Review - Winter in New York ⭐️
Times Square - where you check in
Overall - Highly Recommended
Update (March 2021) - Winter in New York is now closed
Winter in New York is a new resort experience from the team behind Timor Isles, which has now closed for the Winter.
It includes a variety of New York themed attractions (Central Park, the Rockefeller Center skating rink, the Statue of Liberty etc), spread around a series of streets designed to look like Manhattan. Around the sim you then have hotel rooms of varying size and cost.
Winter in New York is restricted (you get a group tag for the duration of your stay), and like other restricted resorts, there’s an RP check-in.
Normally I’m not a fan of these, preferring to just go straight into the resort, but Winter in New York does it really well. You arrive at “JFK”, go down to an arrival counter where someone greets you (on voice) and gives you a subway ticket.
You then get on the subway, meet someone else, get handed over to a yellow cab driver, before you are finally taken to the check-in desk, where you are given your room keys.
Muti (Camille Milos), came with me on this visit, and we both reckoned that having everyone lined up waiting to greet arrivals in rotation, must be quite a big undertaking.
In fact, one of the things that stood out was the efforts staff members went through to help us. A broken shower was immediately fixed, and given that a 4pm SLT check in time is not so good for Europeans, the resort agreed to let us arrive a bit earlier.
The detail and ratings
The look and feel
Statue of Liberty Boardwalk
Winter in New York does a pretty good job of replicating the look and feel of the ‘real’ New York.
When looking out the window of our hotel, the view was like that you’d get in the actual NYC, and the street scenery was authentic.
Of course, one thing that is hard to do in SL is recreate the scale of a place, so of course, the SL Central Park feels quite compact.
However, overall the team did an excellent job here.
Rating - 4.5 / 5
The facilities
“Empire Steak” Restaurant
We spent two days here and could easily have spent several more, you won’t run out of things to do.
Winter in New York includes Central Park with a skating rink (there are either freebie ice skates, or better ones at 250L available), a steak restaurant, the Statue of Liberty boardwalk, a Starbucks, a bar, and a place where you can have a ‘cooking class’ - to name just a few things.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the staff try to get guests involved, through daily sleigh rides, and an on-going photo competition.
Rating - 4.5 / 5
The rooms
Coffee in the room, looking out over the resort
We stayed in one of the cheaper hotel rooms, “Room 301” of the “Dinzel Hotel”, at 2500L a night.
Nevertheless, it was still the size of a suite with a living room, complete with private bar, a bedroom, a good sized bathroom, and great views looking out into the sim.
The room was really well designed though the anims threw us a little bit. (see next section)
Rating - 4 / 5
The anims
The shower and bed both have the Ruckus engine. However this is now the fourth resort that I have seen that hides a Ruckus bed inside a PG bed, for aesthetic reasons. It took us a while to figure this out, (be sure to highlight transparent to find it).
Best resort bath so far
The bath anims were however some of the best I’ve seen so far in a resort.
Overall the anims are good but the PG cuddle anims at different public places (park benches and so on) did take a bit of adjusting.
Rating - 4/5
Other factors
Is the resort adult? Moderate, but as mentioned there are adult anims in the rooms
Privacy - This is a restricted sim, only guests and staff have access
Lag - I encountered a little, it’s quite a detailed sim. Nothing to really affect the experience though.
Prices - Rooms range from 2500 to 3500 a night. We didn’t begrudge it, given the number of staff involved at check in, the detail and the scale.
Conclusion - Highly recommended ⭐️
Skating rink and coffee shop
Winter in New York joins the ‘Highly Recommended’ list of places you should definitely visit and stay in. Remember, it’s only here for a few months, in the Summer the team here switches back to Timor Isles
Camille “Muti” Milos came with me on this visit, and this review reflects her views as much as mine. Muti has a brand new destination blog out, be sure to check it out and follow her on Flickr.
