Review - Oasis Luxury Resort
The Oasis is a beach resort that models itself after Broome, Western Australia - a real place. It is owned by ReLUX Vacations, which also owns the Aurora Ski Resort (see review)
It’s a restricted sim, meaning only guests and staff have access. Like the half a dozen other closed resorts in Second Life, you book your room via the website, pay someone in advance in-world, and then get a group tag shortly before ‘check in’, which is 4pm SLT (a point I'll return to).
Check in involves turning up at a reception desk and being given a quick tour of the resort, before you are shown to your suite.
We stayed for two nights in an underwater ‘Melbourne Suite’, which costs 3500L a night, and has glass walls and ceilings looking right onto various fish swimming past.
My partner Muti again came with me on this visit, and the pictures in this review are hers.
Overall look and feel
When entering the resort you tp into the main building, after which the villas are arranged in a horseshoe pattern around a huge pool (the exception is the underwater villas).
Among other things, the Oasis has a beach, a camel riding area, a restaurant and cafe, and a vineyard.
It’s hard to really faithfully recreate an RL place in SL, and so like many other resorts in SL, the Oasis has more of a generic beach theme about it, with Australian touches.
Having said that, arguably it tries to pack in too much, and in that sense reminds me of the Dubai-themed Ermias Lifestyle, where it looks like the owners took a list of Dubai things and crammed them into one sim.
Less is sometimes more, and you should give a chance for the features of your resort to ‘breathe’ with enough space..
The public areas however are very RL like, and remind me of places I have actually been.
This includes the lobby area, the way the villas are positioned around the pool (as well as the pool itself), and the treetops rooftop cafe. As a standalone beach resort (as opposed to a specifically Australian one), these parts worked for me.
Rating - 3/5
The Suites
The suites range in price from 2500L a night for a poolside Sapphire Villa, to 7000L a night for the underwater Sydney Suite, which is suitable for groups.
As mentioned, we stayed in the Melbourne Suite (3500L), which is underwater.
An elevator takes you down below the sea, and you have a good sized reception and dining area, a large bathroom, and a bedroom with a hot tub. You can see the fish and coral reef from all four sides, which is definitely a great feature.
The other villas are largely spread around the pool, with fences in between them. Some might consider that a bit enclosed, but as I’ve said, many RL resorts work exactly like that. Those villas have direct pool access, including to the several poolside bars.
Rating - 4 / 5
Amenities and features
The Oasis certainly has a lot to see and do. There is a spa, a nightclub, a restaurant, a salt sauna, a vineyard, a long beach with a camel tour (rez a camel and get on top), and a rooftop cafe.
The beach had red sand, and lots of beach cabanas, along with the camels. It didn’t wow me in the same way as other resort ones did, like the one at Lush Tulum.
We did however like the spa, and the very large pool, as well the rooftop cafe. Also, the underwater area was really well done.
Note that the resort charges extras for things like vineyard tours, spa treatments, and of course dinner.
Rating - 4/ 5
The animations
The resort itself has a mature rating, but it asks for ‘adult’ activities to happen in the villas. We noticed adult anims in both the sauna and room, and PG ones elsewhere.
Our villa had a ruckus bed (standard for most Second Life resorts, with most of the furniture being adult-animated in one way or another. We did have a few problems in getting the anims to change, but that could be an SL glitch.
Rating - 4 / 5
The check in time - important if you are in Europe, Africa or Asia
As I said, check-in is at 4pm SLT. In fact, you are given an hour to arrive and get your group tag (the Aurora Resort check-in, which has the same owners, has a 5pm check-in so clearly they go from one to the other).
That’s OK if you are in the Americas, but 4pm SLT is Midnight in London, 1am in Rome, 2am in Athens and 4am in Dubai…..you get the idea.
Though 4pm SLT is standard for these resort sims, our request to arrive a bit earlier has always been accommodated. This time though, we didn’t even get a ‘we’ll see what we can do’, just a flat no.
This is made worse by the fact that while other resorts allow you to leave at 3pm SLT, check out at the Oasis is at Noon. In other words, you can make up for a late check in time (for Europeans) with a late check out time, but not here. That means we really only stayed one night, as due to the late hour, we left soon after arrival on the first night.
I understand people work, and can’t just rush home, but we did ask ten days in advance, and surely some solution was possible. For example, we noticed that there is a board with a list of staff on duty, could someone else have let us in or could we have been sent our group tags while skipping the RP check-in (which only took 5 mins anyway)?
There were a few other small customer services issues too, which I have touched on in the Aurora review, as we booked both resorts together.
Other factors
Price - 2500 to 7000L
Lag - We noticed some in the public areas, not so much in our underwater suite
Is it adult? Mature, adult anims are in the rooms, PG ones around the resort
Privacy - Not an issue, the rooms have security and as a restricted sim, only guests and staff are on-site anyway
Overall
Some of the Oasis is really well done. The underwater area is beautiful, and the main resort building and horseshoe pool does a great job of recreating an RL resort.
However, bits of the resort seemed a little cramped, and some of the Australian features came across as random.
Then there was the customer services issue. We paid 7000L in advance for two nights, a premium rate for somewhere that styles itself as a premium resort, and so it was disappointing that they didn’t even try to come up with a solution for the fact that we (like many SL residents) don’t live in North America.
Other beach resorts to consider
If you are looking for an amazing tropical / beach sim, I highly recommend Lush Tulum.
Though I have yet to stay there, I have heard good things about the Thailand-style Savasdee Resort. Finally, we are also going to be staying at the Maldives Themed Nobu SL very soon, look out for the review.
Thank you to Muti for coming with me and taking the pics, follow her on Flickr here, and visit her destination blog here!