So-- we got back this week from an 8-night stay at Vommuli and had a fantastic time. Unfortunately, as was alluded to upthread, the middle of our stay had a couple of days of really bad weather. A bunch of the staff said it was the worst they'd experienced in the Maldives, so we spent some time inside, and a lot of time out on the deck of our sunrise (standard) overwater villa.
Background (so that people understand my biases):
I booked 2 rooms on points at the CHEAP levels. 1 overwater villa, 1 garden villa. My wife and infant were in the overwater villa with me. Nanny and toddler in the garden villa-- point difference was minimal between the 2 rooms when I booked, but I didn't feel safe with my wild son running around overwater for 8 days. I have SPG Platinum status due to a Ritz Carlton status match, earned through spend on their co-branded Chase card. I take a lot of vacation, and while I like the St Regis brand, I have no strong loyalty to Starwood and spread my stays out based on where I feel like going the vast majority of the time. (We stay at the FS in Punta Mita for example over the StR, now that we have kids, as I believe it offers a better family experience.) This case was an exception-- I was planning on visiting the O&O next, but when the St Regis became bookable on points last year (I noticed it on 7/4/16), I booked 4 separate stays. This was the final one... I had to cancel the other 3, as my wife was pregnant and we were afraid of Zika. This was our 5th trip to the Maldives, first time with kids-- previously stayed 3x at the Conrad on points + upgrade to Spa/Retreat Water Villa, 1x at the W on a paid rate in an overwater villa. 4 previous stays were 6-8 days each, between 2010 and 2014. So I'm comfortable/familiar with the Maldives, seaplanes, costs, etc, but by no means an expert.
My thoughts on our stay and on a few issues that had been discussed recently--
Seaplanes: Smooth on our journey to the resort, terrible on the return. I was the last guy to board our SilkAir flight from MLE-SIN after we checked out. They scheduled us on a 9:30am flight from Vommuli to MLE to catch our 12:50pm flight to SIN. Weather was fine when we left, so that shouldn't have been the issue, but our plane took off at 10:55am and made a stop at another resort before arriving into Male at 12:15pm. Luckily, SQ and MI had so many passengers to re-accommodate from the previous few days that they actually delayed the flight for late seaplane passengers... I don't believe this is normal, but I checked my bags at 12:40pm for a 12:50pm flight that boarded on time. Not the St Regis's fault in any way, and great they were able to communicate with the SQ check-in agents to help us. If they hadn't been in touch with the SQ staff, I think there's near zero chance we'd have made the flight.
Rooms: I thought they were phenomenal... much nicer than either of the resorts I've previously stayed in. For our particular situation, the overwater villa we had on the sunrise side was great. The shade started to creep into our pool around noon everyday, and most of our deck was in the shade by mid-afternoon... having kids, and being a person that heats up pretty quickly myself, this made for very pleasant afternoons. We tended to spend mornings on the beach and afternoons in our villa. Additionally, and I'm not sure if it's always the case, we were entirely shielded from the wind on our deck (510). If it's windy during your stay, this is a big deal. Only thing I thought was weird was no glass floor anywhere in the overwater villa... not sure why they'd omit that, since it seems relatively easy to include, and I always thought it was fun to look through.
Plat recognition/treatment: Pretty poor in my case. I had gold welcome letters in our rooms when we checked in. In all fairness, I was gold in July 2016 when I made the reservation, only qualifying for Plat in March of this year. Still, I was platinum for 8+ months before we checked in-- I guess they just don't update their systems. On the plus side, if you're losing your platinum status in 2018, it would definitely make sense to book now, as you may be able to keep the benefits for your future stay. Platinum breakfast only applied for 2 guests total... not 2/room, if that helps anyone. Our toddler was free, nanny cost $55++/day. You also get 10% off at the spa as a Platinum, so that's nice. As for upgrades, maybe they would have done it in advance had they updated their systems... I'll never know. But I asked at check-in... they were 60% occupancy, and no upgrades for either of our rooms... I think they're exempt from the upgrade policy, or so our butler explained.
Food: I thought the quality was very good (especially for what I was expecting), but there are very few options for dinner. Deepak, the F&B manager was excellent, and explained they're turning the Pantry into a beer bar/grill of sorts. They need this. For Conrad enthusiasts, there's no equivalent of a Rangali Bar. Whale bar serves very limited tapas... wouldn't really fit the bill for dinner unless you're already full, and the seating/table situation isn't really very conducive to eating. You'd need a plate on your lap or on the couch next to you. Apparently, they're thinking of turning Whale Bar into a seafood restaurant. Also, Deepak mentioned they might end up turning Crust into a steak place... I thought Crust was great, but it's only open til 4pm, so they need to do something there. Most nights, the only options are Orientale (our favorite, but they only have 2 seatings and the 6:30/7 seating was booked quickly during our stay) and Alba (same place you have breakfast, with a menu I wasn't as keen on). Orientale has a huge varied menu... I think they really could split it into a few different restaurants, as it seems odd to serve Japanese, Chinese, SE Asian, and Indian food all in the same restaurant, but the food was really very good, and it's easy to please a lot of people, I guess, with a giant menu. Our family loved it. I though they did the best job with the Indian dishes/curries, maybe due to proximity. Cargo got rained-out back to back nights we had booked, so we never got to try it. Souk buffet was great (in Alba) with tons of meat/fish to choose from. I think it was $145++, but I'm not positive, and I would've done this again had it been offered more than one night. Breakfast was fantastic each day... staff were super-friendly, menu was huge, buffet had a make-your-own soup station that I really liked.
