Hi All. Just back from 8 nights at the RC. I've read the entirety of this thread since I knew we were going there, and seen a lot of reviews online, some great, some, like the FB post above, not great. I think context is important here. I regard myself as something of a hotel snob, and anyone that knows me would certainly call me that, but, that doesn't mean I float around at Ritz's and Four Seasons all the time. when on business, I'll be at one of the nicer hotels in town, but rarely one of the older brands that I regard as being a bit stuffy. I only mention this as I think that calling this hotel a Ritz Carlton is a bit misleading, and ultimately leads some guests to expect something it's not, and never will be. I'm not sure which of the Marriott brands are a better fit, maybe Edition or Bulgari, but I just think RC is a bit misleading. Again, for comparison, our regular haunt is the Banyan Tree in Mayakoba...for us, easy to get to, and familiar.

So, with that out of the way, here's a list of random thoughts. If you don't want to read it all, that's fair enough, it'll end up really long, I'm sure! In summary, I thought the resort was stunning, in many, many ways. The service was good but far from amazing. The location, accepting that it's new and manmade, is beautiful, but needs to grow into it's skin.

• OK, first, Male airport is a hot mess. They're building a new one, it can't come soon enough. We flew Qatar (loved it!) DFW-DOH-MLE, but, there's no jet bridges, the baggage is very slow to get to the terminal. There's really no point posting social-distancing posters everywhere when they load each of the transfer buses to max capacity. Be sure to register your arrival IN ADVANCE at the Imgua site. We didn't, couldn't get a cell signal, and the airport wifi is woeful. Departure was worse, the check-in took forever (just 1 business counter, and lots of form-filling, even though we'd pre-filled everything online before getting there).
• We took the speedboat transfer, since the price was slightly less extortionate that the 10 minute seaplane ride, plus our departure was after dark, so if we took the seaplane, we'd have been hanging around at Male airport for a few, very long hours (seaplanes don't fly at dark). Now, my only prior experience of a speedboat transfer was when I last went to the Maldives was 25yrs ago to Bandos (or Baros, can't recall), and it was this awful banana yellow speedback with white leather seats, that filled with fumes as soon as we set off. The RC speedboat isn't really that at all, it's a nice cruiser, speeds along at 30-40mph depending on weather. The meet & greet at the airport was fine, but we were dumped into the airport cafe for half an hour, waiting for another couple to make it off the plane. The boat is nice enough, it's new, snacks and drinks were served, and overall very pleasant. Not ultra-luxurious, but still nice. Took about 45 mins getting to the island.
• If there's a front desk at the hotel, we never found it. On arrival, we were whisked off by our Aris Meeha, a quick tour, then to the room where they get passports and credit card info.
• Room Arrival/First Impressions: In my view, the room is stunning. take your breath away stunning. We had a sunset lagoon villa (#311). The first service screwup was that the welcome letter waiting for us was actually for someone else. I assume they got ours. Not a big deal, but come on, that's easy to get right. There was a bottle of Italian 'champagne' on ice, some small snacks and fruit. Some specifics about the room:
  • The build quality is outstanding. I've stayed at the St Regis in Bora Bora, but the overwater villas here are far superior. I've built a couple of houses, and refurbished a few offices, so while I'm no construction expert, I know enough to tell the difference between a room built to a budget vs. a room built to a very exacting quality standard. I can't imagine how much of a nightmare it is to project manage a build like this in the middle of nowhere. I've seen some reviews online complaining about the spec of the room. Claiming the toilet/bidet was cheap, and the AC didn't work effectively. To those people, I respectfully suggest they get some perspective. The defining thing about these rooms is the main door (maybe 24ft wide?) which slides away to be completely hidden, and opening up the room completely to the outside. It's amazing. We had the doors open from sunrise to sunset (tried to sleep with them open, but it got a bit too warm). Of course, the AC doesn't do squat when the doors are open, other than make the floors and surfaces a bit damp. The hotel should just add a relay to turn off the AC when the doors are open, it's not needed, and obviously completely inefficient. Finally, being a nerd, the underside of the ville is just as clean as the top-side. Very few exposed pipes, and those that you can see are perfectly tidy. I distinctly recall that not being the case at the St Regis Bora Bora, with various leaky pipes criss-crossing all over the place.
  • The pool is 1M deep, and basically somewhere to stand while you read a book. It is quite cold, and none of the pools are heated, aside from the main resort pool. For context, I find 86f a comfortable temperature for a pool, I'll get in at 82, and you get get lost for anything in the 70s! The villa pool, I'd guess, was in the low 80's at best. The sea was always warmer.
