Family-Friendly Paradise: A Review of Kuramathi Island in the Maldives with a Toddler
- 15 hours ago
- 4 min read
During our ten-day trip to the Maldives with our three-year-old daughter, after hours of painstaking research, we selected Kuramathi Island for our toddler-friendly Maldivian adventure.
How to choose a toddler friendly resort in the Maldives
With hundreds of options to choose from, and a vast range of price points, choosing the perfect hotel in the Maldives can feel like a daunting task. The first thing I did was narrow down the choice to hotels that allowed three-year-olds into the kids club at no extra fee. This was an absolute essential for us, because we wanted to go scuba diving without incurring huge babysitting fees. Kids club information was hard to track down, involving a lot of manual searching of websites and reviews, but eventually I compiled a list of Maldives hotels with kids clubs for three-year-olds as my starting point.
Beyond this, I narrowed down the search by budget. We planned to spend approximately £6,000 per person for flights and hotel - with some flexibility depending on the dining package available. The Maldives is typically a big budget, luxury destination - our moderate budget did restrict our choices but still gave us some excellent options to choose from.
Finally, I prioritised hotels with very good house reefs that would also offer us an opportunity to swim with manta rays. I searched reviews on TripAdvisors, checked professional reviews from The Times and used the exceptionally useful Island Attributes checklists on Purely Maldives.
Why we chose Kuramathi Island
After weeks of research and deliberation, we chose Kuramathi for our toddler-friendly trip to the Maldives because it satisfied all of the criteria above. The kids club was one of the largest we had seen within our price bracket, with good operation hours. The option to chose a full board dining basis, rather than all inclusive, worked perfectly for our family (we aren’t big drinkers).
The transfer times are reasonable - 90 minutes from Male via speedboat and 20 minutes via seaplane.
The house reef overall had very good to excellent reviews, with previous guests mentioning how easy it was to access via the jetty or beach. Importantly, we knew that we would stand an excellent chance of snorkelling or diving with manta rays.
Accommodation
We stayed in a Garden Villa which was one minute from the beach, and just three minutes to the buffet restaurant. It was quiet, cool and the perfect place to relax during the heat of the day. The sleeping set-up worked perfectly for a small family of three, with our daughter in a single bed in a corner and the king-size four poster featuring useful curtains to screen our reading lights. There was plenty of storage for our clothes and suitcases - although I should note that we do travel pretty light.
We absolutely loved the generously sized bathroom, complete with an outdoor (but totally private) shower surrounded by luscious vegetation. In the evenings, after our daughter was in bed, we enjoyed relaxing and reading on our veranda.
Food
Our full board package included meals at buffet restaurants, tea and coffee at breakfast, and still or sparkling Kuramathi water throughout the day. We were hugely impressed by the quality of the food at the Haruge buffet restaurant; probably the best buffet we have ever eaten at. At breakfast, we enjoyed almond croissants and mango cronuts that were honestly patisserie standard. At lunch and dinner, we particularly loved curries, stir fries, daals, sushi and fresh chapatis. Our three-year-old is a picky eater, but she was happily satisfied with pancakes, pasta, fish fingers, mozzarella sticks, tropical fruit and some truly excellent chocolate cake.
We did not visit any of the à la carte restaurants or bars. However, we indulged in daily trips to The Palm for excellent gelato.
Activities
We spent the majority of our 10-day holiday in the water, one way or another, exactly as we had hoped! The house reef is excellent for both snorkelling and diving - with a huge abundance of reef fish, and larger species like groupers, Napoleon fish, black tip and white tip reef sharks. While the coral is shallower areas is mostly bleached, there is healthy and vibrant soft, hard and fan corals in some of the more sheltered, deeper waters.
Having not dived for four years, we did a refresher course with Rasdhoo Divers led by Wata. This involved an incredibly reassuring skills refresher, followed by a beautiful dive on the house reef. We also dived at Madivaru, and were treated to an amazing experience with a fever of eagle rays.
A real highlight was the manta ray excursion, during which we swam with six different oceanic manta rays feeding and swimming near the surface. We also did the snorkel safari excursion, spending 40-minutes snorkelling above two mantas on a cleaning station before doing a lovely gentle drift snorkel with young green and hawksbill turtles. One excursion we missed out on but came highly recommended was the nurse shark trip.
One minor disappointment was the sunset dolphin cruise, which is advertised online with photos of spinner dolphins. However, we discovered that the spinner dolphins haven’t been in the area for a number of years. We did see five bottlenose dolphins, but they are typically much less interactive and acrobatic as a species.
Bageecha Kids Club
I cannot say enough good things about Kuramathi’s kids club - Bageecha. Weeks after we came home, my daughter was still asking to go back! The kids club itself is huge, much bigger than it looks on the website, with an indoor play area, dining, sleep room, and outdoor space with two splash pads and swimming pool. The staff are incredibly nurturing and attentive, encouraging the children to take part in crafts, themed activities like treasure hunts and even learn new skills, like dressing themselves. Our daughter loved the splash pads so much that she never wanted to leave. She gained so much confidence during our holiday thanks to the kids club, and as a result continued to flourish at nursery and other activities when we got home.
Overall, our trip to Kuramathi with our toddler was one of the best holidays we have ever been on! We would highly recommend it as a moderately priced Maldives resort with an exceptional kids club and incredible wildlife experiences.
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