 16, 2012, 12:17 am
  #354  
thtsapaddlin
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 152
My wife and I just returned from a fantastic visit to the resort, where we stayed from March 25-April 2.

The transfers were pretty effortless. After clearing customs at MLE, we met a Park Hyatt employee who carted our bags for us over to the Maldivian Airlines terminal. The airport is under a massive renovation project, so if you visit a year from now, expect to arrive in a gleaming, state of the art terminal. As someone previously described, we were weighed with our hand baggage before we finished checking-in, which isn't totally surprising considering the planes (Dash 8-200s and -300s) Maldivian flies and the hot climate. We then faced a 2 hour wait at the airport, but were shown into the Maldivian Airlines lounge, which is certainly tolerable (but don't expect any alcohol, as it's forbidden in Maldives). On a related note, we visited the MLE international departures lounge (courtesy of SkyGuide) before we left Maldives, and it was quite nice. The next step is a MLE-KDM flight, which lasts about an hour and is easily tolerable. At KDM another set of PH employees met us and convinced us that they'd take care of our luggage. They perused the baggage at the baggage claim, looking for our names, and pulled them aside. The baggage claim is hilarious: Maldivian Airlines employees cart bags inside on SmartCart style dollies, and mixed in with the bags are myriad supplies for the locals: I saw a few tires, some Dell laptops, bottled water, and other quite miscellaneous items.

While the PH staff collected our bags for us, we were brought by golf cart to the PH boat, about 1/4 mile away. 15 or so folks were arriving at KDM and transferring to another resort, but those suckers had to walk from the airport to the boat. A quick note about walking near the KDM airport: while Park Hyatt sprays every morning (their pamphlet says evening, but I saw them fogging one morning), mosquito abatement doesn't exist on the island where KDM is located. I got massacred pretty good waiting for our flight to depart at the end of our trip (at midday, no less). Be mindful.

After a 55 minute boat transfer on a ~25' speedboat, we arrived at the resort, where we were greeted by our personal host and several departmental managers.

I was absolutely 100% satisfied with our park villa. The villa is spacious, with a king-size canopy bed in the middle of the "bedroom" facing out floor to ceiling glass windows and sliding glass doors towards the foliage and with a clear view of the water. For privacy and for darkness, large "blackout panels" are slid in front of these massive windows when the room is turned down. The bathroom is probably just as large as the bedroom, including a separate toilet and shower and a large open space with 2 wardrobes, two counters, and two sinks. Just past the sinks, outside a swinging glass door are the outdoor shower and bathtub. These are magnificent; I didn't shower inside once. As a nice touch, and probably in line with their conservation efforts, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, and body lotion are held in stoneware jars rather than small plastic bottles. Both the bedroom and bathroom have 3-4 light settings, depending on the mood you're trying to create. Each room has it's own a/c unit as well, and ours kept the room at a comfortable 22 degrees C. Someone upthread mentioned ants, and while we encountered plenty of ants outside, we found none inside. There are geckos outside everywhere (as well as fruit bats with foot-long wingspans). At night, watch your step on the beach, as there are 2-5 inch ghost crabs scurrying about.

We used a combination of Hyatt Stay Certificates (which apparently are no longer being accepted at PH Maldives -- I hope I wasn't the last person to use one and ruin it for everyone else) and Gold Passport points, so I was booked into a park villa by default. We had villa #10, which is about a 2 minute walk from the restaurant/bar/pool/arrival jetty area. It probably takes longer than that to walk from a water villa to the end of the pier (which is still probably a 5 minute walk from the restaurant/bar/pool), so our location was ideal. Walking doesn't sound like a terrible inconvenience, but when it's 80-90 degrees out, and my pasty white skin is being baked by equatorial sun, I found time to be of the essence. For the record, they'll cart you around the island if you request, but it was nice being able to walk to the action relatively quickly as we desired. You can't do that from the outer margins of the island, especially the over-water villas. On that note, walking around the perimeter of the island is spectacular at night. I'd even consider planning a future trip to the island around the full moon. We had a half moon, and at night our shadows were still cast on the white sand.

Another nice aspect of our particular villa was that the beach in front was rather private. For some villas, walking out to the beach puts you in the midst of your neighbors and their "private" lounge areas. Villa 10 has vegetation extending nearly out to the water's edge on either side, so sitting on our chaise lounges, we couldn't see any other lounges, and they couldn't see us. There are reefs in front of every villa, so you have to be careful swimming during low tides, but our villa had a relatively large area where swimming was unimpeded by coral.

Personally, I can't see spending the money on a pool villa or over-water villa. I saw one person swimming in the main pool over the course of our 8 night stay, so that pool is hardly crowded. And in the pool villas, the frickin' ocean is never any further than 15 feet from the pool. So aside from the novelty, I can't really think of any reason why I'd elect to spend additional money on a pool villa. If I wanted to swim in a pool, I'd go to Palm Springs; when I travel to the middle of the Indian Ocean, I'll elect to swim in the Indian Ocean, thank you very much. I didn't tour any water villas, and I'm sure they're spectacular in every way, but if you're booking one, you should keep in mind that you're essentially getting screwed out of a private beach and you'll be pretty far from the restaurant and such. The beauty of the park and pool villas is that within steps of your sliding glass door is the most beautiful white sandy beach imaginable. While stepping down a ladder into the sea must be fantastic, I personally feel like when traveling to a beach destination, it's nice to have a beach. The reef immediately beneath the water villas is pretty lackluster, by the way. The good stuff is probably 10-50 yards from the villas, depending on the location of your villa on the pier.

Forgive me if I seem preachy, but I was more than content with our park villa. If money isn't an issue, upgrade to an over-water villa. A pool villa just seems impractical under any circumstance.

