Coaster Community

This is going to be one of the weakest trip reports ever.  The main reason for our drive up to Minneapolis was because Janessa wanted to redecorate and Ikea was her primary target. 

We got in late Friday night and used Priceline to score a room at the airport/mall Hilton for $50/night.  This was our first time using Priceline and based on this experience we'll be using them again.  The room was great. 

Saturday morning we checked the weather report and determined that Valleyfair would be our first activity of the day.  We only planned on spending an hour or two in the park and the rain cut that down to about 45 minutes.  Upon arriving we quickly made our way back to Renegade and found a 1 train wait for the 3^rd row.  I wasn't expecting much since our day rides last year were pretty tame.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Renegade is now broken in and was running like a champ.  We decided to give it a try in the back row and waited two cycles for our ride.  The drop actually scared Janessa a little and put a smile on my face throughout.  What a difference a year makes.  The night rides later this year are going to rock. 

The clouds were getting darker and we felt a couple of raindrops fall so we made our way over to the Giant Swing for one last ride.  It was again just a one cycle wait.  Great ride, 'nough said. 

That concludes our Valleyfair opening day report.

I’m going to start by saying some nice things about Atlantis.  The location is unbelievable.  The water is absolutely perfect.  The water park is flippin’ sweet.  The snorkeling is bad ass and there actually some decent wave action on the north side of the island.

Now I’m going to complain.  Atlantis is one of the biggest rip offs ever.  The cheapest drinks are $12 and they’re light on the alcohol.  A cheese burger is $10 plus $4 for fries plus another $4 for a drink.  And the food isn’t even that good.  Our best experience was one of the buffets and it was $46/person before tip, which is included in everything you buy.  Even the cheese burger stand in the water park tacks on a 15% tip.  Since the buffet actually filled us up and had decent food we went back to it multiple times. 

Here’s how the actual trip broke down. 

We flew in Wednesday and got the Bahamans late in the afternoon.  We booked a shuttle to Paradise Island beforehand and didn’t have any problems with the ground transport.  It took about 30 minutes to get to the hotel.  You get to see a lot of Nassau on the way, which isn’t good.  It’s pretty much a dump.  We stayed in the Royal Towers, which is pretty much the building that you see in every Atlantis advertisement.  Check-in was quick and easy.  Our room was a little disappointing though.  The ad had made it out to be a lot more than it was but since we didn’t go there to lay around a hotel room it wasn’t a big deal.  After dumping our crap in the room we headed out to get a lay of the land.  The sun was on its way down, which lead to some great photo ops.  We quickly figured out that the overall resort was going to be to our liking.  Atlantis is made up of several resorts and we hit all of them the first night.  We wound up having dinner at Bimini Road in the Marina Village.  The menu was limited and like everything else way over priced.  Janessa’s classic Cuban sandwich was pretty tasty though.