  • Again, for a RC room, it's very contemporary. Not soft and comfy (but the bed was just fine). Lots of hidden lighting. The bathroom is nice, the (inside) shower is huge, with the de rigueur rainhead shower (I'm never a fan of those), and a hand-held. The outside shower is also a rainhead, but it was generally too windy to be useful while we were there.
  • About the wind, it was a steady 15-20mph easterly wind for our entire stay, this made the sea a bit choppy, and opening the door to the villa is virtually impossible when the sliding doors are open. If you have children, it's something to worry about; the villa door is heavy, at least 3" deep, and would easily take your fingers off if it slammed in the wind. Luckily, you have to be somewhat herculian to open it in the first place (if the sliding doors are open).
  • The 'lower deck', with the net and steps down to the sea is a nice place to hangout and get some sunburn.
  • On a couple of days, we experienced what I'd describe as typical Florida weather, i.e. warm and sunny, then you blink, and there's a 5 minute monsoon, before it returns to warm and sunny. You need to be a bit quick closing the doors if you don't want, literally, the outside coming in. Adds to the adventure :-)
  • Privacy in the room is good. In the Maldives, being topless, or naked, is technically illegal, although when the sliding doors are open, it would be a grey area, as I assume you're allowed to be in your birthday suit in the bedroom. Anyway, privacy in our room was good, and would be in most of the OWV would be (but see below re: villa 212).
  • Toiletries are by Bamford, a British brand. I've never heard of them, but they were nice enough that we bought some at the spa before leaving.
  • From out villa, we could see across to the last island that's still being developed. At no time did we see any sand dredging. They were planting trees on the new island, so you'd ocasionally see a boat bringing those in. Not a big deal, at all. The ferry service to the Marina at Patina also runs along the west side, so we'd see the ferry boats every half an hour. They're at a distance that we didn't care, at all, and it's not noisy. The sea plane would also land, nearer the arrival jetty, so it was fun watching them. If you're worried that the boats will be invasive, or annoying, don't be. The crazy looking Adastra also went by a couple of times.
  • If we went again, we'd probably opt for the sunrise side of the island, since it was a lot less windy on that side. None of the staff seemed to think the weather was particularly unusual, but, of course, most of them have only been there 6-9 months.
• Food. Again, for context, I don't mind paying good money for good food, but you'll never find me splurging $1k on a bottle of red. If you do like to do that, there's no shortage of options for you at the RC, but as you'd expect for any Maldivian resort, booze is expensive.
  • La Laconda is the main restaurant for breakfast (I pre-paid for that), all-day dining (including dinner), and I think afternoon tea happens there as well, but we didn't go to that.
    • Breakfast is good, not amazing. If you opt for the buffet, you can order anything off the a la carte menu, together with anything from the buffet. Unlimited mimosas & bloody mary's. In all, this is probably the closest thing you'll find to a bargain at this hotel.
    • Dinner was also good. It's an italian theme. The pizza was average, the pasta was good (the chef made us some fresh gnocchi as we mentioned to the manager it was our favorite).
    • We're Bonvoy Gold, that gets you a 15% discount on food & booze, but only at La Laconda. Plat and above get 20%.
  • Summer Pavilion was probably our favorite place. The food is good, over-priced for what it is, but good, and the atmosphere is fairly chill.
  • Arabesque is the RC's restaurant over at the Marina (5 minute boat ride). Also expensive, and we weren't impressed, but other guests were, so maybe it's just us, and our expectation of white chicken meat, rather than legs and thighs.
  • Wok Society is Patina's restaurant (same boat ride to the marina) but you can charge back to the RC. Mostly sushi, and relatively reasonably priced. Overall, our second favorite place.
  • We didn't eat at the other options, either the menu didn't appeal, or the set menu just seems over the top. Our Aris Meeha immediately recommended Iwau, and then said he'd 'try' to get us in there. The cynic and saleguy in me makes me think this is just an attempt at fake scarcity to lock in a reservation at the most expensive place (the cheapest option is $235pp, but you'll at least want the $335pp option).
• Service We are low-key when we travel to a place like this. We rarely do any form of activity or excursion, and the less we see of anyone the better :-) It's not that we're anti-social, but for us, vacations are a little sacred, and about escaping the real world for a week, and just relaxing with books, good food and our own company.
