Travel Review: Atlantis, Paradise Island, Bahamas

Yes - Atlantis is beautiful...the property can be described as a cross between a water park, aquarium, and the ultimate island resort.  But after a week of calm isolation and soothing remoteness, it felt a little more like arriving at "Disneyland on crack".

After our plane arrived in Nassau we met up with a shuttle service for the 40 minute ride to Paradise Island and the Atlantis Hotel.  Walking in to the Coral Tower lobby was like walking in to a war zone.  The check-in line was practically out the door and groups of crabby kids and impatient parents were huddled about every available space.

With only three employees behind the front desk the line took us approximately an hour.  We finally "checked-in" around 3:30pm to find out that half of our rooms (we had four total) were not yet ready and we would have to wait at least an hour until we could get inside.  Beside the fact that check-out time is 11am apparently it takes the maid service about five hours to complete the room turn-over.  Not a great way to welcome your guests paying an arm-and-a-leg for their overpriced rooms.

So the family decided to pass the time by having an early dinner at Johnny Rockets. A typical burger style diner, but what would typical cost you $7 in the States cost you $15 at the Atlantis.

After dinner we followed our given instructions and called the "Prompt Response" extension on the internal hotel phone to see if our rooms were now ready.  After some difficulty finding our reservation, the Not-So-Prompt response did confirm that our rooms were now ready and we finally got into our rooms around 6:30pm.

Our rooms were on the 4th floor of the Coral Tower and had a great view of the Royal Towers with the "Bridge Suite" and were directly above one of the predator lagoons that contained at least 30 stingrays and assorted small sharks. Very Cool.

Excited to settle in and get out in the great pools on the property, we quickly changed into our swimsuits and went downstairs to retrieve a wristband for pool access and towels from one of the few-and-far-between "Towel Huts".  After swiping our room key card and handing us pool towels the Hut Lady crushed our spirits when she refused to issue us wristbands, because in her words "you wouldn't be able to use them anyway."  Although the nights are extremely warm and the sun sets around 8:30pm in the Bahamas, the Atlantis closes all their swimming pools at 7pm.  I seriously believe the Atlantis purposefully closes their pools early in an effort to force all the guests into the resort's restaurants and casino, where the slots are tight and the tables are crowded. (greedy $$$) Also thereby forcing all patrons to "hit the showers" at approximately the same time after returning to their hotel rooms from the pools- which could be an explanation for the lack of hot water in the room's shower. (half of the rooms my family stayed in were without hot water during our entire 4 night stay.)

Speaking of the resort's restaurants, there is a plethora of dining establishments and also dining plan options available for your stay.  However the food quality does not match the high cost at these restaurants and leaves much to be desired.  Sure there are probably a few exceptions, such as the Mosaic Buffet and Bobby Flay's MESA restaurant, (each of which are located in the uber-expensive Cove Tower).  The rest of us non-billionaire's are forced to fight for reservations amongst the riff-raff and settle for the average quality.

Customer service at the Atlantis is unacceptable.  As another recent visitor described it, "The staff acts as if they are doing you a favor."  With automatic 18% gratuity tacked on to every single transaction, (but there's no tax either) it's easy to see why there's no incentive for attentive customer service.

But like I started this Review, Atlantis really is beautiful.  Even though the pools were closed we still got to wander the property grounds to find hidden pools of sting rays, sharks, sea turtles, dolphins, amazing manta rays and colorful tropical fish.  The property boasts that they have one of the largest marine habitats, second only to Mother Nature herself.

A new addition from my last visit in 2002 is Dolphin Cay.  A hands on encounter experience arena with 36 dolphins and 16 sea lions.  Jason and I attended one of the sea lion meet and greet interactions and we both had a lot of fun getting to know some other friendly native Californians. (And I don't mean the Santa Clara High School student we met on the Tower of Power - what are the odds that the one random person we talk to in Atlantis is from our exact same small Bay Area town.)

I could still give Atlantis the benefit of doubt - Maybe in the off-season (and not smack-dab in the middle of summer vacation), a smaller crowd could enhance the experience.  Maybe if we would not have arrived from a quiet laid back destination to a cracked out Disneyland environment the opening day experiences would not have been so bothersome.  But the cold shower and crappy customer service are hard to forgive.

It was a once in a lifetime experience for Jason.  I do feel very lucky to have been able to experience it's beauty twice myself, so far.  But we have no current intentions of raising Atlantis again.  Our Atlantis adventure is now complete.