nichojo

Yeah, I did, and they corroborated your story - all about seaplane safety. From them, Looking at the history of EK660, it tends to be +/- 10 minutes, so I am hoping they are not that strict. Obviously, if it's delayed by hours, it's a safety issue. But if it lands at 3:35, I'm hopeful they aren't turned away.

Now I just gotta figure out if we risk it, or just go ahead and book the Male Sheraton or nearby hotel instead.

Dn10

Good to hear. When I was there a few months ago thought the rooms were beginning to show some age with scratches and dents.

Dn10

There's a Qatar flight that typically lands around the same time and you should be fine. The line in immigration & customs is pretty long typically (don't stress) and they tend to wait for all those passengers provided the flight lands roughly on time.

Because they're flying first, when they get off the plane and into immigration, they should go to the very left part of the building and there's a line for business & first class passengers that is almost always empty and will save ~30 mins going thru customs easily.

friedablass

If the plane lands more or less on time they'll be fine. If you search this thread for that flight number you'll see that there are several guests including myself who arrived with that flight and were transported same day. In my case, the customs line was insane even for first/ business class (there's nobody there making sure you really are one of those), but we still had a seaplane take us and several others from our flight to STR same day.

flayum

HA! This exact video was the one that finally convinced me to look into actual quantitative climate data and eventually change my target Maldives dates from Summer to Winter. Seems obvious now based on established 'peak' season, but I had always assumed it was due to other factors (international holidays, north hemisphere tourists longing for tropics, etc).

Dn10

Think it was mentioned somewhere here, but does the St Regis have a slightly different peak season (maybe delayed by a month or something) given it's a bit south of Male?

flayum

You're right, I linked the wrong weather station! Weather Spark has 2 stations on the Dhaalu atoll (North and South) that are approximately equidistant from Vommuli. Interestingly, even within the atoll, the southern station shows ~7% increased precip chance on Jan 1st and an overall ~4% increased 'cloudiness' likelihood for January compared to the northern station.

Not sure how relevant this is, but I also remember a discussion (I believe on TripAdvisor) of a local claiming the climate averages for Nov~Jan are a bit deceptive. Apparently the exact timing that the monsoon recedes varies year-to-year, so sometimes there will be a very dry Christmas if the winds change early or a very wet one if the winds change late. Would have been interesting to load up more granular data if I had needed to confirm, but ended up settling on late Dec over safer weather in Jan/Feb regardless because PTO ended up being a limiting factor.

Dn10

You're right - looks like Jan-April is the best time to go to not get rain, where the rest of the year is somewhat similar.

godbreath

Currently have a booking that ends in on June 3rd and saw that the resort will be closed for all of June. I haven't heard anything yet from the resort and will see what they will do. Currently wondering if I should rebook to the W or RC. I am platinum status, so I was looking forward for the free breakfast.

https://loyaltylobby.com/2022/02/21/...s-wont-rebook/

Dn10

Think you'd still get breakfast at the W or JW. You can try calling the resort, maybe something that ends June 3 will be fine, but given that they might be starting some refurbishments halfway thru your stay it might also make sense to just change the reservation to a more peaceful resort.

randomdude

close june-august. wait for the deval. re-open.

Dn10

Just strange they wouldn’t have announced it more than 3 months before it happening unless it suddenly became an emergency. Doubt they’re really playing games with the deval, but it is convenient timing.

Mr. Vker

I tried to post this article on The Bonvoy Insiders FB page. This property and Maldives in general is a top 5 topic. Marriott removed it.

Dn10

Isn't it run by non-Marriott admins though?

Mr. Vker

.dupe