First of all, I want to thank everyone for their extremely informative posts on this site. I never posted prior to my trip because all my questions were already answered on this forum! I did most of my research here, and found that I was very well prepared once I arrived. Okay, so, now my report.

My husband and I stayed at the Comfort Suites, thank you to all who suggested it! The hotel saved us a bunch of money, and we had a perfectly nice room, very close to Atlantis. I had no issues with the hotel, other than the fact that we weren't informed by Hotels.com that the pool would be undergoing renovations while we were there. This upset my husband more than me, since he had his heart set on a swim-up bar!! The extra fees, besides the safe fee, were all included in the price on Hotels.com. No surprises in the end!! There were no bugs, the continental breakfast saved us money (I did get sick of it by the end though, not a lot of choices, and as some have said, all carbs), and the staff was extremely nice and helpful. If you want a view and a beachside room, this is not the place to stay. If you are like us and feel that a room is just somewhere to sleep, this is it! It's so easy to get to Atlantis, just across the way, I won't even say across the street, it seemed closer than that even. The id's they give you get you everywhere, though some places, Dolphin Cay for example, won't charge to your room because they only use the swipe your key method. We only found this in one other place, not a big deal. Whomever suggested to bring laminate for that id, thank so much! It was a great idea, our id's stayed nice the whole trip. By the way, we got a chance to peek at a Coral Tower room, our room was just as nice.

Beaches- Beautiful! There is a lot of talk about the people trying to sell you stuff constantly on the beach, but we only found this on Atlantis Beach, the one right outside the Coral and Beach Towers. However, our first few days were red flag days where you weren't allowed in the water, very few people were there to bug and we were still able to get some great sun! We found that the Cove Beach was our favorite. There were no people selling anything, and when Atlantis Beach was red flagged, Cove Beach was red/yellow, allowing us to swim with caution! We were told the best snorkeling is on Paradise Beach, but did not find good snorkeling anywhere on the Atlantis property. We had some dangerous surf days, which added to murky water on the rest of the days. It's very easy to gain access to any of the beaches as a Comfort Suites guest. Just flash your id at the guard at the doors from Coral towers heading out to the grounds and then look for a towel hut to get your Atlantis wrist band that allows you full access to their amenities.

Food- We ate at Anthony's, Carmine's, Murray's Deli, Marina Pizza, several of the pool side food stands, and Mesa Grill on Paradise Island, and Luciano's of Chicago, Conch Fritters and Hard Rock Cafe in Nassau. It is ALL expensive. Nassau was marginally cheaper. We loved everything we ate! Carmine's was hard to do for 2 people, but another suggestion I read was to heat up leftovers in the breakfast area microwave at the Comfort Suites, and we did! The only problem we found was getting plates to heat up the food on. The breakfast plates are styrofoam. We ended up getting a single slice pizza box from Marina Pizza and using that. Prices ranged from $25 at the pool side places to $175 at Mesa Grill. Most alcoholic drinks at Atlantis will run $10, but I believe that is the best deal you get on the whole island! They are not modest with the amount of liquor in each and are a good size as well. Once we even had to request more juice in each as the drinks were too strong! We did buy our own stuff to mix and bring it to the beach once or twice, this saved us too. Some people have suggested that the service is terrible in the Bahamas. We did not find this to be true. They were very nice and attentive, especially the nicer restaurants where they often had a server and an assistant, something you rarely find in the States unless you are at a very, very upscale restaurant. They were slower to refill drinks, but I'm venturing to guess that the reason for that is they don't often drink more than one serving. The refill charge adds to my guess. If you wanted more water, however, no problem. Due to the off season, many of the restaurants at Atlantis were closed at various times. I was bummed that Bimini Road closed our second day there. I really wanted to try that one. For us, the other closures weren't a problem. We hadn't planned on eating at any of the restaurants other than at Marina Village and Mesa Grill. The pool side restaurants rotated on closures, but when one closed another not too far away opened, and so it was just a short walk to find food.

