Atlantis Resort - Best and Worst
You can have a great family vacation here in the Bahamas, if you kno
Nov 27, 2006
The Atlantis Resort is fun for children and adults, but it's not all paradise on Paradise Island. These are my choices for the best and worst of an Atlantis vacation.
The Atlantis Resort & Casino, on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, is famous for its water slides and abundant marine animal life. All those pools and slides makes this part of the Bahamas a great family vacation, with children's activities and child-friendly wading pools galore. Before you take a family vacation at The Atlantis Resort, it would be useful to consider the three best and worst things about this resort.
The Three Best Things about The Atlantis Resort
- The waterslides. Aquaquest, a new addition to the Atlantis Resort and Casino on Paradise Island, continues in the Atlantis tradition of bigger, faster, more exciting water slides. The Atlantis' former prizeholder for highest slide, the Mayan Temple waterslide, is pretty much dwarfed by Aquaquest's highest slide, the Power Tower. The Power Tower (it's completed, and due to start operating in January) is almost twice as high as the Mayan Temple Waterslide - which, by the way, is already scarily high to begin with. The Power Tower uses jets of water to speed up your trip down the slides and tubes, and also to push you up inclines. The Atlantis calls this "master blaster" technology. This is a first for me: Before the Atlantis Aquaquest, I hadn't heard of sliding UP a water slide. Sounds like an awesome ride.
- The dolphin swim and encounter. This relatively new activity opened in 2007. Dolphin Cay provides a home for dolphins displaced by Hurricane Katrina. It's a planned dolphin swim and encounter pool (well, an 11-acre pool, to be precise), and, in keeping with the rest of Atlantis, is sure to be fun for children and the rest of your family. I haven't experienced The Atlantis Resort's Dolphin Cay swim and encounter first hand - yet - but if it's anything like the crowd-pleaser at SeaWorld, it's going to be massively popular.
- The casino. After a day spent with your children, splashing in the lagoon and sliding down the Power Tower, its nice to get some adult time. For my husband, this means leaving our children with an older family member or sitter, and heading down to the casino. Now, I'm not the biggest casino fan around - and Texas Hold-em still stumps me - but it's hard not to get caught up in the excitement of winning hands at the blackjack table. Crowds gather quickly and murmur encouragement when the house seems to be on a losing streak, and empty glasses are quickly refilled. The Atlantis Casino is a clean, classy operation. I like it more than anything I've seen in Atlantic City, in any case! Which brings me to...
The Three Worst Things about The Atlantis Resort
- The casino is smoke-filled. It would be great if it were made a no smoking casino. I imagine that people who are even more turned off by smoke-filled rooms than I, would have a miserable time in the casino. Anyone old enough to remember when airplanes had smoking and no smoking sections, remembers how useless that designation was.
- The food is expensive. Now, the Atlantis Resort is more expensive than many other equivalent resorts, but it is also, surely, more expensive to run. Those fish and dolphins don't feed and clean up after themselves, you know. For budget tips and money-saving ideas, please click here.
- The time-share people really put on a hard sell, which is annoying - especially when you've already plopped down a hefty sum to simply vacation at the Atlantis resort in the first place. It got to the point where I wanted to walk the long way around Coral Towers, rather than a straight line through it and deal with those smiling come-ons.
Despite its shortcomings, The Atlantis Resort is really a great spot for children of all ages. Come prepared, and your family will have a really fun vacation on Paradise Island.
Related, on Suite 101:
Atlantis - Bahamas on a Budget
The copyright of the article Atlantis Resort - Best and Worst in Luxury Travel is owned by Jennifer W. Miner. Permission to republish Atlantis Resort - Best and Worst in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
