Perhaps you thought that Atlantis sank into the ocean thousands of year ago, but it turns out there is a modern “ancient civilization”, which is a favorite tourist attraction on The Bahamas. Though experiencing Atlantis Bahamas can be expensive, we bring you the top tips to do it on a budget. Since we stayed there eight days for “free”, we had time to really explore the place and figure out money saving hacks.

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What is Atlantis Paradise Island?

Before we found out about our “free stay” offer, we had no idea what to imagine for Atlantis, apart from some kind of tropical paradise. Being Dutch, the word “free” was what pulled me into this trip right away. Once we started reading up on the resort, we were convinced we did want to escape the NH winter and stay in The Bahamas for a bit.

Atlantis, Paradise Island offers something for every one.

Aquaventure Water Park: Leap of Faith or Lazy River?

One of the big attractions of Atlantis Paradise Island is their so-called Aquaventure. If you stay in any of their hotels, you can access this water park for free. Because it is so big (141 acres), we didn’t get to do everything the park offers, so we will have to go back 🙂

Atlantis has done a fantastic job making their playground themed like the sunken civilization. The not-so-lazy river has 20 swimming areas and lots of water slides.

My favorite was the Serpent tunnel, speeding me through a long, dark tunnel into the shark tank for a lazy ride on my inner tube. This time I politely declined the Leap of Faith, an almost-vertical 60-foot drop from the top of their Mayan Temple. Maybe next time…

Marine Habitat: meet Mantras, Sharks and Dolphins up close

Discovering the Marine Habitat was one of the best moments of our Atlantis stay. Before we arrived, we had no idea about the expanse of aquariums and marine preservation programs in Atlantis.

Between lagoons, caves, coral formations and underwater ruins, the mind boggles. Atlantis, Paradise Island is home to the largest open-air marine habitat in the world. For example, the predator tunnel, the rays, the sharks, the lobsters, and the Dig all are amazing.

Sawfish: Remarkably Ancient Creatures

Atlantis is the only marine habitat in the world to have had a successful birth of the critically endangered smalltooth sawfish. We loved watching these ancient looking creatures glide through the water. Also known as carpenter sharks, they have been around for the last 100 million years.

Did you know when baby sawfish are born, the baby’s saw is covered in gelatinous material, as not to damage their mother? Also, in 2015, scientists discovered that sawfish can have virgin births! Such an amazing creature.

Dolphin Cay‘s first residents were 17 stranded dolphins and 10 sea lions whose home in Gulfport, Mississippi was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. In addition, Dolphin Cay is also the Caribbean’s premier marine animal rehabilitation facility.

I would happily go back to explore more, I feel I haven’t seen even half of this Marine habitat!

Hotel (with complimentary… cockroach)

As we were staying during low-season, we got a room in the fancy, centrally located Royal Towers. When we arrived, we started in an upper-floor room with harbor view. Nice enough, until I spotted a HUGE cockroach running through the room. Scared me enough to get a very bad picture.

As required of a dutiful husband, Tom captured the creature into a coffee cup and off we were to the front desk. If I weren’t so afraid of it escaping, I would have gotten some better pictures. Luckily the cockroach scared the front desk enough to upgrade us to a king suite with a balcony overlooking the turtle pond. In addition they gave us a $75 credit for the inconvenience.

After this experience I see the advantage of cockroaches in one’s hotel room. Heck, they seem like really interesting creatures, just not in our hotel room! You should know, we never saw another cockroach during our stay, and we do understand that such creatures are common place in warm climes. In fact, we think it was a palmetto bug, it definitely was not a German cockroach.

Restaurants at Atlantis, Paradise Island: Money Money Money…

Before we went on our trip, we had been reading about Atlantis Bahamas, and the one common denominator was “Food is expensive!”. Right, it sure was. Although there are many good and fun restaurants, it simply added up every time you ordered anything.

The first night we ate at Olives because it was convenient and we hadn’t figure out yet how to stay within our Atlantis budget. Just some food and sparkling water added up quickly to almost $70.

