| Aquaventure at Atlantis 4/16/08 - 4/20/08 |
| Written by Jason | |
| Sunday, 20 April 2008 | |
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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. We got an early start on day two. We figured that the water park would be open at 10am and we were wrong it’s more like 11:05 or so. While at the water park or one of the surrounding pools you can get a wristband and score towels at several towel stands. I should also mention that the water park is included in the price of the room, which is a major bonus. Since we had some time to blow we explored the water park and kept finding more and more cool stuff. This is one of the highlights of the resort. There aren’t a ton of attractions in the park but everything they have kicks booty. We also found the cove, which wound up being one of our favorite locations throughout the trip. Once the park opened up we went right for the Power Tower, which is a slide complex that includes 3 master blaster slides and a vertical drop slide. We started with The Surge. It’s the master blaster at the top of the complex. It has a great double down drop with a launch up into a twisting tunnel section. After that you’re dumped into a lazy river that blows ever other lazy river out of the water. The river includes multiple rapids sections, a wave section and several pool exits along it’s mile long course. It also takes you back to the Power Tower and puts you in line for the other two master blaster slides using conveyer belts. We tried The Drop, which included a couple of nice master blaster bunny hops in a row and then put us back in the lazy river. Instead of taking the 20-30 minute trip back to the final Power Tower master blaster we hopped out and went to the racing slides at the Mayan Temple. These are two speed slides with an air hill half way down. They also kicked a lot of booty. Next on our list was the Leap of Faith, which is another vertical speed slide that shoots you through a shark tank. The slide is great but you’re going so fast they could shoot you through a nacho platter and you wouldn’t know the difference. While in line for the Leap of Faith a couple of kids told us that The Abyss was way better and close to 100 feet (Leap of Faith is only about 60 feet). After clearing the shark tank we headed back over to the Power Tower and found a really short line at The Abyss. People are terrified of it because it’s a drop slide in a tunnel and all you see is people disappearing really quickly, which is followed by a lot of screaming. It’s one of my favorite slides ever. There’s a handle above the tunnel opening and once the light turns green you can fling yourself into nothingness. I don’t think that I even touched the slide for the first 10 feet. The slide levels off briefly outside and then dips again and drops you off in a cave a ways away from the actual starting point. The cave is also surrounded by aquariums. After spending a ton of money on a below average lunch we decided to check out the ocean. We were lucky and found nice sized waves on Thursday. They were probably only about 3 feet but they were great to jacking around. We spent a good hour or so getting our asses handed to us by the ocean. The water was pretty warm as well. It was time for a little R&R at this point. We washed the salt water and sand off and laid around for a while on the beach. That night we went to the Water’s Edge buffet that is located in the Coral Towers. They advertised lobster. We figured it would be all you can eat and we were wrong, it’s one tiny tail and it was comparable to what you would find at Red Lobster. The rest of the buffet was decent though. We spent the rest of the night trying to score a buzz on $12 drinks. This isn’t easy when the drinks are lacking in alcohol. They get a point or two for tastiness but loose 5 for price and lack of potency. Friday was set aside for snorkeling. Neither Janessa or I had ever been. The price didn’t seem too bad, it was $55/person (plus the additional 15% gratuity) and it included 2.5 hours and two stops. The first stop was a ship wreck. The difficulty was navigating around the parts that stuck out of the water. There was a pretty strong current. Once we got that part nailed down it was time to jack with some fish and they were everywhere. I figured that we would see a couple and then get bored but new fish kept popping out of ever nook and cranny. Some of them even jacked with us. The wreck was surrounded by coral that housed even more fish. It was way better than I thought it would be. Stop #2 was just a long stretch of coral. Janessa spotted a yellow eel and then chased a fish that was half her size. It was the better swimmer. The 2nd stop was just as good as the first but since we had learned so much from the first stop we made much better use of our time. We’ll be doing the snorkeling thing again. The amount of calories that we burned snorkeling need to be replenished so we tried the Marketplace buffet located in the Royal Towers down the hall from our room. For only $46/person you too can eat as much as you want. This experience was better than the previous buffet and became our main dinning facility. The food was actually pretty impressive but the price still left a bad taste in my mouth. We spent the evening on the beach watching the sun go down and later that night we went to the onsite casino and thought of a new way to become intoxicated. Toss $10 in a nickel game and play really slowly. When the cocktail waitress comes place an order for something strong and give her a couple of bucks when she gets back. You can do this for a couple of hours if you’re even slightly lucky. If you’re really lucky you’ll cash out with your $10 and a nice buzz. Skip the bar. Saturday was our last full day so we decided to hit everything that we really loved. First up was a water slide that also sends you through the shark tank. This is a mild slide and it takes it’s time traversing the tank but the view is just as good from the outside. We also took a couple of dives down The Abyss. I don’t think that it could ever get old. After another crappy water park meal we spent the rest of the day at the ocean, which also doesn’t get old. Later in the day we headed away from the resort for the first time and when into downtown Nassau. The locals from the snorkeling trip pointed us towards fish fry, which is what everyone eats. It was pretty good and half of what the same meal would cost at the resort. We then walked to the downtown shopping district, which was not fun. It’s dirty and it’s basically a bunch of junk shops with constant harassment. It’s also where the cruise ships park so it’s crawling with ship people. We decided that life at the resort wasn’t so bad. On the way back the cab driver turned us on to a small restaurant just outside of the resort called Anthony’s. This was a great tip. It was affordable, had good food and the drinks had a good amount of kick. Sunday morning was spent on the beach. Sunday afternoon was spent sitting around the Nassau airport while our flight got delayed twice. 5 hours at the Nassau airport is 5 hours too many. I’m not sure if I would recommend Atlantis to anyone. The water park is the only reason to go there and not some place cheaper and I’m sure that top notch slides can be found in other parks. The price attached to everything really sucks some of the fun out of it and the quality doesn’t make up for it. Next time we’ll be doing an all inclusive resort that gets high marks for its beaches and snorkeling tours. |
I’m going to start by saying some nice things about Atlantis.
