SanDiego1K

Your pictures are stunning. We stayed at the hotel in December and your pictures introduced us to some areas of the hotel that we had not explored.

platbrownguy

Awesome review! This place has been on my radar. I note the crib -- may I ask how old your kid is and how your kid handled the helicopter ride? We have a 9 month old who is already very well traveled (45 flights) and generally loves to do whatever we do and eat whatever we eat. We're doing a Euro Trip soon to test the waters on transoceanic flights etc, but I could see this being part of the next trip we do...

escape4

Our daughter was just short of 10 months old at the time of the flight so almost same age as yours

We never had any problem with our daughter on any regular aircraft, and it was the same for the helicopter. They provided head phones for her to block excessive noise but I am not sure it was absolutely necessary. She was tired at the beginning of the flight fell asleep after 10 minutes; the pilot told me that most young children sleep with the noise.

platbrownguy

That's awesome! Thanks! Now to convince the wife...

abcx

They used to include breakfast and dinner for all guests, even those on point stays with no status, but now it is breakfast only for all guests, including no status points guests.

JohnnyP

How much was the round trip helicopter transfer?

khabah

This is the page for the company doing the transfers; a round trip between Muscat and the Alila is north of 3000 USD.

khabah

escape4

These are the quotes I received, for two types of chopper (H125 vs H145), from ASA hangar near MCT airport or pick-up straight from Al Bustan Palace (Ritz Carlton) for door to door service.

H125
ASA site = 3800 USD
Al Bustan = 4500 USD

H145
ASA site = 4900 USD
Al Bustan = 5900 USD

All are for one-way.

escape4

North of 3k... well... very far north of 3k actually, if you are speaking of round trip. Unless you meant round-trip in the same day (just visiting for the day) then ok, but if it's to stay at the hotel then the pilot is flying back alone and you must pay for it.

xfisgsm

If I’m on a time crunch, is it worth staying at this property for just one night?

onlysuites

If we land at 11pm how long would it take to get to the hotel? Also my younger one gets car sick, are the mountain roads winding?

chuck1

Two questions.
-Our flight is at 02:00. Has anyone had luck getting the hotel to do a test the calendar day before a flight that departs so early the next day and have the results the same evening before late night check in that same day around 23:00?
-I can't seem to find any pictures of the bunk beds in the Loft Suite? Are they big? Where are they?

chuck1

We completed our stay. I booked a Loft Suite. As a Globalist, I was given a 4pm checkout.

The setting is beautiful. It took about 2.5 hours from Muscat.
I thought most of the staff was helpful and friendly.
The spa treatment was also quite nice.

Now for the not so nice stuff and just simple stuff that is off.
-It was hard for the hotel to arrange Covid-19 testing. They could not seem to get their act together to get it organized even with advance warning.
After much prodding, they were able to get it done but cut it very close causing us a great deal of stress on the last day of our stay,
-Service is not really spot on. One of our two nights they forgot turn down service and when we checked out the bellman just forgot to bring one of the bags.
-The teenagers in our group got a bit bored. We went to the goat market and it was interesting enough but requires a lot of time in the car.
-None of the TV channels matched the in-room channel guide.
-The driver/guide we had was not all that friendly and could/would not guide us but simply walked around with us.
-The lunch and dinner food really is not very good. Not only is the preparation not wonderful but many of the dishes were brought out cold.
The pizza had potential but was at best barley warm. The Arabic mezze had no flavor at all. The hummus I buy in my local grocery tasted better. The Arabic Mixed Grill was okay but the chicken was undercooked and some of the other meat was tough. At this price point I would have expected the food to be better.
-A la carte breakfast seemed to turn out better.
-Email requests done in advance sometimes took a couple of tries.

I'm glad I came here once to satisfy my curiosity but I don't think I would go back.
I much preferred Al Maha and Six Sense Zighy Bay.
Maybe if we had a done an excursion besides the goat market, souk and fort we would have enjoyed ourselves more. I did hear several guests talking about some of the more physical activities.

I guess I would say it's not so bad to visit if you are curious about this scenic area but just don't expect excellence and temper your expectations a bit.

gbongc

I will be making the trip to Alila JA in a weeks time, and was wondering if anyone had advice regarding renting a 4x4 at the airport? I will be making the drive up after my flight lands at ~4am.

stargold

There isn't much to it - I'd choose a middle model (Toyota Prado or equivalent) because the Pajero was not at all comfortable to drive, yet the Land Cruiser was not really worth the significant premium.

In all cases, they are extremely basic trim levels and even lack basic things like bluetooth to stream audio from your phone, so if you want to listen to your own music rather than the radio, you should take an aux cable (remember them? )

You'll need to present the vehicle registration card to the mountain check point. If you're comfortable with steep hills up and down, the road itself is very well finished and easy to drive. However, I would not recommend doing the drive at 4am - this is not a drive to be doing for the first time, during the dark, while tired.