I just arrived here this afternoon for a 5 night stay.
We were at the Le Meridien for 5 nights previously. Here's some quick notes and I'll try to provide links. For context, this is our first time in the Maldives.
We got to use the Conrad lounge at the airport for a few hours. It was nice and they have a full lunch / dinner menu (which is complimentary). Food was very tasty!
* Dinner: I pre-booked all dinner events early in the week. Today was supposed to be KoKo Grill, but that was cancelled due to weather. Instead we ate at Vilu which just reopened today (including for breakfast)
* Vilu's menu is now all italian. It was great. Two people (3 dishes, with tax, service, tip) was $170.
* $15 for a bottle of Voss water and no house water isn't cool. It's not even on their beverage list... (I could rant about this...but aside from the cost I hate the idea of shipping water half way around the world!)
* HHonors happy hour is back at Vilu. We checked in just in time to stop by which was a nice treat.
Both my partner and I have Diamond Status, so they provided prosecco, truffles, fruit and marshmallows in the room. (Turns out passion fruit and coconut marshmallows are surprisingly tasty.) We were upgraded from a Sunrise villa to a Sunset villa with pool. Pretty neat, though we are at the far end of Rangali island. Snorkeling will be a trek, but that's OK. There's a surprising amount of fish outside our villa still.
In getting our water gear, getting dinner at Vilu we've probably walked 3.5-4 miles on these islands already! (We could have called a buggy, but I enjoy the walking.)
The villa is very nice, though parts of it are showing its age. The doors and windows are definitely not as quiet as the Le Meridien, and they don't seal the air as well. Thankfully though, the light switches are labelled...but some of them took time to figure out.
Props for having a real Nespresso machine and
real Nespresso capsules, as well as normal milk in the fridge! (Though attempting to pour a juice-box style carton into a cup isn't so easy...)
Being 1 hour off of Male has it's annoyances. Beyond needing to manually update 4 devices (and then remember to change them back...), the clock difference breaks a few applications and sites. Manageable, but I'll re-evaluate how I feel about this at the end.... Same with WhatsApp Setting it up just for this is meh, but it does make it easy to contact people, and I do suppose it's better than the pretty poor Hilton app.
WiFi is definitely inconsistent walking around as one might expect. It's often there, but sometimes requires reconnecting. in 2022, I think they could mostly solve these problems if they wanted.
Dive Center options (Google Drive with PDFs)
Here's an updated resort map dated May 2022. Notably the Dive Center is now at #4,
not #24, not sure where the business center moved to...
