cmhsieh54

<sigh> Yes, it was. I've since chalked it up to a bunch of the service fees that I probably hadn't accounted for in my restaurant bills.

$910 paid (after subtracting destination dining, alcohol costs, and tips on my credit card), and I still only got credit for $670. I wonder if room service ("in-villa dining") also doesn't count towards bonus points. (?)

Lesson learned: if you want to maximize points from dining at RC Maldives, go to the restaurants.

cmhsieh54

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stml8

Thought I would post a quick review about my 7 night stay in December 2022:

Transportation:
Arrival - We were upgraded to the yacht and they had drinks and snacks on board. The staff let my SO and I stay on the top deck during the ride. Overall as perfect as it gets.

Departure - We left the resort at 9pm on a boat transfer for just my SO and myself. While it wasn't the yacht, it being fully private made it really nice.

Service:
Arrival - Smooth, easy. Immigration was fast. Nothing to complain about.

Departure - We had a late 11:40pm flight to Singapore. When we arrived at the dock, there was a Ritz Carlton employee waiting for us. He walked us all the way through to the checkout counter, handled our luggage for us, and walked us to immigration. I didn't see any other guests at the airport with a resort employee guiding them through, so Ritz Carlton definitely shined here.

Aris Meeha (Butler) - Our Aris Meeha, Viola, was perfect. She arranged all dining, brought any gear needed to our room quickly, made sure our room was always clean, always had a buggy available within 5 minutes of texting her, etc. She was able to secure us a 9pm checkout from our villa on the day of departure due to our late flight. She also gave us a couple really nice gifts at the end of our stay. We didn't bother taking the beach bag as my SO has way too many bags already, but it was offered to us.

Dining - The servers were all very pleasant and remembered our names. La Laconda during breakfast definitely has some hiccups in service though. It's not bad, but I had a couple days where I waited 10 minutes or so for a waiter to come.

Food:
Overall - The food was good to great. I do want to note that serving sizes seem Americanized here. They're large, and I highly doubt most people can seriously eat as much as the board plan offers. My SO and I chose to go a la carte and forgo the meal plan. We spent around $3k total on food and drinks during our 7 night stay.

Arabesque - Our favorite. Love all their dips.

La Laconda - Good dinner, nothing notable though. Only ate here once for dinner. Breakfast is actually really solid. Eggs benedict + minute steak was my goto for breakfast.

Summer Pavilion - Good, definitely not as good as Singapore's though. The xiao long baos (soup dumplings) aren't worth the money for their quality. Maybe using Din Tai Fung as the bar isn't fair, but come on, Din Tai Fung is everywhere now. They should be able to match their quality especially if they're charging $40 for 4 dumplings.

Villa drinks/snacks - I doubt most people will eat all the snacks to actually replenish them fully every day. One day, they filled our cookie jar to the very top. Easily 30-40 cookies in there. We ate maybe 10 total.

Iwau - Didn't try it.

Activities:
Snorkeling - I love snorkeling so choosing Ritz Carlton was definitely a compromise. It's definitely better than expected though. If you have an overwater villa on the lagoon side (sunrise side), you can swim out to a decent young reef. We actually saw way more than expected including sharks, stingrays, etc. The reef itself isn't too pretty, but the amount of fish is pretty good. Currents were okay. Know your limit or wait for good weather.

Manual Watersports - As expected. We had great weather during our stay, but if it was windy, I doubt we would have done any kayaking/paddle boarding.

World Cup Final - We were here during the world cup final, and they had a watch party for $250/person. It included a buffet of sushi, burgers, Mexican food, and bbq. It was pretty fun, but I wasn't the biggest world cup fan.

Gym - Good gym. A little smaller than expected, but it was empty in the morning so that's fine.

Morning Yoga - Other than dining, this is where you're likely to run into the most people. It was packed.

Paid excursions - We had a few snorkeling excursions booked, but after swimming around the islands a few times, we stuck with just manually swimming out.

Hard Product:
Room - We stayed in a sunset beach villa and an overwater lagoon (sunrise) villa on the ring. There was basically little to no wind except for a couple hours during our trip, so both villas were great. Coming back again, we would probably choose the lagoon villa on the ring. The snorkeling directly off this villa is going to improve heavily over the next few years, but you definitely want to come during good weather (Jan - March). The villas itself do have some janky parts primarily the shower hardware and the outside shower door that will likely get fixed over time. Everything else is as expected for a resort at this price.

Resort - Having a separate staff island really helps with making it feel more open. Expect this resort to age beautifully.

kerufin

Room service counted towards mine without any issues (around $300 before taxes and service charges).

Liang Hua

Yes, the sofa beside TV could set up as a bed, big enough for an adult. You daughter would pay adult fare for everything such as transfer boat, buffet, dive center activities, etc. My 12 years son paid everything adult price as resort policy is 12 and up would be considered as adult.

md10302

Random Q- do they have sunscreen in the room? Trying to limit my belongings to a carry on

cmhsieh54

No, they don't. But I highly suspect that your Aris Meeha would give you some complimentary bottles of it if you asked.

I also suspect that they started realizing that guests didn't trust in the reliability or legitimacy of the generic brand that they were offering, so they stopped offering it.

At Eau Bar, there is a stand in the middle of the outdoor patio filled with a few sunscreens, with no branding, each labeled with a different SPF level. It's very possible that after they installed that, they realized that most guests weren't interested in using their sunscreen at all.

cmhsieh54

Incidentally, they have Colgate and Listerine in the room, refilled daily.

rucksack

In addition to the sunscreen at Eau Bar, the Beach Shack has a sunscreen station with giant containers of Sun Bum brand sunscreen in SPF 15, 30, and 50.

The resort also sells individual bottles of (exorbitantly priced) Sun Bum and Bamford sunscreens in the boutique next to La Laconda and the spa shop. By exorbitantly priced, I mean $50 for an 8oz bottle.

My partner is allergic to ingredients in many sunscreens, so we asked our Aris Meeha for mineral-based sunscreen and he referred us to the products at the spa and boutique. YMMV.

Liang Hua

Just remind an update some people may interested: Starting Jan.1, 2023, Maldivian government rise the tourist tax, which is VAT, from 12% to 16%. So all my spending on the island after new year added 27.6% total for the extra service charge and VAT.

nexusCFX

Just redeemed 480k for Dec 25th to 30th. Looks like cash rate set to 4660USD for the holiday period this year.

90 day cancel policy so beware.

cmhsieh54

Hmm... I wonder if I mistook the sunscreen at Beach Shack for something at Eau Bar... Is there sunscreen offered at both locations?

In other words, I'm pretty sure I recall sunscreen offered at Eau Bar, but now I'm not sure I'm recalling correctly... :-(

cmhsieh54

LOL yeah I stayed for basically that same stretch of dates this past month. It's really a great time, I'm envious already! :-D
They have all sorts of special activities, and also really sizable gifts during what they call "Festive Season".

The cash rates will go up by $1k/nt starting April/May, so you can brag even more later... ;-) ;-) ;-)
And as for that 90-day cancel policy... yeah, my eyes watered when I saw the $28k USD penalty for canceling less than 90 days before the reservation date. As I understand it, the thankful major exception is if your flight gets cancelled. If that happens, I'm sure they won't charge that penalty. Exactly how that all works if you don't tell them your flight details upfront, I'm not sure... :-)

nexusCFX

I was there 26th to 31st so I'm familiar.

cmhsieh54

Wow, and going again same time frame later this year! That's pretty cool.

Yeah, I left on the 31st too, this past month. There was a solo traveler from Canada on my boat going back. Maybe that was you... (?)