The Cove Accommodations
This Spring Break, we decided to take a trip to the famous Atlantis Bahamas resort, which Justin and I grew up wanting to visit. Our girls love a good water park and after we visited Bahamar last year, they wanted to test out the waterpark at Atlantis. The Bahamas is a quick 1.5 hour plane ride from Orlando, so it’s an easy trip. We stayed for four nights and decided to book The Cove through American Express fine hotels travel services. When you book through American Express, you can get early check in, resort credit, late check out and even a room upgrade if possible. For example, we were upgraded to a Deluxe Ocean View Room that was slightly larger than our original room with two Queen beds, a small separate seating area and a nice sized balcony facing the pool and ocean. I also loved that there was a mini fridge that we were able to use for our waters and leftovers.
Aquaventure Water Park
One of the main reasons we chose Atlantis for our Spring Break trip was the Aquaventure water park on-property. Your pass to the park comes with your room, so there’s no additional charge if you’re staying at Atlantis. The waterpark actually weaves into the resort area between the different hotels, so it’s never really a far walk from any hotel. My girls are 7 and 5 and the first day they spent most of the time at Poseidon’s Playzone which included a splash area with a play structure and massive bucket that dumped a huge amount of water (to the kids’ absolute delight) every few minutes as well as a few smaller water slides. This is great for younger kids. My 7-year old was able to go on all of the slides (49″ minimum height), but my younger one couldn’t. This created a challenge for us. We basically had to continuously split up throughout the day – Katie wanted to go on the River Rapids ride over and over and Emma wanted to try out a few of the older kids slides – especially the Surge which is a less-scary tube slide that goes through the famous shark tank. The water park definitely isn’t a mom-lies-by-the-pool and has drinks type of day. We usually started our day out at the water park before the older kids came, then migrated to the beaches to enjoy the ocean and ended at the Cove family pool which was pretty quiet and where I could finally get a much-deserved drink.
Evenings & Restaurants
Evenings for us consisted of a family dinner, a walk around the property, getting ice cream and then heading to our room to go to bed. We didn’t get a chance to gamble at the casino or go to a comedy show. This blog post would be a lot different if only Justin and I had gone on this trip! Our two favorite restaurants were part of the fine dining options at Atlantis.
We went to Fish by Jose Andres the third night we were there. I was impressed that when we told our server that Justin had a gluten allergy, the chef actually came to our table to discuss options for dishes that he could make gluten-free. Justin really loved the gluten free bread. We had the crab cakes, octopus, gazpacho, roasted chicken and the girls had the mac and cheese. The crab cakes were delicious – soft, browned and had a nice little kick to them. I love a good gazpacho and this one did not disappoint. I love cilantro and this had a nice bit of the herb to give the soup a bite. The octopus was tender and delicious and it was quite a large portion.
The final night of our trip we went to Nobu. I’ve been to Nobus all over the United States, quite often when I would take clients out during my time in New York and you know what to expect when you go to a Nobu. There is nothing better on the face of this Earth than Nobu’s crispy rice. I could literally eat it until my stomach burst. Turns out, the girls like it, too, just not with the spicy tuna. They ate almost all my sticky rice so I had to order more to finish the tuna. I got the scallops as my main and they were soft, buttery and melted in my mouth. The girls got the kids bento boxes which include edamame, teriyaki skewers of chicken or steak, white rice and a California roll. The girls ate everything!
Overall, we loved our stay at The Cove at Atlantis. The flight from Orlando was easy, The Cove property and rooms were very nice. We loved that The Cove pools and beaches were not crowded (even on Spring Break). We enjoyed the fine dining restaurants. The only thing I would recommend is that for families with kids in different age groups, be aware that the property is very stringent about the height requirements for water slides. Next year, when Katie is taller, the Aquaventure Park will be fully accessible to our kids and I think be an even bigger hit.
