Review - Cova Restaurant and Resort
Introduction
Update - The Cova Resort will be closing on 7 August 2022
Imagine you wanted to fly a date to a secret underground restaurant on a private jet, have dinner, and then stay in a resort which you’d have all to yourselves. How much would this cost you in RL? $10,000? More?
In SL this experience is available for you for 3700L at the Cova Resort. My SO, Aria Christen, and myself went to try it for ourselves, and this is the review.
In conclusion, the overall idea and concept is excellent.
Parts of the experience didn’t quite hang together or flow that well for us, but with a few changes and updates the Cova owners could turn something that’s good into something that’s great.
Cova Website for more information (bookings need to be made in advance)
All photos except the final one are from Aria. Please follow her excellent Flickr feed!
Overall look and feel
The Cova Restaurant and Resort is built into a hillside and a series of caves on a plot of land with sea (and eventually Blake Sea) access.
Arrival involves a short flight from Angels International Airport on a D300 private jet to the small airstrip attached to the resort.
After having arrived, we were then taken direct to the restaurant, which is in an underground cave, and is beautifully done.
Though I appreciate it was already late for the owners (who are on SLT+9), we wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to check us in first, let us go to our villa and change, and then come to dinner, this is what would happen in RL after all.
After dinner (more on that later), we were taken on a tour, shown to our cottage, given a series of LMs, and were left to it. The whole resort was then ours to explore.
The landscaping is really nicely done, though I gather that as this isn’t a new place, some parts look better than others.
It’s also well laid out, and the idea of having a small private resort in a hillside and caves, with a beach at the bottom is a very good one.
What did strike us though is that some of it didn’t quite hang together, though the caves feature prominently, there isn’t a consistent theme.
For example there is a kids’ funfair area with food trucks, as well as an adult themed outdoor hot spring.
Given the constraints of space, concentrating on one thing (e.g the adult caves theme) and having consistency in terms of look and feel might have worked better.
Overall - 3.5 / 5
The rooms
When staying here, you have the resort to yourselves, whether as a couple or a group.
We stayed in the cottage, which is more couples and adult themed. This has a terrace overlooking the caves, a bedroom and living room. However, there is no bathroom, which for me personally is something I look for.
In addition to the cottage there’s also the so-called suite, really a villa, which we thought was much better designed and looked more premium.
This, however, has PG furniture in the bedroom, living room and bathroom - clearly this is intended for a family audience.
The villa really does look great, and the owners should make this the main accommodation that they offer to couples as well as families.
(Update - the owners contacted me to say that the furniture can be swapped around here, and that the suite has a different price point than the cottage,. Given that you only have one couple or group staying here at one time, my comment would still be that this should be the default option offered to guests, as it’s much better).
Overall - 4 / 5
The facilities
There’s a lot packed into a small amount of space.
There’s a restaurant inside the caves. The RP was good, but having just been to the brand new Fete inside the Ishtar Hotel, which for us has set the standard for SL restaurants, the menus and the furniture could maybe do with a refresh.
Then there is a cave mini-golf experience, a zipline which takes you down to the water, a private beach, a small spa, a games area, a hot springs pool (our favourite), and a family area with food trucks, bouncy castles and other kid friendly games.
I think having all these things together would work if you have one or two sims to play with, but that’s not the case here, and having all this into a small area meant that the theme (which should be exclusive, underground cave resort) kind of got lost.
It might be better to turn it into either an adult resort OR a family one, but not both.
However, you certainly won’t be bored when coming here or run out of things to do. You are also on the mainland, with water access (the Blake Sea is 18 sims away), so you can rez a boat and explore.
And on the subject of rezzing items, you can rez during your stay - no group tag needed, so you don’t need to make room in your groups.
Overall - 3.5 / 5
The animations
Our cottage featured furniture from Nutmeg, which is inclusive - e,g, MM and FF as well as MF. This is of course a plus, and not something you can say about a lot of SL adult furniture.
We didn’t try too many of the other anims, except in the hot springs and restaurant - but these worked well.
You can also bring and rez your own anims, which is what Aria did for pictures.
Overall - 4 / 5
Other considerations
Is the resort adult? The cottage is adult, the villa (suite) is PG, various facilities in the resort have adult anims
Price? We paid 3700L for flight, dinner and a stay where we had the resort to ourselves. I think this is good value for what you get
Lag? I had few problems, but Aria did in running Black Dragon and had to take her pictures in Firestorm
Privacy? You have the resort to yourselves, so yes.
Overall
I’m constantly asked for advice on special places to stay if going on a date, and what could be better than a private resort where you arrive on a private jet?
As a result, the owners of Cova are sitting on an excellent idea, and one for which I think there’s definitely a market.
As mentioned, there is a lot to see and do, and you will have fun here.
However, we left feeling that the owners should update parts of it, strip out some of the facilities, and give it a consistent theme throughout (for an idea of how this should be done, see the brand new Ishtar Hotel,). If they did that, they’d really have something exceptional on their hands.