The next night we dined at The Point at Harbourside. Touted as a perfect place to watch a Caribbean sunset, the food was good, but yet again, very pricey. Also, somehow we missed the sunset…

During both these days we had breakfast at Poseidon’s breakfast buffet. Polite helpful staff and a good selection of food. For example salmon eggs Benedict, which makes my pescatarian soul happy.

Saturday night we discovered the Pirate’s Republic, which quickly became our favorite restaurant in the resort. Not only do they have superior beer, they also have excellent food. Top choices: their blackened salmon and the seared tuna salad.

Anyway, lots of restaurant choices, but none of them are cheap. It is not easy to do Atlantis Bahamas on a budget if you want to eat in any of their restaurants. On their website, they offer suggestions for Casual Meals & Dining, but all of these still were quite expensive in our opinion.

Casino: You might get lucky… but don’t count on it

Part of our package was $100 free slot play for each of us, so we made sure to take advantage of that. In addition there is a daily slot tournament, where you just hit the buttons as fast as you can and could get another $100 free slot play (or $10) if you are not in the top-3 🙂

Because our slot play skills are awesome, we managed to translate our $220 slot play credit in about $150 actual money. Which was a nice added benefit and helped with paying for the resort fee and our meals.

The casino is huge and has tons of people playing. The high rollers are tables with like $500 minimum and $5,000 maximum. Neither fit in our budget, so we mostly stayed away.

Tom did try the $5 table for blackjack, but it had an electronic dealer, who creeped me out :p .Anyway, if casino is your thing, you will feel in paradise! (pun intended)

Frankly, if you are doing Atlantis on a budget, you might want to limit or totally skip casino play.

How we Stayed for “Free” at Atlantis Bahamas

Thanks to extreme travel hacking, we managed to stay for “free” at Atlantis. In this case. Free means the room rate is free, but we still did have to pay resort fee and gratuity, which were almost $70 a night. Still a lot cheaper than the normal rates when you have to pay a few hundred dollars per night PLUS that added $70.

Travel Hacking For The Win

How do you get to stay for free at the Atlantis Bahamas resort? Well, it all started with travel hacking, and having the right credit card. In short: Hilton Honors Gold or Diamond gets you Wyndham Diamond, which gets you Caesar’s Diamond. There are different ways too, but all of them eventually lead you to Caesar’s Diamond status without actually having to do any gambling.

Basic Travel Couple has a great guide on how to get Caesars Diamond status, without ever having to play in a casino, including a guide to which credit cards can get you there. Plus the other benefits of said cards.

Other Benefits of Caesar’s Diamond Status (free shows!)

Once you get your Caesar’s Diamond status, a plethora of opportunities awaits.

• Four “free” nights in Atlantis, Paradise Island, Bahamas.
• $100 celebration dinner (we used ours in Las Vegas last year, had a fabulous meal for almost free, two nights in a row);
• Two free show tickets each month (from a limited selection but fun anyway. We saw Penn and Teller);
• Free or discounted hotel stays (last year we stayed in Atlantic City hotels for about $30 a night and we have seen free nights in Las Vegas hotels);
• No resort fee on any of your hotel stays;
• complimentary valet parking

And of course, going to Vegas doesn’t mean you do have to gamble, there are many awesome day trips from Las Vegas.

Since we both status matched using our AMEX credit card hilton honors status, we got 8 nights in Atlantis Bahamas for free.

How to Save Money on Food

During the first days of our stay, we discovered that food is expensive. Not surprising for a luxury resort, but we were staying for free and didn’t want to pay their inflated prices. So we tried out their meal plans.

Is the Atlantis Bahamas Dining Plan Worth It?

Because we found the food very overpriced, we considered buying into the hype of one of the Atlantis dining plans. Covering an extensive breakfast buffet and a 2 or 3 course dinner almost seemed like a good idea. Soon after arrival, we signed up.

For two days we tried out the meal plan and discovered that nope, it surely wasn’t worth it for us. Don’t do it if you want to do Atlantis on a budget!

