Showing posts with label Atlantis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atlantis. Show all posts

Friday, 25 January 2008

The Atlantis (a video)

We found this YouTube video on The Atlantis resort. It does a great job of providing an accurate accounting of the resort and showing the pretty scenery. (It’s kind of infomercial for our tastes) Sure sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

It’s from a Canadian outfit called Romantic Planet. To be fair, nowhere in the video do they show a destination wedding at Atlantis in progress (something we had the opportunity to see). We didn’t find much, if anything, about The Atlantis to be romantic with all the young, screaming ultra-entitled children running around. (See previous post Our Honeymoon – The Atlantis) Although, we thought we would post this video here to give you some balance.

At the end of the video, Romantic Planet makes an excellent point – there are many islands in the Bahamas and you can surely find one your speed. For us, we were on our honeymoon and we wanted to enjoy each other (it’s a honeymoon after all). However, if you are the kind of people that need things to do and stuff to buy, go to Atlantis. However, if you can create your own romance by long moonlight walks on the beach, followed by cocktails and then heading back to your suite, you should probably look someplace else.

Friday, 30 November 2007

Our Honeymoon – The Atlantis


We were married on Grand Bahama Island, but decided to go to a different island for the honeymoon. Based on a recommendation from a coworker, we chose to go to The Atlantis resort on New Providence and Paradise Island.

I guess we bought into the hype – the website, the marketing materials, etc. It seemed so adult and romantic. After a week with our families, we thought it was exactly what we wanted.

What we found was a HUGE resort that was wall-to-wall children. Atlantis is Disneyland on the beach. We estimated the average age at the place was somewhere south of 14. Not what we were looking for. We ended up spending a fair amount of time down the beach at the One And Only Ocean Club (where Lionel Ritchie was staying and we bumped into him several times).

We tried to get off the Atlantis property as much as possible. We went into Nassau for a day. And another day, we went to the other side of the island for scuba diving with Stuart Cove’s. This is a big dive outfit, but they do a good job with personal service. The Hollywood Bowl dive site is fantastic and we got to have a close encounter with some live lobsters.

We also spent a fair amount of time in the casino, where Laura played the roulette wheel with our wedding date and it hit. So we made a fair amount of money in the casino. But the other facilities, namely the restaurants, were very over priced and were of disappointing quality. Lance had to send his lobster back to the kitchen at the Bahamian Club because it was overcooked and rubbery (and then we got attitude from the staff for complaining about the inferior quality). We loved the food at Fathoms, but were disappointed in the large numbers of screaming children. The restaurants in the Marina Village were better, both in terms of quality and price. Our favorite was Carmine’s – one of our favorite restaurants back in New York, so we enjoyed it here.

In addition to honeymoons, The Atlantis also does destination weddings. We saw several weddings going on while we were there. The weddings were held out in the common areas, so you’re still dealing with lots of gawkers and people walking very close by, so think carefully about this one. At one wedding, a group of young girls in bathing suits decided to join right in on the wedding. There’s nothing inherently wrong with lots of children, it’s just helpful to know that’s what you’re getting before you show up there. If you want a “family friendly” wedding, this might be your place.

We’re glad we did it once (been there, done that). Had we done more research, we probably would have gone someplace else with a more romantic and sophisticated atmosphere.