Someone upthread mentioned that 40% of the staff is native Maldivian. I spoke with several Maldivian employees who estimated that it was much closer to 80-90%, except for the upper-level management. We made friends with our personal host, our servers, and the reservations manager, and they all independently invited us to their inter-departmental soccer tournament, which was being held on the employee compound in the middle of the island. Based on the crowd at the match, the 80-90% estimate seems about right. We learned that there are 180-200 employees on the island at any given time. Aside from upper-level management, we encountered ~6 employees who weren't Maldivian.

Beware that dining options are limited. Battuta's reopened on our 2nd night there after undergoing renovations, and that certainly helped. But by the end of our stay, we found ourselves ordering meals that we had already ordered before. For dinner, we'd typically share one appetizer and each have an entree. We spent $80-115 per night depending on the meal and restaurant (The Dining Room is more expensive than Battuta's). Wine starts at ~$15 per glass, and cocktails slightly more than that. Two glasses of sparking wine, an appetizer, and 2 entrees ran us $155.

Breakfast was quite enjoyable, but again, we ran out of new options about 3/4 of the way through the trip. I don't know that anyone has discussed breakfast thoroughly, so I'll describe it here. Sitting down, you're offered your choice of fresh juices and/or coffees/teas. The juice must be juiced on site, because the flavor correlated directly with the flavor of fresh fruits presented. After 5-10 minutes or so, a three-tiered set of plates is presented, the first level containing fresh fruit, the second containing moshuni (a tuna dish with pepper and coconut) and roshi (think naan meets tortilla), and the third containing pastries (croissant, cakes, etc.). In addition to this, you're allowed to order three items off the menu -- theoretically one item from each "course," but there's a lot of flexibility in that. The first course is something light; I had the homemade yoghurt (with different fruits embedded inside each day) nearly every morning, but museli, and other similar dishes are available. The second course is selected from a list of egg dishes: eggs any style, omelet, eggs Benedict, coccette (my wife's favorite -- poached eggs served with feta and fig compote). Each egg dish is offered with a hash brown patty and your choice of veal or pork bacon, sauteed mushrooms (a different type each day) or spinach, or pork/chicken sausage. I ordered chicken sausage one morning and was served a hotdog, by far the strangest dining experience I had. The third course is selected from a pretty diverse menu including (among other things) waffles, pancakes, moshuni and roshi, tuna curry, vermicelli, miso soup, crepes and Bavarian sausage. Being cheap, we ordered each course and devoured the three-tiered "appetizer" every morning, skipped lunch, and had dinner around sunset. That seemed to work perfectly.

There were a few dishes that weren't available during our stay, and one dish (seared scallops at Battuta's, which I HIGHLY recommend) that was available only on our final night. Hard to fault them for that...they're quite far from everything. The catch of the day is literally caught the morning of the day it's served, and doesn't disappoint.

We probably spent 3-4 hours snorkeling each day, and it never got old (the sunburned backs did, however). If you bring your own dive gear, they'll store it in the dive shop by default. Just walk from your room towards the dive center and ask for your snorkel and mask, and be on your way. No need to store gear in your room.

We did a total of 5 dives, and this was by far the most expensive component of our trip. A guided orientation dive of the house reef is mandatory, at $70 per person (not including 10% service fee and 6% tax). I would recommend against spending a lot of time and money diving the house reef because the snorkeling is so spectacular. The reef is fairly shallow, so you can float just a foot or so above it and see an incredible diversity of marine life. The reef drops off quite steeply, and so while scuba diving at 30 feet or so, you're below the bulk of the coral. Besides, the water above the reef is intoxicatingly warm. My dive computer showed 81 degrees at 50 feet, so you can imagine how warm the surface is. One day when the water was incredibly glassy, the tide was low, and the sun was beating down, the water above the reef must have been 90 degrees. I'd suggest an early morning, pre-breakfast snorkel session; these were reliably the best in terms of conditions and organisms seen.

Rather than diving the house reef, spend your money on boat dives. They aren't cheap; a 2-tank boat dive is $200 per person excluding fees and taxes ($70 per dive plus a $60 boat fee). We did 2 channel dives and 2 reef dives. The reef dives were unreal...I can't even describe how spectacular they were. The channel dives were hit and miss. We didn't see much during the first channel dive, but the second was a whole different story..we saw a school of 2-300 tuna, a handful of sharks, 2 turtles, schools of barracuda, eagle rays, and 2 Napoleon wrasses. Maldivian law dictates that you cannot spend more than 57 minutes below the surface, so the argument upthread about air utilization is sort of moot. Service during dives is just as spectacular as it is on land. By the time you arrive on the boat, your gear (if you brought your own, otherwise this isn't surprising) is set up for you, and one of the employees is always around to lift your bc/tank for you. I probably spent a grand total of 2 minutes under the weight of my gear between all 5 dives. During surface intervals, you're presented with sandwiches, fruit skewers, and your choice of beverage.

On our last night, we went fishing ($150 per person), but didn't catch a thing. If you're successful, they'll prepare your fish for dinner for $25. If fishing isn't your thing, I'd still urge you to go on the fishing trip, as it enables you to be on the water at sunset and motor back to the resort under the stars. So it's essentially a sunset cruise, but is cheaper.

All in all, we were incredibly pleased with our trip. Our bill for 8 nights was just under $3,500, including taxes and fees. Figure $100-125 per night for dinner with appetizers, $140-170 with a drink each. We hit the bar only a couple times (but did some damage during the complimentary cocktail hour). We didn't visit the spa.

If you have questions for me and don't want to litter the thread, feel free to send me a PM. Thanks for allowing me to share my long-winded review.
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