Anantara Veli Maldives Resort

I liked here almost everything, service, food, island, bicycles, shore, villas, was everything superb, but. Can you explain to me stupid what is the price for bottle of water 15$ ? at the room you get for free, whatever you want, for breakfast too, but water for FB meal at dinning is 15$? i know, you need to earn, but when bottle of water is more expensive than a glass of wine this is ridiculous.

I literally could not imagine which lagoon could win over the one of the sunset side of the Dhigu. When you thing about the Maldives, you imagine this scenery.. When you go to Dhigu, you must choose the side facing the sunset (this applies to both beach and water villas). I requested a beach villa number between 61-65, as these are the villas facing the sunset, which have the densest vegetation and privacy between them. The rest are separated by some wooden fences, which are far from a Maldivian feeling and a form of privacy. The villa does not scream luxury, but I find it cozy with everything you need, spacious enough and with a typical maldivian open bathroom. The verandah is nice to relax, you have a shelter where you can sit outside even when it's raining. Also each villa has its sunbeds and a a parasol on the beach itself, not just on the veranda. As for the time of visit, we generally go at the end of November or beginning of December, but this year we had the opportunity for March, which people called "the main season". I've heard it's the driest month and it rarely rains, but for 6 days we had rain absolutely every day. It rained for 1 hour a day, mainly early morning or late evening. Well, again, it's good to remember that choosing a given month and paying x2, x3 does not automatically guarantee only sunshine and clear skies. We got a good offer again from Adore Maldives and decided to visit the Maldives in March, but basically if I had to pay double that price to come to the main - Feb/March, I wouldn't do it. Another positive of Dhigu is that the island is very green everywhere. Walking inside you get that feeling of being in the middle of a jungle with tall trees, palms and different colors of flowers. We really liked that each vila had wheels. We used them to go to breakfast, dinner and to the spa for the best massage I have had in the Maldives - "anantara signature". The breakfast at fushi was nothing special but quite enough to satisfy you. Since we were half board, we had a buffet included at fushi, a la carte menu at aqua and $60 credit per person (which we find decent) at each of the other restaurants. Some of the restaurants you can choose are in the neighbor island of Veli, to which there is a boat every 5 minutes throughout the day. The restaurant we liked the most was also located there - the japanese Origami. It featured a 6 course menu where the main course was cooked in front of you. I have noticed that if an island has a Japanese restaurant, the food is the best there and so is the service. Maybe it's just my conclusion. The other restaurant we liked – Sea.Fire.Salt. Unfortunately we couldn't experience its authenticity by dining outside as it was raining that evening. Very tasty rib eye steak by the way! Don't want to miss the job from the guys who took care of cleaning the villa twice a day. A lot of effort, arranging and leaving small gestures every time. They had memorized when we had breakfast and dinner and so they passed by every time we were gone without bothering us. Almost forgot to mention that we saw baby sharks close to the shore passing by every afternoon. I guess this is a normal for South Male atoll. Now for the negatives: first thing you mention when you came to Dhigu is the view of industrial islands from almost every corner of the island, in addition to the ugly island of maafushi. Second - their app Anantara. You have to download this app and use it to make all reservations and inquiries - for dinner, for daytime activities, for the spa, everything. The app itself is very slow, crashes, lags and if it accidentally kicks you out of the internet, you have to go through all the menus again to get to where you want to book. You go to write in the chat of the application and the responses from the staff were extremely slow. There are no notifications and you have to log into the app each time to check if you have received a reply. For example, the last two days we were trying to book a cooking class and due to the slow response of the staff and lack of confirmation, we missed the start time and so were unable to attend. I don't understand why they don't make it as easy as it is at many other resorts - via WhatsApp - fast and efficient. The other annoying thing - since the resort was at 100% occupancy, we were super tight on our dinner reservation time. Many of the restaurants didn't even have seats, and the ones that were available offered us dinner at 6:30 PM. Extremely inconvenient for Maldives when you want to make the most of the beach and daylight. I said several times that we wanted a reservation time around 8, but I was told back that there were no available seats for that time. Very strange considering that afterwards we saw half the restaurants were empty. When I complained, I was told that people reserved later hours and then went to eat at the buffet in Fushi… Another thing I've read about from guests on other islands but haven't experienced before is - noise from renovations. One of the days, almost all day, a noisy renovation was carried out at one of the restaurants on the beach. Another day, again during the day, noisy repairs were being carried out on one of the villas next to us. Extremely unpleasant when you have gone to the Maldives and expect to have the most peaceful and relaxing time possible. In conclusion, I can say that if you are a fan of lagoons like me and want to dive in one of the most beautiful lagoons with many shades of blue and don't mind that this is an island visited mainly by families with small children, I think you must visit Dhigu from the sunset side. And for the right deal of course because just days after our dates the price was 30% higher which I wouldn't pay.