Is Christmas in the Maldives Worth It? (Velaa Private Island Edition)

Back when I first got into this luxury travel malarkey, I used to look at peak-season price increases and feel blood escaping my eye sockets.  Those sneaky little pricks.  The audacity.  Rates tripling between the 19th and the 20th of December.  Who do these people think they are?  And, more importantly, what idiot is paying that?

Reader, it’s me.

I’ve now spent Christmas in the Maldives more than once.

The last time was at Joali, where they at least make a token effort to leave you feeling only semi-violated, with vaguely reasonable festive premiums and no minimum night stay.  This time, however, it was Velaa.  A ten-night minimum.  Rates cranked accordingly.  No pretending otherwise.

So…is Christmas at Velaa is actually worth it?  To answer that, let’s start with what you’re getting.

Intangibles

You might call it the Festive Spirit.

One of the biggest surprises is how social it actually feels. If you come here expecting pure seclusion and zero human interaction, I guess you could get it, Mr. Scrooge, but it’s probably not my first recommendation. However, fear not, there’s no forced mingling, it might just end up happening naturally due to all the events they organise.

In a strange way, I admire the ten-night minimum stay. It forces you to slow down and actually settle in. You get to know people. This is our third year in a row here around this time, and there are so many familiar faces now that it already feels oddly comfortable. Not allowing people to drop in for a night or two helps preserve that atmosphere.  Basically, I am a man child and need to be gently coddled and cannot tolerate change.

The Maldives is often perceived as a “secluded couples paradise,” but that ship sailed the moment those honeymooners did unspeakable things and produced a small human that inherited their DNA and an insatiable desire to incinerate their wallet. You’re now more likely to find families than honeymooners.  At Christmas especially.  At this time of year, if you spotted a couple without children, you’d at least check the FBI Most Wanted list. Ensure they’re not in the Epstein files. All the usual stuff.

Basically, there’s lots of families, endless child-focused activities, and children who are so permanently entertained you almost forget you brought them.

Kids club

Whilst there being only 47 rooms, the kids’ club had nearly 40 children in it. You may consider that hell on earth.  If you needed to spend time there, you might be right.  But my kids were so happy that we were basically booted out. Persona non grata.  

Every morning started the day: our kids asking what time the Kids Club opened.   Then they’d walk themselves over after breakfast, occasionally emerge at lunch to remind us they still existed, then become genuinely upset when it closed at 6pm.  Is there a higher endorsement?

The entire kids club is decorated to within an inch of its life, this year with a Frozen theme.  It all looks great, with the exception of one reindeer that appeared to have been designed by Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs using actual reindeer.  Disturbing.

There are activities every single day.  A full itinerary, similar in volume to other times of year, but tweaked heavily for Christmas.  As an example:

10am: Hand Puppet

11am: Wooden Beads Keychains

2:15pm: Kinderglühwein

3pm: Kristoff’s Ice Blocks

4pm: Olaf Buttons

5pm: Rudolf Treasure Trail

What does any of that mean?  It meant I could go to the gym, that’s what.

Lights, lights, lights

More lights go up every day. For reasons known only to Velaa, this continues even after Christmas. The longer you stay, the more worthy you apparently are. By the end, the island looks quite stunning at night.

20th December – The Anniversary

Velaa celebrates its anniversary on the 20th. This year marked their 12th year, with a beach party near the main pool and a stage that appears overnight like magic.

The headline act was Ella Henderson, singing a catalogue of her hits, including Filthy Rich. A song featuring the lyric “I don’t need no money,” performed to a crowd of multi-millionaires and billionaires. She repeatedly encouraged audience participation. You would find more enthusiasm from a crowd at a funeral held for an orphanage and puppy massacre.

Ella, this is my target audience. Please don’t convince them they don’t need money. They need that money to book holidays.

Still, we enjoyed it.

The evening also included a vast buffet spread. We were seated directly next to the dessert station. Whoever made that seating decision has my utmost respect and should be promoted immediately.

23rd December

The main activity of the day was gingerbread house making for the kids.  All the scientific brains in the world wouldn’t have been able to guess which creation was ours and which one belonged to the professional pastry chef. To really drive the point home, we were later sent the chef’s version to our room.  Talk about low self-esteem.

Christmas Eve

The evening starts with complimentary cocktails and canapes with the staff. An actual complimentary event. I don’t drink, and across two or three of these gatherings I think I managed exactly one mocktail, but when Velaa offers something free, you show up. Not to consume it, but to witness it. Like a solar eclipse. You’re not really there to see it, you’re there to be able to say you saw it.

Then came the Christmas Eve buffet. No avoiding this one. Buffets must be the most profitable business model in existence, because otherwise their persistence makes no sense.

One of my children ate a single scoop of ice cream. For that experience, we paid roughly $500. I am now planning to die earlier purely out of spite. My will will explicitly reference this incident and blame her for my death, whilst also deducing $500 plus expenses, so she can experience a fraction of the pain I felt.

