Review - Canary Islands Resort
All pictures by Aria Christen, rights reserved
Summary
Canary Islands SL is one of a series of new beach resorts that have opened up in time for the Northern Hemisphere summer.
Aria and myself went to have a look, and stayed for two nights.
With so many beach resorts around it is hard to stand out in this category, but Canary Islands manages it thanks to excellent design, landscaping, and a few innovative features (such as a loyalty scheme type passport). It is however quite expensive when measured against similar places, and we both experienced lag.
Website for information and booking
The pictures in this review are from Aria, the words mine, but it reflects both of our opinions.
Overall look and feel
This is a closed resort meaning you book via the website and get a group tag on check-in (see here for the difference between open and closed hotels).
Most resorts have you check-in at 4pm, which is of course not so good for those of us in Europe, as 4 SLT is Midnight in London or 1am in Paris. Here, check in was at 2pm SLT, making it better for those of us on this side of the world.
However Aria (who is in the US) was still at work at that time, so as a general point I wonder if resorts should either make check in 3pm, or offer earlier check in on request (Vegas SL does this).
Check in itself involved a friendly welcome and tour from one of the owners, including a speedboat ride from the arrivals area to the resort.
The resort includes a main hotel building with bar, restaurant and rooftop terrace, and then a series of villas and other attractions and amenities.
Aria, who has done extensive landscaping and interior design, was impressed, in particular with the tropical landscaping. Her one comment was that some of the builds could have been phantomed, as for example there is a lot of furniture on the hotel roof-lounge which makes it quite hard to move around.
Does it look like the actual Canary Islands? Not really, but few SL resorts look like their RL equivalents. Instead it's fair to say that this is a beach / tropical resort that takes general inspiration from its RL namesake.
Overall - 4 / 5
The rooms
We stayed in the "Fall into the Woods" villa, which like the rest of the resort is really nicely designed - see above for a gallery of pictures Aria took. This includes a wrap around balcony and an outdoor area with views of the rest of the complex.
Our villa also had a sitting area, bathroom, bedroom and kitchenette. There are other villas that are more suited to groups, catering for up to eight adults.
Overall - 4 / 5
The facilities
On check in you are given a bracelet which allows you to tp to other areas of the resort. Facilities include a winery, the hotel (with bars, cafes and rooftop lounge), a jungle cafe, a cigar bar, a hiking trail (with rezzable horses) and of course a beach.
And though we didn't take part in RP activities ourselves, there is that option with both a restaurant (gallery above) and spa on site.
Suffice to say, you won't get bored here, and there is lots to do.
Finally, like a lot of other resorts, it advertises itself as a wedding venue.
Overall - 4 / 5
The animations
The villa included a mix of adult and PG furniture.
The bed was an adult bed from Myasa, which is aeros, physics and also Lovense compatible. With bluetooth enabled ‘toys’ such as Lovense being integrated more into SL furniture and clubs, I can see many more resorts doing so in future, but this is the first time I saw this in a resort.
The animations were good, but one downside is that there are no MM or FF options.
The bath was from Loft and Aria, while there was also a Black Nest adult shower, with decent anims.
Overall - 3.5 / 5
Other considerations
It's worth mentioning the price, we paid 10,000 for two adults for two nights, or 5000 a night - as Aria pointed out, a nightly stay here is s almost what the two of us pay for our homestead a week.
This makes it one of the most expensive resorts in SL, costing more than the highest priced rooms / suites in other high end places like Vegas SL, the Ishtar or Ritz.
We’d recommend lowering the prices by at least a third, and / or throwing in some RP activities such as dinner and spa and make it into a vacation package.
However, what we did like was that on check-in you are given the chance to apply for a “passport”, which seems to work like a loyalty card, where you get discounts on future stays. This is a good idea.
There is also a fair amount of lag.I use a newish (2021) macbook pro and of course SL is not too mac friendly, but it's the first time I was at a resort where I wasn't able to run graphics on high, which given the excellent design is a shame.
Aria was able to take pictures in Black Dragon, but this involved her having to go away and do other things in RL while everything rezzed, Aria again recommended phantoming and descripting where possible.
The resort as a whole is moderate, but as mentioned there are plenty of adult options in the room.
Overall
There was a lot we liked about Canary Islands, and the owners have introduced innovations like lovense enabled furniture, and a loyalty card system that they deserve credit for. The design is of a really high standard and the tropical landscaping in particular is beautiful.
The two watch-outs we had were around the lag (you will have issues on an older machine), and the high cost. However those factors aside, this is a resort that we recommend.
