how did you use free night certs? I was under the impression it was only up to category 4 or 5 hotels?

The wine seems outrageously marked up to me. I’m very willing to pay a premium at a resort, but $7 killawara goes for $65 and $50 Veuve is $290.

Are 500% and 1,000% markups common?

Also was charged for sparkling water which irked me slightly. I suppose I should have been paying more attention. On the upside, beer seems to be reasonably priced, especially during happy hour!

Overall a beautiful resort with fantastic food. A few small hiccups here and there but overall very very good.

Be warned also that the activities are pretty light. Will only take up 2-3 hours of your day, so don’t come in expecting it’ll be jam packed with action.

How are the prices for wine and cocktails during happy hour? Is it buy one, get one free? I'm not a beer drinker.

Three nights for us and it was the perfect amount of time. Also we are in January so the weather was great - I imagine summer could be stifling.

Meals are elaborate and take 1-1.5 hours each. There is a nice free spa with sauna, pool, jacuzzi, and cold pool. We went in with the mindset of relaxing and enjoying ourselves, which we certainly did.

If you are a “go go go” traveler then 2 nights might be better.

Also we paid for dune bashing, which is additive. So one day we had 3 activities which felt much more full when you include those three plus meals and happy hour

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Mainly, you could consider this your friendly welcome to Dubai I’m sure the drinks could have been keener priced, but everywhere in Dubai is essentially outrageous for someone used to prices from the English speaking world.

Overall, Al Maha was a 9.5 out of 10 for me. I think it should be a 2 night stay and you can pack in all the activities to one day. Unless you want to fully commit to relaxing a bit as we did. My slight issues:

- Sometimes dinner dragged on too long, taking ~30minutes between courses.

- I was disappointed they tried to upsell me so hard for the “deck dining” for my proposal. Also, I would have hoped that they would have offered to do *something* given what a special event it was. Not that I am trying to milk them for freebies, but just a rose or a special box of chocolates or a card or something really would have been nice. Instead, they just suggested an expensive and fairly pointless add-on... twice.

- This is tiny, but I hate espresso and wish they had brewed coffee out in the lobby in addition to the machine

- We went through probably 40 plastic water bottles. Would be awesome if they did refillable branded water bottles like at the Kuai Hyatt

Overall, beautiful well-run resort with amazing food. We ate and ate and ate the whole time. I felt full every minute I was there.

Spent a bit more on alcohol than I would have liked, but we were celebrating. 10X Markups are the norm there.

The dune bashing was worh the small upcharge for us.

Overall super awesome.

Fixed. Thanks