Whoever invented the mandatory Christmas Eve buffet, now enforced across the Maldives, I know you’re somewhere below us, looking up from the pits of hell. That said, you’re clearly a man of talent, so I assume you’ve Jedi mind-tricked the depths of hell into believing that à la carte dining and personal choice are some kind of aggressive fungal infection.

Look, it is undeniably impressive. Oysters. A foie gras station. Premium steaks. Sushi.  Every cuisine known to man, including many that shouldn’t coexist. But I just don’t like buffets. I don’t want to be standing there deciding whether my spaghetti carbonara pairs better with sushi, a lamb rogan josh, or a cake from some country I can’t pronounce.  Ok, it’s the cake.  The answer is always cake.  But just because you can eat caviar, pad thai, and tiramisu on the same plate doesn’t mean you should. Your chef’s were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

I will give them this: the desert counter is a winner.  Why can’t everywhere have their deserts on view like they do here?  I hate ordering something and then having no idea what’s going to arrive, only to have discovered it’s the opposite of what I wanted.  It’s like ordering sex but getting herpes and only herpes.

Anyway.  Simon Webbe from Blue performed for just over an hour, with the in house pianist Maksym Shorenkov.

In our room, a Christmas tree, a Harrods hamper in the room.  Some nice gifts, including a blue jug that we actually took home with us and will be used.  Thanks, guys.

Christmas Day

Santa’s arrival was ballsed up, but I appreciated the effort, including the weirdly skanky dancers hovering around like they’d got caught up with Liam Neeson’s daughter in Taken and were not hooked on crack. I can’t remember that bit in the Bible. I’m sure if I looked hard enough, they’d be a section about a fat guy sneaking into your house while you sleep, eating your food, and forcing your children to sit on his lap though. That part fits disturbingly well with the Church.

Let’s think about it for a moment: Santa is an absolutely unhinged concept.  A strange man with a terrible work ethic, not even as much as a work visa, and an alarming interest in children somehow becomes the one exception to every rule we drill into them for the other 364 days of the year.  Don’t talk to strangers.  Don’t accept gifts from strangers.  Don’t let strangers into the house.  Don’t sit on strangers’ laps.  

We actively encourage this man to break into our homes.  We leave him snacks.  Worse of all, my snacks.  He knows when you are sleeping.  He knows when you’re awake.  He knows if you’ve been bad or good, which really starts to sound like something Mark Zuckerberg would say to someone.

Anyway. Santa was meant to arrive by paromotor. Something went wrong, something something wind, physics, liability waivers, so instead he showed up on a jet ski. Later that evening he gave it another go and reappeared exactly as planned, showing up six hours late, just like your alcoholic father also used to on Christmas Day.  Ah, happy memories.

I’m amazed by my four-year-old’s ability to logically dismantle my arguments, yet completely accept nonsense when it matters. When asked why Santa wasn’t on reindeer, I replied with something that roughly translates as “this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever said”. She nodded in agreement and went back to unwrapping presents. Gifts work miracles like that.

Anyway.  Santa arrived, the kids got to go sit next to him (liability waivers again) and get a present.  You could give my youngest a stick of shit and she’d be happy, but I had my camera at the ready for the inevitable meltdown from my eldest over her disappointment.  And she did not disappoint.  I will be accepting my Parent of the Year award in absence this year, I’m too busy gloating at my fine work to attend in person.

After Santa, out came the train, fitted with music and allowing the kids to hop on and off and go around the island.  And then, of course, no better way to celebrate that time some virgin farted out a human being, than another buffet.

26th December

Not much happening today.  You spend all year waiting for some fat guy to turn up and hand out presents, and then it’s over in a blink. From that point on it’s just a countdown to next Christmas, or death. That’s life, kids.

Buffet, buffet, buffet

We left on the 27th. I assume that after this point the remaining guests are slowly absorbed into a black hole of buffets until the island collapses under the sheer weight of itself.

It actually goes until the 6th January, with the New Years Eve party and all that.  A review for another time, I guess.

So, worth it?

Yeah. Fuck it. Let them have it.

It has this wonderful feel to it, the kinda thing I wish I could tell you money can’t buy, but I’ve seen the receipts.  It feels, and I say this as a compliment, like a high-end retirement village, where you start to know everyone and everything feels so familiar.  The staff, the quality of what is on offer, the parties, the kids friendliness, the celebration of it, is really wonderful.

10 nights felt enough.  On day 7 it felt a shame to be leaving, by day 10 we felt ready to go, and then the moment I got home I immediately regretted it and wanted to return.

The real stroke of genius is the pricing structure. A non-refundable 50% deposit up front, followed by the balance three months before arrival. By the time you get there, the pain is long forgotten. You leave with a checkout bill so small it barely registers as a number, relative to what you’ve already paid, and somehow that feels like winning.  Somehow you went to Vegas and beat the House.  You are the first person in history to go to that buffet and make them lose money.  You’re a goddamn hero.

But, for me, the best part was not being in miserable England during the darkest, coldest days of the year. And my kids loved the kids’ club, which I deeply appreciated, though none more compared to the joy of getting home and realising there were still another ten days before school started.

Next year, just send me away for the full three and a half weeks.  I’ll pay anything.