TheDrPhil

Arrived yesterday with Ms DrPhil. I'd be happy to field any questions.

Initial impressions:

Wow! The island is impressive, bigger than I had imagined. We got upgraded to sunset OVW on the new south (east) side.

Arrival was a bit messy. We were on the first (big) arrival of the day into MLE. (A 789 on AF, followed up by two 777s within the same hour) Bus transfer from a hardstand into the terminal, customs was super quick, we just happend to be at the front of the line but everything looked to be moving quickly. LM staff weren't out yet so we had to look around a bit, but somebody eventually showed up and took us over to the sea plane check in. We hung around the airport for a while for some other pax going to LM, then took a bus over to the seaplane terminal building. We were brought to the "lounge" and waited about an hour and a half before walking down to the docks.

Something to consider: Ms DrPhil was wearing shorts on arrival at MLE and felt very uncomfortable.

Overall timeline: landed at MLE 7:15am arrived at LM at ~11AM. There were 3 more inbound seaplanes within the next 2ish hours so I imagine people wouldn't have been waiting long at MLE.

Staff is incrediblely friendly and it feels genuine. Some resorts the guest interaction feels forced and not natural, exact opposite here.

If you plan on doing really any drinking, all inclusive is the way to go IMO. 4 drinks/person/day puts you at $160/day in booze alone (that's drinks one step above "house" level, you could really run up the tab with more expensive stuff). That and dinner and you're already going to make out better with all inclusive package ($225/person/day) after elite discount.

Not at all a foodie, but the food is significantly better than mid level resort quality. The meal/drink service is definitely on "island time" though. Not necessarily a knock on the resort, just set expectations for 20min+ drinks and 1hr+ mains. We easily spent 2hrs at dinner last night (Velaa).

Not much to see snorkeling off our room, we'll try to hit the house reef today. We did see a little shark right up on the beach chasing some smaller fish around which was cool.

Fire away with the questions!