Though the breakfast buffet at Poseidon’s was excellent, it was not worth $76 for the two of us. After learning this expensive lesson, we bought some instant oatmeal for our room and had a less luxurious, but more budget-friendly breakfast. Eating breakfast on our balcony, looking out over the turtle pond AND saving money was very enjoyable.

During one of our dining plan nights, we went up to one of their restaurants and tried out a 2 course dinner on the dining plan. Though it was good, we felt required to eat more than we otherwise would have eaten and wine was not included, so that was an extra cost.

Next day, it was an easy decision to cancel the meal plan, which happened fast and easily. After cancellation, they just charged the posted costs of the food we had consumed so far. Much less than the daily meal plan!

• Cheapest meal plan: Aqua Dining Plan, $109 / day including VAT and mandatory gratuity.
• Luxury meal plan: Trident Dining Plan, $171 / day including VAT and mandatory gratuity.

Doing the math, we would have to pay $872 for 4 days on the “cheap” or $1368 for more food than we could or wanted to eat! Checking our Atlantis budget, we realized that oatmeal in our rooms would be just fine for breakfast.

Budget Friendly Food in Atlantis

Instead of dining in the restaurants, grab a taxi to a nearby supermarket (about $15 to get there) and buy affordable food. Nuts, crackers, fruit, oatmeal, ramen noodles, bread, peanut butter, the possibilities are endless. Depending on your personal situation, you can save tons of money.

After our taxi trip to the supermarket, we found out that there actually is a small grocery store within walking distance (behind the Marina Village in the resort). Just a few hundred meters away from the resort, you can find a small supermarket, a liquor store (wine, tonic, gin, beer, all cheaper than in Atlantis), a Dunkin Donuts and Anthony’s Sea Food and Ribs with affordable food and a happy hour. Well worth the five minutes walk to stock up or eat off-resort.

The Fish Fry at Arawak Cay

When we told people we were going to go to Atlantis, they all immediately exclaimed “The Fish Fry! You HAVE to go to the fish fry!” After hearing their reports of cheap amazing food, fantastic fish, compelling conch, and the occasional unicorn jumping for joy in the rainbow filled sky, we had high expectations.

Off we were, on the yellow brick road to Arawak Cay (the fish fry in Nassau). Of course, the yellow brick road actually was a taxi who charged $20 for the privilege of carting us off to the promised land. Where we chose one of the restaurants he, and other people, had recommended.

Sure, it was nice enough, great atmosphere, friendly people. Sipping our local beer, eating conch salad for the first time, we enjoyed our time, but it also felt like something that needed to be crossed off our bucket list. As opposed to it being cheap and amazing. Definitely not cheap!

After our meal, we walked for a while on the beach, enjoying getting steps in in a tropical place, and watching the birds. Then it was time to pay yet another 20 dollars for a taxi to get us back “home”.

Maybe other restaurants would have been cheaper, but just getting to the fish fry from Atlantis and getting back will easily set you back $40 before you even eat anything.

Watch this video for some awesome dolphin jumps and yes, there might be birds:

Comfort Suites Paradise Island is Better for your Budget

While researching this article, I found out that visiting Atlantis while not staying there (like from a cruise ship) will add up for a family. As a reply to that, many people mentioned the Comfort Suites Paradise Island, a hotel within walking distance of the Atlantis resort.

Reserving a room at the Comfort Suites, will entitle your group to up to 4 Atlantis day passes every day. It turns out that this often is cheaper than buying the day passes at Atlantis. An added benefit is the free breakfast for everyone in your party.

Traveling mom has a great article about this option at Best Kept Atlantis Resort Secret: Comfort Suites Paradise Island

Conclusion about Atlantis on a Budget

Wrapping up this article, I would like to conclude that yes, you can do Atlantis, Paradise Island on a budget. Stay away from the expensive on-site restaurants, consider the Comfort Suites, avoid the casino and bring your own food or eat off-site. Have you been to Atlantis? What did you like best? Do you have other tips to make the visit budget-friendly? Please share!

More travel hacking tips and tricks.

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