bgriff

I'm at the hotel now. I'll write up a fuller review with some pictures sometime later after I'm done enjoying my vacation, but a few thoughts for now. This is my first time in the Maldives so really don't have anything to compare to directly, but I've of course read many of the detailed FT and blogger reviews of the St. Regis Maldives, so I can't help but let that color my impressions somewhat.

Pleasant surprises / Positives

• Soft drinks in the minibar are free, which I have not seen mentioned anywhere before, though I might have missed it, or it might be a recent change? Includes some soda and juice. Branded bottles of water in minibar are chargeable, but lots of resuable glass W water bottles are provided in the room. Hotel also markets tap water as safe to drink, which I hadn't expected, but I guess makes sense considering the hotel controls 100% of the water supply chain so why wouldn't it have been built to that standard? That said, tap water wasn't forthcoming as an option at dinner last night and I didn't see anyone with it, and I caved and paid $12 for a 750mL Evian, but I might eventually get up the nerve to ask for tap water at a meal.
  
• Nespresso machine available in room.
  
• 20% F&B discount (including alcohol) for Plats appears to be alive and well, and seems to come off your bill at the time of signing the check, so you can keep track of it as you go rather than having to reconcile at check-out. 10% service charge and 12% tax are applied to the post-discount amount, so net amount spent for Plats actually comes out a little bit below listed menu prices. 20% off is not offered on room service and excursions but valid at all restaurants and bars.
  
• Prices are the same as the most recent menus posted on here, which isn't good exactly but at least they haven't gone up again. I had made my peace with the expense but it still jarring to confront it for real when you sit down and the menu is put in front of you. That said, I actually think the booze prices are pretty reasonable for the most part, perhaps because I live in NYC where $18 seems entirely reasonable for a "designed" cocktail at a high-end hotel these days. Minibar prices are also not terrible, with some items probably cheaper than the minibars at many city Ws, especially since free soft drinks means free mixers. (By contrast beer is the one booze that is quite unreasonably priced IMO, but maybe that's just because beer isn't really on brand for the W?)
  
• I am not going to do the drinks package, both because I don't know that I'll drink *that* much (and/or the times/places where I want to drink more, like at the pool during the day, aren't covered by the plan), and because the variety available on the plan isn't that great and the a la carte drink options are IMO not that outrageously priced. In particular there are a number of wines by the glass for around $11 each and I'd prefer to have the wider variety of wines to choose from. (The red that is offered in the drink package is also on the by-the-glass menu and my husband ordered it last night; it was about what you would expect for a cheaper South African red.)
  
• The pool does have a swim-up bar, one of my favorite features.
  
• Have just had one restaurant meal so far, at Fire last night, and the quality was acceptable. Not the best steak dinner I've ever had, and obviously not what I would expect for an $80 steak anywhere else, but it was decent, which I think is typically about what you expect in the Maldives.
  
• Bloody Marys and sparking wine are available as part of the breakfast buffet, meaning that part of the drink package actually has no incremental value.
  
• Service so far is generally very good and attentive; many of the staff know our names without us having to introduce ourselves, etc., and everyone is very friendly. Definitely feels 5-star in that respect and better than one might expect from the W brand given many of their hotels are known for sometimes off-putting service. Similarly ice bucket in the room is filled by housekeeping during both daily services, which is not normally something I expect at a W or similar level hotels. (There are also ice machines available at the snack stations around the island.)
  
• MLE airport transfer process was very very easy with staff guiding you along every step of the way. Lounge was a little shabby maybe, definitely not as luxe as what I've seen of pictures of the St. Regis lounge, but got the job done and had a decent selection of snacks and soft drinks available. We also got lucky and had barely any wait for our seaplane (our incoming flight landed at 12:30pm). We were also not charged for overweight bags on the seaplane, despite being well over the quoted limit (by at least 10kg each). The W rep said something about they were using a new company so they weren't charging any more, which I don't think is right since I think there's still only one seaplane operator, but regardless I'm not going to complain, although I also wasn't too worried about it because the W had quoted only $2/kg for overweight baggage which would have been quite reasonable and which I had been planning to pay anyway.
  
• Perhaps the only true F&B deal of the entire trip was a $2.50 DQ Blizzard in the MLE airport food court airside, near the seaplane check-in area. It was a considerably smaller size than I think DQ even offers in the US, but it was still a decent size and perfect to cool off since it was very hot in the arrivals and seaplane check-in area of the airport. And on a per ounce basis I think it still would have been cheaper than what I would have expected to pay in the US. By contrast, at Burger King in the same area, value meals cost $14-17.
  
• Haven't checked it out yet, but apparently there are also a few free snack services (popsicles, Magnum ice cream bars) a few scheduled times a day at the main pool.

Unpleasant surprises / Negatives

• As has been reported elsewhere, the snack stations around the resort have been downgraded significantly from what they apparently once were. Currently offer just green apples and some weird local energy drink thing. It's not ultimately that big a deal since I don't know that the hotel ever actively marketed the snack stations, and there are a few other places to get free snacks and drinks as mentioned in the pros above, but just something to be aware of if comparing to any older reviews online.
  
• No idea how long this has been the case, but it seems that the underground nightclub mentioned in some older reviews of the property is no more. I believe there also might have once been another restaurant, I think called Kada or something like that, which also appears to be dead. Restaurant / bar options are now Kitchen, Fire, Fish, Wet (poolside), and Sip.
  
• Fire and Fish are open on alternating days, so there are really only two sit-down dinner restaurants (one of those plus Kitchen) any given night. Reservations are strongly recommended; when we called at around 3:30pm to make one for dinner at Fire last night, the closest we could get to our 6:30 dinner time request was 7:30.
  
• The breakfast was frankly disappointing. It's not bad, and it probably doesn't help that we just stayed at the St. Regis in Bangkok and that our last W stay was in Amsterdam not long ago, where the breakfast is outstanding, and it definitely doesn't help that I've looked at lots of reviews of the St. Regis Maldives. But, it just doesn't have the super-wide variety I expect from high-end Asian hotel breakfasts (indeed the variety is not much more than I might expect from a true 5-star hotel in the US), and there are only a handful of fairly boring made-to-order options. The level of variety is also below what I have seen at other 4-star-ish resorts in places like Phuket for example, and at city Westins, Ws, and similar hotels in south/east/southeast Asia.
  
• The bathroom in the room is mostly nice enough but I do have one big complaint: there is way too little toilet privacy. The toilet stall has a glass door with a partial design on it, but it doesn't really provide any effective privacy, and what's worse, there is no door or curtain or anything closing off the bathroom from the bedroom. The toilet stall also looks right out onto the windows overlooking the plunge pool. I've seen reviews of the St. Regis complain that there the toilet stall has a completely clear glass door, though at least there I believe there is a proper door between the bedroom and bathroom.

It's early days so we'll see how the rest of the stay goes, but so far breakfast is the only major disappointment. I did get a great deal on this stay (340K points for 5 nights in a confirmed overwater villa), so I do need to keep reminding myself that buying up to a St. Regis overwater villa would have been a lot more expensive, plus pricier seaplane transfers, and probably pricier F&B with the lack of 20% discount there. But, it's not clear that the deal I got at the W exists any more, and how much various room categories are supposed to cost using points at both hotels is rather unclear, so I would say that I think the St. Regis is probably worth something of a price premium.