Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa Review: Activities

So far, I’ve gone over how to get there, the two different types of rooms we stayed in (here and here), and the food and beverage program. Next, I want to review the activities at the Park Hyatt Maldives.

As you can imagine, given that this is a remote island, it’s quite a different experiment than even your typical beach resort vacation. For example, in Cancun, you can spend your entire time at the resort. However, you always have the option to go to other areas of the Yucatan peninsula, even taking a bus tour to Chichén Itzá a few hours away.

That just isn’t possible here. You are literally stuck on the island, bound by the activities that the Park Hyatt Maldives offers.

Thankfully, the Park Hyatt Maldives has tons of activities on the island for you to partake in, both free and paid. Additionally, I think they do a good job offering activities when there is even the prospect of rain, which I found to be a great touch.

How to Approach Activities in the Maldives

I think the first thing to talk about is how to approach activities in the Maldives. This isn’t a party atmosphere. The Maldives are really meant for true rest and relaxation. You’re not going to get a schedule full of niche activities like a cruise ship or Cancun resort, but high quality activities interspersed with times to relax. Given that the whole island only has ~50 rooms with people from all over the world, you’re going to find, at the “wildest,” moderately relaxing activities. I like to think that the most intense activity you’ll find at the resort is close to an intense meditation activity.

Embrace the slow pace. Embrace the calm.

Categories of Activities

Given that you are on an island, your actual organized activities are pretty limited. Primarily, they focus around two specific locations: the dive center and the spa.

The spa makes complete sense, since you’re going to the Maldives specifically to relax. The gym is located right next to the spa, so I’ll put this here as well.

I would also argue that the dive center makes sense too. You’re on an island! The ocean is the primary place to do water activities!

For this particular post, I’ll review the spa & gym first, and then I’ll talk about dive center and dive-center adjacent activities.

I’ll end with some minor activities offered, as well as what does a rainy day look like at the Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa.

Park Hyatt Maldives Spa

There are two entrances to the spa area at the Park Hyatt Maldives. First, there is a secret path that is much closer to the south side of the island, closer to a majority of the land-based rooms. It’s subtle and slightly hidden.

Second, you can access it via coming from the main beach and dining area. You’ll see a big sign for the Vidhun Spa (it’s proper name). When you enter in coming from the restaurant area, you’ll first rinse off your feet. You’ll then walk by a beautiful relaxing (and peaceful) pool. We hung out at this pool one day when it was especially hot outside because it gave us a ton of shade.

You’ll then come up to the reception area for the spa. You’ll enter into the door to the right of the sign. Here, this is your basic spa reception area, with the receptionist and a variety of products to purchase.

We got sunburned pretty bad one day. However, they do have aloe vera available for purchase. It was about $30, but, to be frank, it was the perfect amount so you don’t have to lug it with you when you travel to the Maldives. I normally would not suggest buying products from a hotel spa, but I wouldn’t bring aloe vera to the Maldives if I knew this was available.

Anyways, once you check in, the team will lead you to your spa room. Surprisingly, the massage rooms aren’t right off of reception. You exit back through the entrance and walk down a “secret path” to the spa area. Here, they have a variety of spa buildings, with each one being a self-contained unit for a massage room and an outdoor area.

You’ll use the outdoor area if it’s a full spa day, and not just a single spa treatment. We had a couples massage, so we did not use it. It’s very similar to the outdoor bathroom area in a beach villa suite, but added a seating area. They had a bath and outdoor shower.

Once you get to where your spa room is, they have a changing area that is very similar to the bathroom in a villa. The changing station has two sinks, two closets, a toilet, and an indoor shower area.

For this massage, you remove your clothes and put on a robe and disposable underwear, which I assume is for religious reasons (remember, the Maldives is an Islamic country). You store your clothes in the closets. You then head out to meet your masseuses and get your massage.

I did not get a picture of the massage room (I did not have my phone), but it was a fantastic massage. We had ours the day after we arrived in the Maldives, and, after our long journey, it hit the spot.

