courtesy: Atlantis
By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
December 6, 2010
Our room at the Atlantis was beautiful. But let’s be honest. You don’t come to the Atlantis to sleep. As a family with a toddling baby, we needed to make sure there was enough for him to do.
While Atlantis has taken major steps in recent years to appeal to adults, a major priority here is to keep the kids happy with the multiple attractions on site. #SonOfJae was far too young for many of the organized kid activities the resort had scheduled, but he still had a blast.
The resort has a huge waterpark (Aquaventure), which is included in your hotel stay, that has a water-fort for younger children. We all enjoyed going down the lazy river. These activities fit right into his daily schedule, which included playing in the sand, swimming in the ocean and eyeballing the resort’s resident dolphins.
He especially loved checking out all the fish in the aquariums. He had been to an aquarium back home — the Shedd, in Chicago — but the floor-to-ceiling exhibits at the Atlantis were more kid-friendly. He could get up-close and personal with the fish without having to be hoisted on our shoulders.
There are so many exhibits throughout the resort that there was always something to do.
The meal plans are on the expensive side. Our child ate so little of the breakfasts we ordered for him that most of his food went to waste. (He was only two years old during this trip.) We stopped purchasing the breakfast plan for our son and ended up feeding him bits from our plate, which technically isn’t allowed. But the servers didn’t seem to mind. They even brought him bananas to munch on every morning.
Just the facts: Atlantis Bahamas, One Casino Drive, Suite 41, Paradise Island, Bahamas (242-363-3000)
From their website:
In 1998, the 1,200-room Royal Towers opened – a major architectural achievement of arches, domes and spires, flanked by soaring towers that appear to have arisen from the sea — based on the myth that inspired them. Millions of dollars were spent commissioning museum-quality art from renowned artists from Europe, Africa, The Bahamas and the United States. The Caribbean’s largest casino was built in the Royal Towers, and contains millions of dollars in art. The most notable of which are Temple of the Moon and Temple of the Sun by glass sculptor Dale Chihuly, insured for $1 million apiece. Upon opening, the casino also offered a gaming industry first: a wall of windows – bringing light and the outdoors in.
Following a decade of success, Atlantis, Paradise Island continued its growth as Kerzner International embarked on a third phase of development with its approximately $1 billion expansion in 2007. Adding to Atlantis’ existing 2,317 rooms and the world’s largest open-air marine habitat, the Phase III expansion includes: the luxurious 600-room resort within the resort, The Cove Atlantis; a 497-key condo-hotel, The Reef Atlantis; a 14-acre dolphin habitat and education center, Dolphin Cay; a 63-acre addition to the waterscape, now called Aquaventure and a total of 140 acres; Aura, a nightclub from the operators of Hakkasan Group; approximately 100,000 additional square feet of new conference facilities and a total of over 500,000 indoor and outdoor space creating the largest conference space in the Caribbean; and the 30,000 square-foot flagship Mandara Spa.
