As I mentioned before, we stayed at the Atlantis Resort in Bahamas. It's located on Paradise Island, just off New Providence (where Nassau is). The setting is beautiful. White sand, gorgeous water, warm weather, warm water, Lovely. Atlantis, however, doesn't measure up to nature.
It's not cheap to begin with. You pay quite a lot for rooms and for your meal plan (which you basically have to get, because it covers most of the resort restaurants and it's hard to get away from the resort – more on that later – and without it, food would be too expensive to consider eating) but it doesn't stop there. Every second you're there, practically, you're handing over the dough by fistfuls. Everything on-site is ridiculously expensive, so that when you get back to the airport, things seem reasonable by comparison. Some if it, I'm sure is import cost, but far more is resort mark-up. And they've got a very captive audience because it's very hard to get away from the resort. It's pretty inconvenient and as usual expensive.
Not being able to get away from the resort is a pain for a few reasons. First, there's zip for shopping. I don't want to spend my whole vacation shopping, but I do love to find some interesting local jewelry or something to take home. There's not much of that. Gucci and Versace abound though. This is a large problem with Atlantis in general. Nothing in the middle. You have buffet or gourmet. Tchatchke shop or Versace.
Having said that, the food was largely very good at the gourmet restaurants. Buffet food was frequently cold and the service matched it. Speaking of service, everywhere you go you pay an automatic 15% gratuity, even when you go to a buffet and they won't refill your damned Coke and even if you wait 45 minutes from appetizer to entree with no explanation and then your food arrives cold and your steak tough.
In-room movies were also interesting. We tried to watch one movie and the signal came in very poorly. We called down and they told us to try another one. No problem there. So we tried the first again. Same problem. “Bad tape” they said. See, apparently, their on-demand movie service is a room with a bunch of VCRs that get routed up to guest rooms. Rather … err.. quaint for a resort like this.
The resort itself is very beautifully land-scaped and its best feature is definitely its beaches and pools. The waterslides are a nice idea, but there are so many people that the wait is very long. 10 minute wait for a 10 second ride does not compute.
The final word on Atlantis: just not worth it for the money you pay. That's not to say we didn't have fun … we had a great time! We just think we could have had just as much fun somewhere else … for less money.