I highly recommend getting one, particularly because it was only maybe like 20% higher than when I find for a reputable massage place in DC. However, if you’re from a lower cost-of-living area, you might have a bit of a sticker shock. However, I found the massages reasonably priced for an incredibly remote island resort.

Park Hyatt Maldives Gym

My wife and I religiously do are workouts almost every day, so the gym was incredibly important to us. The gym is actually two individual rooms connected by an outdoor path. One room is a cardio room, while the other is a strength training room. Also, next to the strength training room are men’s and women’s bathrooms.

They did a phenomenal job incorporating these rooms into the surrounding landscape. Additionally, there’s a reflecting pool outside of the two rooms to give you a sense of place near the water.

For purposes of this review, I’ll explain what’s in both rooms first, then I’ll describe the rooms separately.

In both rooms, the consistent items across both are workout towels, a bowl of apples, hand sanitizer, and water stations. It’s hard to miss the towels. Additionally, there were baskets right next to the door to throw your sweaty towel into.

The water stations are unique in that they have glass cups set out with bottled still water from their on-site water bottling plant. You’ll see three bottles out pretty easily. Additionally, there are mini-fridges in each exercise room with cold water bottles you can pull from. The staff did a great job of keeping the water bottles full. Every very bottle was full whenever we were there. My only critique is that, once you finished using your cups, I didn’t find a designated place to put them. I ended up just putting them very far away from the clean cups to make sure that no one used them.

In terms of the actual rooms, the equipment was relatively dated, but in good condition overall. I was actually pretty impressed with the equipment they had in the strength training room. I doubt that it’s not easy to get exercise equipment out to the Park Hyatt Maldives. The staff does a great job maintaining a good gym area.

The cardio room was pretty standard. It had one treadmill, two exercise bikes, and two elliptical machines. Note that none of the metrics are in standard US metrics, but metrics that 99% of the world uses (kilometers).

Additionally, if you are into cardio classes, they had this wall with all kinds of items that you can turn into your own exercise class. As you can see in the picture below, a poster shows how to use the equipment into a single exercise regiment to the left of the wall of equipment.

In the weight training room, they had a dumbbell and barbell set. Note that these are in kilograms, not pounds (because that’s what most of the world uses!!!). They also had a bench press rack and a general bench for using the dumbbells.

Additionally, they had an all-in-one machine that is supposed to mimic the countless machines you’ll find in a typical gym. I was skeptical of the whole machine in general, but I actually found that it was quite versatile, with very detailed instructions on how to do between 15 and 20 exercises that would take that many machines in a typical gym.

Finally, their most updated piece of equipment was a Technogym Kinesis One machine. I’ve never used one of those, and I know they are controversial for whether or not they actually are good machines. However, from what I hear, they can be useful for a single piece of equipment being able to do the main functional exercises to stay in shape.

Ocean Activities at the Park Hyatt Maldives

The main thing to do in the ocean that we spent hours doing was snorkeling. The snorkeling here is fantastic, as the reef goes all the way around the island. You’ll never run out of space to explore. I haven’t had time to look through all of my GoPro, but I will dedicate a separate post to all of my pictures that we took. We loved it and got excited when we saw our favorite fish as we were walking around by the beach as well.

You will absolutely see friendly reef sharks. On the backside of the island, there is apparently a house turtle, but we could not find him. Ask the dive center staff where he was last seen hanging around!

Now, the specifics of snorkeling on the island. First of all, you’ll get snorkeling gear from the Dive Center. The first thing we did after we had checked-in was head to the dive center and get our snorkeling gear. They’ll give you a bag to put your stuff in.

Two things about the snorkeling gear: First, if you don’t snorkel regularly (I hadn’t snorkeled since our honeymoon in Aruba in 2019), you’ll probably not realize the necessity to protect your feet. Snorkeling for an hour or so, you’ll be fine, but for multiple hours a day for multiple days in a row, bring a pair of socks that you are willing to ruin. Second, I would recommend bringing your own anti-fog for your goggles. They’ll do it for you at the dive center. However, it’s only ~$10, and it’s nice to have it right there with you wherever your diving.

