westcoastscott

Yes free used.

scopelenz

Just came back from a 5-night stay for my partner's birthday and we benefitted immensely from all the shared knowledge in this Flyertalk thread. Wanted to thank everyone for providing resources and recommendations for meal plans, packing lists and even day-to-day activities.

Happy to answer any questions based on my experience:

Meal Plans

Since I am a Titanium Elite, we went for the Half Board for the first 2 nights, and then All Inclusive for the last 3. We actually found the All Inclusive to be of better value as compared to the Full Board Plus, since the All Inclusive is the only meal plan to get access to Tabemasu for dinner (the food was superb) and you can get any drinks from any restaurant at any time. It was extremely convenient to not have to worry about food and drinks during the last 4 days, and we could pop by any of the restaurants for a drink to chill when we wanted (the sunsets are amazing and it's the perfect time for a beer). We did not end up finishing the alcohol in my room, but we brought them home (yes, you can do that!) since we had additional luggage space.

One thing to note is that the food options in the restaurants do not change during the stipulated meal times (unless you are having buffet at Turquoise), so if you are on the Full Board Plus or Half Board, you may be eating dinner at Velaa for multiple nights. While we found the food at Velaa to be amazing, we had wanted a bit more variety.

Another thing is that lunch options are available at Waves and Riveria as part of the All Inclusive meal plan. For lunch, you get to pick any 3 food items and any drink on the menu. There are some drinks in Waves that are not included the All Inclusive, but most of the time the staff will just give it to you anyway. Waves serves mostly brunch food, sandwiches and keto bowls, while Riveria serves small plates (similar to tapas).

Activities

We actually never ran out of activities to do - we snorkeled around the house reef, rented the stand-up paddle-boards and kayaks for free and attended at least one free activity a day (there are yoga/HIIT classes, a greenhouse tour and outdoor movie nights). We ended up paying for the Sunset Dolphin Cruise ($80 per pax for 2 hours) and a Guided Snorkeling Tour ($70 per pax for 1.5 hours). I highly recommend both - for the dolphin cruise, you basically sit in an open deck boat to a location ~30-minutes from the resort to see dolphins (and there are many!). Drinks are actually included and we got to drink voluminous servings of Cava (beer and non-alcoholic drinks were also available). Snorkeling is done outside the house reef with a very experienced guide and honestly the marine life in Maldives is just something we have to see.

We wished we had spent more time swimming, but we did not since the salt water can be really punishing for your skin, so the pools were a great alternative. However, both the pools in Riveria and Velaa are really tiny, so be prepared for a crowd during peak months.

Service

The staff was highly attentive and very professional. When we arrived, we were assigned a staff whom we could contact with any questions or concerns. She was also the person who gave us information about our departure timings and made arrangements for our celebratory dinner during one of the nights. That being said, I did not want to bother her with my day-to-day requests, so I ended up using the Whatsapp concierge (+960 930 0123) to arrange buggy rides from our villa to the restaurants, make table reservations and ask questions relating to my meal plans. The concierge was highly responsive (way faster than using the Bonvoy app).

Staff at the restaurants recognized us by the 2nd day and we got to know some of them as well. There is a group of them who came over from the Ritz Carlton Bali and they certainly bring with them their experience and service standards. We also got to know the resident barista and HIIT/yoga instructor, whom we met with almost everyday during our meals and activities. The staff did tend to chat us up quite a bit (not sure if that's the way they treat all customers or they were looking out for elites), and we certainly felt very welcomed and looked after.

Post-Check out

Even though our flight departing Male was scheduled for 11.40pm (it was the last flight out of the airport), the resort had arranged for us to take the 3pm seaplane (apparently the last scheduled seaplane), which meant that our check out was around 2pm. This also gave us a 8-hour wait in the airport. LM staff was waiting for us at both the seaplane terminal and airport, and gave us ideas on how we can spend the time - it was either a guided tour of Male city (you can tip the guide, but there will not be a fee) or we could wait in the land-side Priority Pass lounge until check-in opened.