Activities- Aquaventure at Atlantis is a blast! We loved the Current, or as we called it, the "Not-so-Lazy River!" It's very cool that you don't have to leave your tube in order to ride the Power Tower slides too! The pools were pools, but nice and big. The one at the base of the Mayan Temple was closed, we felt it was probably a good one, so were a bit bummed. We used the Baths Pool as our home base most of the time. We chose to do the deep water swim with the dolphins at Dolphin Cay. At the time, it was less expensive than Dolphin Encounters. I understand the price fluctuates. It was so much fun. I've wanted to do something like that since I was very little. The swim was not as extensive as we would have liked. They take you around a small area of their lagoon and it's very controlled. It's understandable, but I would have loved a bigger area to swim around and more time. The foot push is awesome, as well as the time you get to see the stuff the dolphins are trained to do. It's so amazing to see these creatures up close! There was no feeling the animals were mistreated in anyway. One of the dolphins is 43 years old, that is twice what she would live in the wild. We also hit up Stuart Cove's. We did the Subs which are so cool! It's your own personal craft that you drive around 15 feet under the water. You have your own air tank and a bubble around your head so you just breath normally, unlike scuba or snorkeling. The fish are used to this activity going on by now and know that they get fed, so they follow you everywhere. I highly recommend doing something with this very professional operation. We are not gamblers, but we did go to the casino one night, and after quickly losing money in the slots, left. Those who have said there isn't much of a night life on Atlantis are not kidding. It's frustrating not to be able to take a night time dip in the pools or ocean. Walking around the grounds at night is cool, but spooky, no one was around! We didn't do the clubs, didn't want to waste money on the cover charge. We live in LA, it's not like we can't do that anytime. We did do the movies one night. Loved that it was free! It didn't really bother us that there wasn't much to do at night. We usually ate around 8pm, and were asleep by 11, so tired from the days adventures. We also spent a day and a half in Nassau seeing the sites. It's pretty easy to walk to most of the suggested touristy things. Taxi cabs practically run you down trying to get you to use them, so that's not an issue either! The one time we got stuck in the rain, however, there were none in sight!! The straw market was very overwhelming for me. I was raised to be polite and it was hard for me to just shake my head or ignore all the vendors calling out to me to get me to buy something. If you start talking to them, but aren't interested in what they have to offer, it's hard to get away without being too rude. We had a great moment there though. We are Obama supporters, as are the people of the Bahamas. I had a button on my purse which a group of vendors commented on. We told them we wanted to find a Bahamas for Obama shirt, which we had seen people wearing, but could not find anywhere for sale. One of the ladies walked us around the entire straw market to find one of the shirts for us! Of course we then felt obligated to buy something from her and couldn't haggle for it! It was so funny being lead around searching for a shirt that was such a novelty!

Wow this is long! Just a few more notes. As someone posted, bring your chill with you. Have fun, be on vacation! We were appalled when waiting on the ferry to go back to Paradise Island a woman yelled to the captain on the dock, "We want to go!" We had been waiting a while to take off, her less than more than half of the people there, but it was the only ferry docked and only half full. It was obvious he wanted to get as many people as he could. It made us so frustrated that someone could be so ugly. The woman's husband even made the comment when they came aboard that they were Canadians, not to be mistaken for Americans. Well, his wife was a shining example of what others usually refer to as an "Ugly American!" The captain later commented that the ferries leave 30 min. after the first person boards.

Expect to spend a lot of money on food. Souveniers are on par with most places. A great example for the food cost is my staples Starbucks and Jamba Juice. Starbucks cost me 1/3 more than usual and Jamba twice more than usual! And remember, I live in LA! The one snafu of our whole trip dealt with the photos they take of you around Atlantis and at Dolphin Cay. One of the photo places told us we could put all our photos on a CD for $90. This is true, but doesn't include the Dolphin Cay photos. To get those on CD, you have to pay $140 and you get all your photos and some print outs. We were finally told this by the 3rd photo place we spoke to for information. We did get the good info that most of the packages are mix and matchable so you can do more than one photo. Then, someone at Dolphin Cay told us we can print the photos from there at any of the photo places, but what they neglected to say is that a few of the packages at Dolphin Cay are only available there. For example, what we wanted to do was packages of 2 5x7's. Not available anywhere but Dolphin Cay. So, what happened was we got all our photos put on a card to print on our last morning, but with all the misinformation, one of us had to go to a photo place and the other to Dolphin Cay, running at the last minute so as not to miss checkout! It was crazy and expensive to get the photos we wanted.

Overall, we had an amazing trip and were well informed thanks to this forum. I hope this report pays a little of what I got forward. I would recommend a vacation to Paradise Island anytime! I think I would suggest off season though, based on what others said of the busy months! We had warm weather, warm water and just a little rain. When you're on the beach or in a pool, who cares about a few sprinkles. Most of the time there were no more than 30 people in the pools, and on the beaches where we put our stuff. We heard Atlantis was about 30% capacity. You could really tell when the cruise ships were docked! Please feel free to ask any questions. I look forward to helping out!