Second, where are the best places to snorkel? If you are in an overwater hut, you can snorkel right off of your room. However, note that during low-tide, you’ll have a hard time swimming over some corral without touching it. That unfortunately didn’t stop some people, but, to protect the ecosystem, it’s easier to snorkel from your room at high tide.

Given the slipperiness of the rocks, if you are in a beach villa, it can be hard to enter straight from the shore. Fortunately, there are two docks with ladders that you can absolutely jump off of. We did that when we were in our beach villa, and we got exhausted from being snorkeling so much! Note that there are covered areas about halfway down the docks. Thus, we typically put our stuff there and then walked to the end of the dock to jump into the water.

The Dive Center at the Park Hyatt Maldives

Now, the Maldives is well-known for its fantastic diving. Thus, they have a full dive-shop that really serves as the activity hub of the entire island.

Every morning, they have the day’s activities, as well as the temperature, high tide / low tide, sunrise & sunset, etc. posted. It’s great to check out if there’s anything you want to do.

While we did not partake in scuba diving, this is the highlight of the dive center (of course). What’s great is that if you’re not certified, you can pay to become a certified scuba diver. I can’t think of a better place to become certified than the Maldives!

The dive center goes beyond just scuba diving though – it also does all kinds of excursions, from a turtle tour to a sunset dolphin cruise to an “equator experience.” This is also where you can pick up free non-motorized watercraft (such as kayaks; note that glass-bottomed costs additional money).

We partook in two experiences. First, we did the turtle tour. For about 3 hours, we went to an area where turtles are known to hang out.

On this excursion (I’ll post GoPro pictures once I have time to go through them), you start off with a short presentation on sea turtles in the Maldives. I’m not going to lie and say that it was super eye-opening, but it did remind me of tons of things I had learned at aquariums over the years. Then, you hop in a boat, where they drop you off in the location. You follow along a reef ridge. Life jackets are provided.

We probably saw close to 60 turtles, dozens of reef sharks, and some eel rays. It was incredible!

We had a group of about 20 people on our tour, so they had someone in front leading us, someone in the middle, and someone in the back to help in case anyone was having any issues. My hat goes off to the gentleman who lead our group. Not only did he point out every turtle that he could find, but he also had to deal with a rowdy group. For example, he had a life-preserver bouy thing (great for safety). At one point, there were two people just holding on to it while he dragged them along the reef. Not because they needed saving, but because they were tired! The whole team did a fantastic job.

Additionally, we also did a sunset dolphin cruise. For this excursion, we never got in the water. It was intended for us to go and see dolphins. They went to an area where there was a pod of about 75 dolphins. It was great to watch them play!

Once we saw the dolphins, it was really cool to see the social hierarchy within the dolphin pod itself. Dolphins surrounded the boat (my guess is to protect as many as possible from being hit by the boat). The other dolphins put on a show, jumping out of the water, doing flips and spins. The dolphins would switch off who was surrounding the boat and who was putting on the show. Dolphins truly are magnificent playful creatures.

On our way back, they gave us some juice, some cookies (including a dolphin-shaped cookie), and fruit skewers.

It started raining, so it turned into a bumpy ride. There were 6 of us guests. All of us were under 35, so we laughed a lot. The other 4 individuals were from Asia (I don’t know what country), and, even though there was a language barrier with them, we always said hi to each other when were saw them in the different restaurants or walking around the island. It was a great time!

Something to keep in mind: for most of the excursions, if there aren’t 4 people, you’ll pay for crew and fuel (roughly double the price for just 2 people). However, as I’ll explain later this week, your host will work with other hosts to get more people to take the excursion. The island was mostly full the week we were there, and people generally like sea turtles and dolphins, so this wasn’t a problem for us. However, if you’re there during a dead week, you might be charged more if they can’t get anyone else to join you on the tour.

Miscellaneous Activities at the Park Hyatt Maldives

Generally speaking, most of the activities revolve around the spa and anything related to the ocean. However, there are a few other activities that you can partake in.