We popped by the PP lounge but it was way too small and crowded to be comfortable, so we paid $2 each for a ferry ticket and did our own tour of Male city. The city is very small (a walk from one end to another took slightly over an hour), and there was not much to see, but we found an local craft shop selling leather goods and accessories at very reasonable prices - my partner bought leather pouch for less than $10, while I got myself a bracelet for around $15. If you have a lot of time to kill, I will recommend visiting Male for souvenirs instead of buying them from the gift shops at the airport. We found the gift shops at the airport to be a major scam (a cheap-looking magnet would have cost us $10!!!).

Overall a very magical experience. Many thanks to the FT folks who highlighted this great redemption opportunity when it first opened!

rakeshs_ca

How safe is the water for swimming then?

rakeshs_ca

They do? I got this from them this morning when I asked about paying with GCs

"Further to your email we are pleased to inform you that you can use Marriott gift card at our for resort service, Hence, please be advise that the gift card is not applicable to the services which managed by third party company such as seaplane transfer, water sport activates. etc."

bobu

I wonder if they're just confused, because it goes into 1 giant bill, and then you pay it off. Either way, i wouldn't follow up too much. My trip is in a week, so I will report back in 2 weeks, unless yours is before mine.

westcoastscott

They simply apply it to the whole bill however the gift card cannot pay for 3rd party services as noted above. So if your total bill was 5000 but had seaplane and dive stuff in the 5000 bill the 5000 gift card would only go towards the actual resort services . You would need to pay the other charges with a credit card.

margarita girl

I paid for my entire bill, seaplane included, with a gift card. YMMV

(Maybe I’m special because they didn’t ask me to prepay the seaplane either! )

martzipan

The water is very safe. None of the marine life there is in any way dangerous to people, it’s quite the opposite. Do not touch, step on or in any other way harass the fish and mammals, please .

bobu

I can tell you i paid entire bill with GC last year, but again, may be different this year. Will report back either way.

BigKenny

Is the new jetty with the new rooms open yet? I will be there in 2 months and hoping its open soon (or now).

thanks!

margarita girl

Post # 1454.

brownpaw

Just got home after six nights. I'll try to consolidate some thoughts without going overboard on typing paragraphs of the same things that others have already said. Hopefully there's some new nuggets of info for some people out there:

Room Upgrade Option -- I booked OW sunrise on points. A few days before check-in I saw on the app I was upgraded (Platinum) to OW sunset. I had previously inquired about a cash upgrade from OW sunrise to sunset w/ pool and was quoted $300++ via email. Upon check-in I was offered upgrade to OW sunset w/ pool for $150++/night and took it. The ++ is taxes, service fees/gratuity, I believe they said it amounts to somewhere around 22.5%. Highly recommend the pool if you can swing it.

South Pier -- been a lot of interest in the new south pier which is now open. It's a bit closer to Velaa, Turquoise, and the front desk ("The Hub") than the original north pier but it's pretty far from Tabemasu (Japanese), Riviera (adults only pool+bar), and Waves (coffee & kombucha) which are right by the north pier. You can request a cart/buggy at any time though. Overall I am not sure why anyone would heavily prefer one over the other (maybe I missed something), except north side OW sunrise technically faces the sea planes but I don't know how bad the sound actually is.

Room Minibar -- Don't recall if anyone's detailed the minibar. It had:

• Liquor/spirits: (I took a picture but can't quite read some of the exact volumes)
  • 350 ml Gordon's Gin
  • ~350 ml Absolut Vodka
  • 375 ml Jack Daniel's
  • 375 ml Johnnie Walker Black
  • ~375 ml Bacardi white rum
• Beer
  • 2 x Tiger bottles
  • 2 x Corona bottles
• Wine
  • ~375 ml Babich Merlot Carbernet
  • ~375 ml Babich Sauv Blanc (iirc)
• Non-Alc
  • 2 x orange juice, 2 x apple juice
  • 2 x regular Coke, 2 x Diet Coke ("Coke Light" locally), 2 x Sprite, 2 x Schweppes soda water, 2 x Schweppes Tonic
  • 2 x San Pellegrino sparkling, 1 x Pana Aqua still water
• Food
  • 3 pack of Ferrero Roche
  • Toblerone bar
  • Small box of salted peanuts
  • Small box of pistachios
  • Bag of salt and pepper potato chips/crisps
• Other
  • There's also a small bottle of champagne but it is not included in the all-inclusive plan
  • Not really mini-bar but normal coffee stock was 3 x illy espresso pods, 1 x illy decaf pod, and numerous nice looking teas (didn't try those though)

It was stated to me that on the all-inclusive plan, everything (minus champagne) is included and can be restocked every day except the spirits which are only replaced every 4 days. For what it's worth, in practice, for me the spirits got replaced whenever the bottle wasn't in there. For anyone worrying about hydration, there's also numerous bottles of other drinking water around the villa which got replaced whenever they were low.

