Joy Island is an ice cream sundae of a property – vanilla ice cream topped with some tasty sauce and a few colourful sprinkles. The vanilla ice cream is the basic (quite basic) build, design and décor. If IKEA did resorts, Joy Island would be a showcase – simple, popular styling, cost effective. The chocolate sauce is the quite distinctive buffet. For a value priced property, this buffet was a good as any premium product. It featured a tenderloin beef station and fresh grilled calamari station. And it’s paste station was manned by a Italian chef making proper carbonara (not just serving up some pre-made cream sauce). The sprinkles were a few Best of the Maldives pieces I uncovered including a literal sprinkling with a sand walkway on its water villa jetty. One of my first-world problems in the Maldives is sub-baked jetties burning my tender toes.
Joy Island offers an economical resort options with few frills but without being fresh and current (rather than tired and worn like many cut-rate properties).
