We just got back earlier this week from a 6 night stay. This was a return visit after a 3 night visit at the tail end of a 3 week trip about 2.5 years ago where we felt we would love to come back for a longer visit. It was a really wonderful trip and I am glad we returned.

We booked 5 nights in an OWV at 85K/night with 5th night free for a total of 340K points, and also a single night at a GV at 60K a night. I am not going to go too much into detail as most everything has already been covered. It was an amazing trip and they really showed appreciation for us choosing to make a return visit to the resort. I was keeping an eye on our reservations and at around 30 days out I noticed they upgraded the GV to an OWV, I assumed this would likely happen as some point as it makes little sense to move us after a night even though I kind of would have enjoyed checking out a different room type the first night.

Arrival at the airport and immediately saw the St Regis Representative on exit and we were pretty excited to see the Bentley waiting for us which they promptly escorted us to while they handled the seaplane formalities and then off to the great lounge. I'm not sure why there was recent reports of the lounge being under construction as it looked the same as it did last time we were there and its a great place to relax for a hopefully not too long of a wait for the seaplane. Unfortunately the seaplane kept getting pushed back a little bit at a time and was a mild annoyance but I knew it wasn't exactly in their control. Ultimately we spent just under 3 hours in the lounge before we headed to the seaplane.

On arrival Mohamed our butler who was pretty great the whole time advised they were sorry for the delay and they offered us lunch at any of the available restaurants or in room on the house. It was unexpected but much appreciated and after the long day we ordered some room service and enjoyed the villa. We had requested in advance to receive one of the north facing villas and we were delighted the request was able to be accommodated. While you can tell the ocean definitely causes some wear and tear to the exterior, it still looked in great shape and inside everything was still perfect. We were welcomed with a fruit basket and a bottle of bubbly in the villa along with a happy anniversary / welcome note and some chocolates. Mohamed gave us his info and we communicated mostly through whatsapp.

As far as meals we ate at Orientale on most nights (which we made reservations for in advance of arrival), Cargo one night, In Room a few times and Crust twice and of course Alba breakfasts on most mornings. We also enjoyed some drinks at the whale bar on some nights which we highly recommend going for the 6PM champagne sabrage. Overall we were still quite pleased with the food and had no problem finding something tasty to eat at all meals.

In advance we had booked the below activities:

• Discover Scuba
  • The discover scuba dive was a find introduction and gave us a chance to see some great sea life, including a shark, sea turtle, and all sorts of fish. On top of the random fish, and manta ray we saw from our villa.
• Sunset Fishing
  • This was fun, but our boat had quite a few loud and obnoxious kids so it was not nearly as relaxing/enjoyable as it could have been. We did catch the biggest fish of the night which we had for lunch the next day. I am still glad we did it.
• Dolphin Exploration
  • After the sunset fishing we asked Mohamed if there were any kids booked on this and if so we would like to cancel. He reported back later in the day that there were already a few and let us know we could book a private speed boat for 250++/hr and go explore on our own. We chose to do this and it was really great, seems like we could cover more space than the larger boat can in 2 hours anyway and we were lucky enough to find a large pod of dolphins. This was definitely a highlight of the trip and we were really glad we went for the private boat.
• 90 Min couples massage - This was a really great 90 minute massage, the spa is really great and the staff know what they are doing.

They later advised us as a thank you for returning they would be providing us a 50 min massage and to let them know when we would like to book it, they also were giving us an hour in the blue hole for our anniversary / being a gold and we booked these on our 2nd to last day. Also on our last nights dinner they surprised us by also fully comping our meal at Orientale as another thank you for returning. Both of these things were very unexpected and we definitely appreciated it and they really showed they appreciated us choosing to make the journey all the way back.

As far as the often confused fruit basket, morning coffee, and afternoon tea. We had one fruit basket and it was large and we didn't end up finishing it nor did it need to be refilled for us. Morning coffee and afternoon tea both seem complimentary. We had morning coffee brought every morning before we would go play an hour of tennis and then cool off in the water before breakfast. As far as afternoon tea I think we only had it once as it was kind of underwhelming but a nice treat and cool off if you are just sitting around your villa.

I'm sure I missed a few things and as I just wanted to touch on a bit but overall it was an amazing trip and I wouldn't hesitate to go back when we are ready to return to the Maldives. The staff all are great and all seem genuinely happy to be there, they really seem to be running a well oiled machine at this point and service was noticeably better then when we were there the first time several months after opening. It was also much more green and lush as the plants have really grown in further. We really love almost everything about the resort, and the only gripe we have with it is when you are going into the water at the beach how much broken coral is at the bottom, but as we were aware of this from last time around we brought water socks with us which we would highly recommend and it alleviated the issue but it would be nice not to need them.

Again, it was an amazing trip and it was really hard coming back to work this week.