Draft Beer -- Most bars have some combination of Peroni, Heineken, Corona bottles. If you dig draft beer, note that the only draft beer available is at Turquoise & Velaa, and it was Tiger, and imho colder and infinitely better than anything in a bottle.

All Inclusive Courses -- All inclusive gets 1 app, 1 main, and 1 dessert from the all inclusive menus during each meal period. However they were fine with trading certain ways, like skipping dessert and getting an extra app instead. This was useful for at Tabemasu where I'd rather have another sushi roll instead of dessert. Small plates at Riviera are effectively unlimited and not considered a course during any meal period.

Breakfast Buffet @ Turquoise -- Had good variety of food but outside of some of the South Asian stuff, I can't say that anything really stood out and some of it was outright bland. I'm a sucker for buffets and variety though so most days I still stuffed myself silly in the morning, had a tiny lunch, and then a normal but late dinner. If I went back I'd probably do a really small breakfast and then a normal lunch and dinner to have better food overall.

Tabemasu -- Really good, but be ready to make reservations ahead of time. You'll probably want to eat here more than once.

Waves -- stop in and get an affogato (ice cream + espresso), yum

Snorkeling -- Until someone else commented on one of the last days of my stay, I didn't really put it together that the house reef is technically just on the north side, and the south side is the "lagoon". I did most of my snorkeling in the lagoon and saw some big sting rays, eagle rays, and a few small sharks (I think black tip reef). After the other comment I did trek to the end of the north pier to snorkel the actual house reef. You have to swim about 15 min to the start of the reef, then you can kind of follow the current eastward for a bit, before having another 15-20 min swim back to the beach in front of the watersports building. If you are dealing with small kids then definitely stick to the lagoon which stayed around 3-4 ft and a lazy current. The house reef gets quite a bit deeper in parts, and the initial swim in and out would probably not be great for kids. It's also much more at the edge of the open ocean if that freaks you out. You will likely see a larger abundance of sea life around the reef than the lagoon though, but the lagoon isn't at all devoid of it.

Pools -- I think occupancy was ~50% while I was there but the two pools, while pretty small overall, were never really crowded. There also weren't a lot of beach chairs overall but there was always at least one pair open when I went looking.

Back of House & Greenhouse Tour -- at some point during the introduction tour, the guide mentioned that they could arrange a back of house tour and a greenhouse tour. I did both and found them really interesting. The back of house tour talked about power generation, water desalination and distribution, and some other points. If you have any interest in learning about how these standalone resorts operate and provide services like they're a small town then definitely give it a go. It was even conducted by the resort's chief engineer. The greenhouse tour was fairly short but they tell you about how they grow most of the produce used on the island which is cool.

Photo Shoot -- don't recall this mentioned before but you can book a free 30-min photo shoot and they'll print out one photo of your choosing, also free. Obviously the idea is that you'll buy more, and they were quite expensive (like over $200 to put 20 of the photos on a USB drive), but there was no hard sell when I declined to actually pay for anything.

Future thing to watch out for -- They were in the midst of building a new restaurant off the back/north end of Waves. It looks to be open-air, and I was told they're expecting it to be open sometime in December and it'll be small plates / tapas, similar to, but different from what's served next door at Riviera.

Let me know if anyone has any questions. Thanks to everyone that came before and shared info, and hopefully there's something useful here for all the lucky folks heading out there soon.

BigKenny

Great info. Thank you!

Do you have bonvoy status?

brownpaw

Platinum

wb2020

Thanks for the great, detailed data point brownpaw . Sounds like things are getting better and better.