  • As mentioned, the Aris Meeha is more or less your only contact point. It's not a perfect system. Ours was mostly responsive, although a little aloof sometimes. Full of promises, but missing the mark as often as not. Things we liked:
    • each morning, we'd message him to say we're going to breakfast, so that housekeeping could be done before we got back. It's a small thing, but a lot of hotels miss this, and it's always a bit awkward sitting around while housekeeping buzzes around you. Since he also made all our reservations, the same worked well at night for the turn-down.
    • All communication was via Whatsapp. This is fine for us, I would expect some folks to find this a bit weird though.
    • The non-boozy stuff in the room is complimentary. He made sure we had a steady supply of Coke, choc-chip cookies and fruit :-)
    • At the airport on the way back, the meet & greet person was exceptionally helpful getting through the BS of Male airport, including sharing his hotspot when we needed to complete yet another form.
  • Things we didn't like:
    • It was rare we could get a table at 8pm (our prefered time), it was always 7.30 or 8.30. Not a big deal, but trust me when I say that there was no shortage of empty tables at 8pm. Again, seems like they're trying to employ scarcity as some sort of technique to upsell the more expensive restaurants.
    • On arrival, he sent us all the menus as QR codes via Whatapp. If you've ever tried to sell your cellphone, you'll see the irony here....how do you scan a picture of a QR code on the thing you use to scan QR codes? lol. Happily, if you use Google photos, it can scan a QR code in a picture. There's probably other options too, but at least print the QR codes and leave them in the room. Again, some guests, used to a 'typical' RC, would struggle.
• The Island
  • First, considering this place didn't exist 4 years ago, the transformation is nothing short of amazing. Anything like this, that's man-made, comes at a huge environmental cost, which the hotel glosses over of course, but in their defence, they're trying to do their part. Each room has solar, there's no single-use plastics, and there's various environmental programs.
  • The basic layout of the resort, as can be seen from north to south (note, the resort map posted everywhere lacks a compass symbol, so it appears the chain of islands runs west-east, rather than north-south) is:
    • The Lagoon, where the spa, and our villa was. This is all over-water, accessed via a wide (8ft?) walkway. There's no rails, just a 6" high edge. If it's really windy, the bikes do feel like a bit of an adventure, but not a big deal. Just commit to the fall if you do go over the edge, and you'll be fine :-)
    • from there, the first island hosts the RC Estate (no idea what that costs, I assume well north of $15k per night), and more OVW and beach villas. Worth noting, if you enjoy some privacy, villa 212 is very exposed to the walkway from the lagoon to the first island. The beach villas here are probably more private than those on the final island, since you can't really take a beach walk in front of them.
    • Next is culinary island, home to La Laconda, Summer Pavilion (both built over the water), IWAU and Eau.
    • Last is the main island, home to Beach Shack, Ritz Kids, the gym, the main beach, water sports etc. You can, and we did, take walks along the main "grand sunset beach', so the beach villas along there are slightly less private, but do benefit from the best beach. the gym is good, well equipped, and generally not busy. There ware quite a few kids on the island (madness if you ask me, but I'm not the best parent!), so I assume the Ritz Kids is a welcome distraction for the anklebiters.
    • The sand, everywhere, is nice enough to walk on, but it's heavy sand, so not the talcum-powder of Bora Bora, and maybe other natural Maldivian islands. At our villa, and the entire lagoon, the water was about 4ft deep, until it fell away around 50ft out. As mentioned, it was windy, so the sea was a bit choppy. The lagoon has plenty of aquatic life in it, but they're all passing through, it's all sand, so there's no natural habitats for them yet. We saw plenty of rays (best time is just after sunrise) and various fish swim by and make a fuss all day long. We saw one violin shark drifting around (harmless), but overall, if they'd put a glass floor in the villa, it would be very dull viewing. At La Laconda, there were a couple of octopus one morning, the staff literally ran around announcing this fact like Elvis had just appeared, so I assume this is fairly unusual.
    • The colors of the sea are stunning. The contrast with the sand, and the various water depths, are often breathtaking. We were last in Bora Bora 10 years ago, but this was comparable.
    • No bugs. Didn't get a single bite from anything.
    • Slightly unrelated, but the boat ride back to the airport was very choppy, and not fun at all. The guys on the boat said that the hotel is working on a larger boat, it's much-needed when the weather is less than calm.

OK, I've probably banged on far too much. Hope this helps someone, more than happy to answer any other questions. In closing, we would for sure return....this was a points trip, so in total we spent another $6k on 'extras' (transfers, early checkin, late checkout, food). The daily rate for our room is $2.4K, so honestly, I'd assume at least half of the guests will be there on points, that's how we'd go again.