Alcohol: I thought the list was well thought-out and right in line with pricing elsewhere in the Maldives. If you're looking for somewhere to buy blue-chip wines at less than astronomical pricing, the Maldives are a terrible vacation choice for you. At the Decanter dinner, which we loved, I asked the import duties on the wines the hotel paid. Apparently it's 100-150%. But they have a great, varied wine list (provided you buy bottles, not glasses), and the sommelier, Julius, was excellent at finding wines to pair with whatever we were eating. Our first morning, I met Julius in the wine cellar... as I mentioned upthread, they give you a discount if you go down there and buy wines in advance. I bought 5 bottles and he took 10% off the total. That was nice, and I meant to head back down halfway through our stay, but somehow kept getting distracted and didn't make it. Beer pricing was quite varied, oddly... didn't make a ton of sense to me, but it ranged from Carlsberg $9 to Paulaner $20. Not sure why the huge price discrepancy, but didn't really care. I drank Tiger when I was drinking beer, and that was $13 both in-room and in-restaurant. Cocktails were in the $20-30 range mostly. Prosecco drinks and Bloody Mary's are free at breakfast... I wasn't really too keen on either, but according to my wife and nanny, the Bloody Mary (which came in a shooter glass) was pretty strong.
Gym: Poor. The equipment they have is nice and new, but somehow, they allocated a very tiny portion of Vommuli House to the gym, and it's extremely cramped. The 3 treadmills are side to side, with one of the 2 exercise bikes perpendicular and almost touching the leftmost treadmill. If you want to use a foam roller, dumbbells (only up to 14kgs for any meatheads reading) or any of the balls, you are necessarily blocking one of the entrances. It's great if you're in there solo, as I was one morning, but it's really not a pleasant place to be with more than 2 or 3 guests. They screwed up this aspect of the resort.
Family stuff: Great. Kids under 4 or 5 (I'm not clear, but thought it was 5) eat everything free off of any of the kid menus-- room service, Orientale, Alba, buffets, etc. I thought this was really nice. Kids club is fantastic. Ika, in particular, was great with our kids. It's also convenient that it's located in Vommuli House, as you can drop kids off (kids under 4 need an adult with them, but being in the same building counts), and head to the gym, yoga, etc. Babysitting was quoted $40++/hour, but billed at $36++./hour-- maybe there's a 10% Plat discount? We brought Ika with us on a snorkeling trip one day, and she brought lots of games, books, stickers, balloons... it was really thoughtful, and our toddler loved her.
Beaches/marine life: Poor. This was the most disappointing part of our stay. If this is your first trip to the Maldives, you'll likely be stunned at their beauty, the clarity of the water, the occasional fish, eagle ray, reef shark that swim by on your walk to your overwater villa. If you've been to resorts with fish everywhere, soft sand, and healthy coral, (and if these things are important to you), I'm pretty sure you'll be disappointed. It's nothing the resort can help at the moment, but there is broken coral all over the main beach-- I cut the bottoms of both feet walking in shallow water-- and even with some pretty decent swimming, you don't get to a great reef. The staff was fantastic and set up some chairs on the beach over by Orientale and the Spa for us a couple of days, where it's a lot less windy, and the sand is a bit softer.
Service: Excellent. Much better than we received on any of our previous trips to the Maldives. I thought it was absolutely in line with the St Regis brand and exceeded my expectations. The staff seem very happy to be there, they were great with our kids, they all seemed to know our names after a day or two-- my son is currently painting several of them pictures that we're going to mail back shortly. We had 2 butlers over the course of our stay, Naseeb and Adam, and both went out of their way to make sure we were having a great trip.
Activities: Okay, but hard to know about/plan around. If you like looking at a schedule of possible excursions, special dinners, classes, etc, this might bother you. I'm a bit of a planner, and scheduling a dolphin cruise, snorkeling, yoga, local island trip, etc, required a call to our butler, followed by waiting for him to call the appropriate department and get back to us. I'm not sure if they're trying to gauge demand before committing to trips, but I would prefer a piece of paper on my desk in the room with a list of events/dinners I can book. Special dinners didn't seem to be announced until a day in advance (at most). Not a big deal, but if you like planning for these kind of things in advance, it might bother you.
Spa: Fantastic. We had some great treatments, and thought the setup was perfect... very relaxing, airy rooms without a ton of distractions. No need for a ton of paintings/clutter when your backdrop is the Indian Ocean.
Value: Very good. We didn't feel nickel-and-dimed at all. Staff brought us free water on the beach, sunscreen was free by the pool, kids were free the entire time. Prices seemed in-line with what I remember at the Conrad for most stuff, but I thought the quality was better across the board. Room rates are interesting... they seem to be dropping the prices substantially at the last-minute. I think it's probably once they've crossed the cancellation policy threshold... I was monitoring paid rates for our dates, and the garden villa dropped from ~$2k/night to under $900/night a week or two before we arrived.
Would I go back? This is really hard, because we had a great time. I'm pretty confident I'll be back in the Maldives between Dec and March of next year... probably just with my wife and no kids, as we love it there. If we lived in Singapore or Dubai, I'm sure we'd be there more frequently, and I'm sure we'd come back to this resort (though admittedly when prices are on the lower end of the range I mentioned above). We had a fantastic time. Unfortunately, with the time it takes to get to the Maldives, and knowing how great the beaches and fish can be at other resorts, even if the StR were to be bookable at a standard points redemption again, we're gonna head elsewhere.
Hope this is helpful, and let me know if I can answer any questions while my trip is still fresh in my mind.