First, there’s yoga. This is free and occurs in the morning and at sunset. We did a sunset yoga class one day, and it was quite interesting. Based upon our conversation with the yoga instructor, the instructors typically live and teach on the island for a month before moving onto another island. It is essentially contracted out by the island on a rotating basis.

We were the only ones there, so we had the option of doing a more physical version of yoga or a breathing meditation-like type of yoga. We did the meditation-like type of yoga. First, we watched a video about breathing and how it occurs in the body. We then spent about 30 minutes working on our breathing techniques. It was a unique experience for me, as I had only ever done the physical version of yoga and not considered the more meditative aspects of yoga. Would I do that specific yoga class again? Probably not. Is it worth experiencing at least once when you’re in the Maldives? I think so! Note that I have really bad ADHD, so that’s probably why I struggled with yoga overall.

Second, there is a golf simulator. I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t really have a lot of interest in using a golf simulator while in the Maldives. However, if you have a game with a client coming up soon after you get back, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to go for an hour to use the golf simulator.

Third, you can hang out in the Dhoni. It’s crafted in the shape of an traditional Maldivian canoe and is quite the specimen. Other blogs made it seem like you would literally never see this place, but it’s literally right across from the main dining hall.

The main thing to do there is to hang out when it’s really hot outside, maybe read a book on a couch or something like that. We did step in while waiting to go to the dive center and found that they had educational materials set up to discuss the history and culture of the Maldives. We had wanted to visit a village close by to see how they live on a day-to-day basis, but it is our understanding that, post-Covid, they don’t offer that anymore. While we still want to do that, this sufficed to tell a lot of history of the Maldives.

Finally, there are a variety of activities geared towards kids and families. This ranges from cooking classes to sand-castle building to other activities. I’ll get to this when I write my post on the service at the Park Hyatt Maldives, but it was my impression that people could really propose anything, and, if it was physically possible, they would make it happen. I do know that they have come a long way with activities for kids as compared to reviews from a decade ago.

Next time, I would love to take a “back-of-house” tour of the resort, as I would love to see how they make it run on a day-to-day basis. (Really, I just want to see the water plant more than anything.)

What Does a Rainy Day Look Like for the Park Hyatt Maldives Activities?

The Maldives is in one of those weird spots in the world where you don’t really know if it’s going to rain on any given day. However, you can predict when it’s more likely to rain.

Northern summer is monsoon season. While we went in the northern winter, we had one “rainy” day (it rained for like an hour). However, during the rainy season, you will definitely get rain…and it will pour. It is monsoon season after all!

So, given that most activities are outdoor activities, what is there to do? First of all, note that there are umbrellas everywhere, so you won’t need to worry about that.

Next, this is where I think that the Park Hyatt Maldives really stood out: on the day when rain was simply predicted (it did rain for an hour, but it was a light drizzle), I got a message from our host with a document entitled, “Drenched Delights at Hadahaa.”

They basically have activities in their back pocket to do when it’s raining. For my specific stay (I don’t know if it changes up), they had a free hour in the golf simulator, a rain meditation at the Dhoni (which is kind of like a pavilion of some sorts, and they might do formal check-in there at times?), and complimentary hot chocolate and marshmallows at the bar.

Because it didn’t really rain, we didn’t partake in any of these. However, it was cool to see that they had some activities planned for when it was going to rain. You can see a copy of the document below.

I would imagine that they could come up with other ideas as well based upon your suggestion. In the Dhoni on the day where it was supposed to rain, we saw that they had set up a screen and projector, and a family was watching a movie. Not a bad place to watch a movie if you don’t feel like you can go into the water, in my opinion. The Park Hyatt Maldives has tons of activities to do on a rainy day.

Conclusion

It’s well-known that you go to the Park Hyatt Maldives to rest and relax. Hopefully, I’ve shown that there are a ton of activities to do on the island. As you can see, the Park Hyatt Maldives activities are top-notch. We had a great time partaking in a decent number of them, and we are ready to go back!

What do you think about the Park Hyatt Maldives activities? Do you think you would enjoy your time there?

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