Atlantis Bahamas Recap

We recently got back from a trip to the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Since it's a trip we might do again in the future, I decided I'd write up some "what I'd do different next time" items here.

• First off, Atlantis is EXPENSIVE. Just get it in your head to start out with. We rented a place with a kitchen and planned on eating meals in the room which helped offset the total cost. We would do a kitchen again, though.
• We ordered from Food Store 2 Go and would do that again. Having groceries delivered to your room was well worth it. Our flight got in too late Friday for them to deliver, so we had to stick around in the room Saturday morning instead of being able to go out right away, but it wasn't too bad.
• We should have ordered more bottled water from the grocery store. I'm the only one in the family that drinks soda, so we had twelve 12-oz cans of Coke Zero delivered. But it would have been just fine ordering more water and less soda. (We ordered 24 16-oz bottles of water). The water from the tap was drinkable, but a bit salty, so having more bottled water would have been better.
• We planned on breakfast in the room, lunches in the room or pre-make and bring with us, and dinners out. Plan for dinners in the room. The cheaper (relative term) places to eat are all next to the pools and all close around 5:00, so you're kinda stuck for dinner to the fewer more expensive places. Pay for lunches around the pools and then eat dinners back in the room.
• The place we got did not have an oven, but did have a microwave. We could have gotten frozen dinners as long as they could have been microwaved. Otherwise, pasta works (garlic bread is tough to make), mac 'n' cheese, stuff like that.
• We didn't look into the all inclusive food options because of the kitchen. But from what little I know about it, it's worth it if you have 2 or more kids 6 years old or younger because they are free. If you have 1 child that's 6 or younger, then it's a tough call whether it's worth it or not. If you're staying at a place without a kitchen (which I would NOT recommend), then the food plan might make more sense, but strongly consider a kitchen.
• Being at Harborside Resort, we had to take a shuttle everywhere except our pool. The hotel pool wasn't bad, but was just a pool. Being in the Royal Towers or Beach Tower would have been more convenient, but we would have lost the kitchen and have been forced to pay for every meal or get the expensive meal plan.
• Bring snacks that won't melt along with you on the plane so you can bring those to the pool. Things like "single server" pringles or cheese-its or stuff like that. You can save money there.
• Bring as much dry food as you can (pasta, breakfast cereals, breakfast powders for shakes, etc) instead of paying for it there, assuming you have a kitchen.
• There isn't a shuttle from the NAS airport to Atlantis. But there's no need to pre-arrange a cab to/from the airport. We had one from the airport lined up and they never showed up. The price ended up being the same ($40 for 3 of us) as what we were quoted on the pre-arrange. And we set up a cab back to the airport but they never showed either and had to call one in the morning when we were leaving.
• Make sure to bring way more than enough sunscreen and aloe vera. We burned the first and second day and didn't spend the outrageous prices for aloe. It wasn't a terrible burn, but it would have been nice to have aloe. And we thought we had plenty of sun screen and ran out the last day. You can always bring the extra home.
• If you have a place with a washer/drier (like we did), bring detergent and drier sheets. That was a good plan instead of buying there because you're only going to do a couple loads of clothes at most. Bring powder in some pre-portioned zip top bags or bring a few blocks of the pod-type detergent.
• Bring masking tape to tape things up that might spill on the trip home. We also used masking tape to identify stuff (we had some old fashioned film for our underwater camera and taped up the canister on the used roll of film). And we used it to tape up the potato chip bags that we brought home and finished eating on the plane.