Baha Mar vs. Atlantis: Which is Best With a Toddler?

In the early days of the blog, I never would have imagined writing an article like this, yet here we are 😉 

It’s a question I found myself Googling a few months ago, before deciding to do both and write about it after! Clearly what I found online wasn’t overly useful!

Baha Mar vs. Atlantis: The Cost

For MilesTalkers, there is ample reason to pick either resort in the Bahamas. After all, if you are on the Status Match Merry Go Round™, then you should have 4 free nights (off peak + about $85 in fees per night + 4 hours in required gambling per trip) each year at the Atlantis (Read: What to Expect at Atlantis via Caesars Diamond). It’s always been a favorite for families with the giant water park, and there’s a nice area for toddlers within. 

But MilesTalkers also tend to have nice banks of World of Hyatt points (especially since you can transfer points in from both Chase Ultimate Rewards and Bilt Rewards).

Baha Mar is a much newer property, a bit Vegas-y in feel, and bookable with World of Hyatt points (21,000-29,000 a night) and that waives all the ridiculous taxes that the Bahamas imposes along with resort fees (also ridiculous!).

Cash prices for both hover around $500 and up based on season.

Baha Mar vs. Atlantis: The Overall Experience (Adults Included!)

I’m surprised I’ve never done a full review of Baha Mar and will make a note to do so in the future.

Here are some pros and cons of each resort:

Pros of Atlantis:

• Everyone knows it; it’s sort of famous.
• Using the Caesars Diamond free stay, there’s no doubt that $85 a night is cheaper than using 21,000 – 29,000 Hyatt points a night. In fact, this is the MAIN selling point.
• It’s got lots of waterslides in the water park (included with the stay) plus a huge beach, the aquariums, and the Dolphin Experience.
• The recently renovated casino is the biggest in the Bahamas.
• Staff is friendlier than they had been in years past – hopefully a top down effort. 

Cons of Atlantis:

• Food costs are exorbitant; especially for what the food outlets are. There are only a few really good restaurants. And there is only one off-site restaurant in walking distance. 
• The free stay puts you in the Coral section at Atlantis which is the oldest and most run down tower they have. It’s been recently renovated but it’s a purely cosmetic renovation in the rooms themselves – not the overall facility.There’s also a huge difference between the Coral Tower and the back part of the Coral (I forget the name, but it’s only 4-5 stories and you walk down a long hot hallway and through the Library to reach it. It’s close to the Coral pool but farther from everything else as compared to the Coral Tower. Despite the rooms being renovated, we were constantly running into issues with elevators not working and the water dispensers for filtered water also being inoperable.
• The outside resort food stands do not accommodate ANY food allergy considerations whatsoever and will send you to the one outdoor food service facility that can.
• Despite the massive property wide renovations recently completed, the Atlantis shows its age. It’s fun, but in no way is it luxury (unless you were paying a huge sum of cash or Bonvoy points to stay at the Cove).
• The main pools are crowded and not so relaxing though the Coral pool, being isolated, was pretty spacious with seating.
• During crowded periods, it’s nearly impossible to make a reservation anywhere good by the time you’ve arrived on-site.
• Despite being a limited participation Marriott Bonvoy property, no benefits or elite night credits apply to casino stays. There is no way to upgrade your room – not with Marriott status and not even with cash (again, this is if you are on the Caesars casino comp).
• The only babysitting service they have is from off-property. Kids under 3 may not enter the Kid’s Club – even with a parent (booooo!)

Pros of Baha Mar

• It’s much, much newer than Atlantis (built in 2017) and it shows. It has a modern and upscale feel from top to bottom and between the three resorts that comprise Baha Mar (the Grand Hyatt, the SLS, and the Rosewood), there are more than enough high end restaurants to satisfy almost any palate. The crowd skews more upscale than Atlantis as well.
• The rooms are new and of a high quality, even if you aren’t upgraded. But if you have Hyatt Globalist status and they aren’t sold out, upgrades are definitely possible. 
• It has several quick serve food options as well including a few food trucks by the pool and pool bars with food. The water park zone also has its own food outlets (several) and even a bar. Way better poolside food options here than Atlantis.
• The pool situation is, in my opinion anyway, far better than Atlantis, with access to several different pools including one that abuts a small aquarium which is especially great for kids. They do have cabanas for rent but not that they sell out in advance and they are crazy expensive (and no, no Globalist discounts!)
• If you are Globalist, you will get a breakfast credit of $145 which will cover the breakfast buffet for 4. You can also use it at a French bakery style restaurant (but that place was a total disaster).
• If you are using points, you’ll owe nothing on your bill besides your room charges.
• The water park is only a few years old and has a handful of great slides (including a couple of pretty crazy ones!) for adults as well as two areas for toddlers (more on that later).
• The casino is very nice. Smaller than Atlantis but pretty similar and upscale. Both casinos will be nearly impossible to earn comps with unless you are a whale.
• Small bonus: It’s much closer to the airport
• You can pay to have a Baha Buddy – aka someone from the Kid’s Club – babysit or even just help you with your child. Like a nanny for the day. We never left our son alone with them, but when we were at the pool, they would play with him while we at least got a few minutes of R&R. 
• There is also a small back area of the Kid’s Club where you can bring your child if they are under 3 (and stay with them). 

Cons of Baha Mar

• Like Atlantis, it can certainly get crowded – making dinner reservations exceptionally hard to come by if you’re already checked in. I was able to pre-book several restaurants a couple of weeks in advance with the concierge but there were some restaurants that were down to 5pm or 10pm already.
• Things are quite possibly even more expensive than Atlantis, although it’s marginal.
• The beach area is very crowded with many, many rows of beach chairs. I would say that Baha Mar is much more of a pool resort than a beach resort – though I would say the same of Atlantis.

Baha Mar vs. Atlantis With a Toddler

OK, here we go – the main event.

Both Atlantis and Baha Mar were better than we expected for our 2.5 year old son. Both have dedicated splash-pad type areas specifically for toddlers which is amazing.

Before that, as I eluded to above, let’s talk Kid’s Clubs:

• At Atlantis, the child must be 3 years old and potty trained to enter the Kid’s Club, even with a parent – no exceptions. If you wanted a babysitter, they could assist but the sitters would be coming from offsite and you’d pay their transport. Link to Atlantis Kid’s Club info. (I don’t have any pictures since we couldn’t go inside – it’s located by the Royal Tower.)
• At Baha Mar, there is a small area behind the main Kid’s Club area where you can play with your child of any age if you just need a bit of distraction time, say during a rain storm or while one person is packing up the room. But it was an hour of fun, tops. If you wanted to drop off your child, 3 years old is the minimum (plus potty trained) just like Atlantis. They have babysitters on site you can reserve (do it well in advance!) for a a half day or longer, during the day or at night. They can stay with you anywhere on-property or you can leave them in the room with the sitter. Just verify when booking exactly what your plans are. Here’s a link to the Baha Mar Kid’s Club. Oh, and Baha Mar also has a Sugar Factory restaurant. Whether that is a pro or a con is your call 😉

On balance, if our kid was 3, the Atlantis Kid’s Club actually looked much better (from the website, anyway) for leaving him for a while with more going on.

On to the splash zones!

Here’s a picture of the splash zone at Atlantis. There’s plenty to do.

One distinct advantage for Atlantis is that there is a very shallow pool attached to the splash zone. As you’ll see below, Baha Mar lacks that, having only a splash pad style pool (less than 1 foot of depth).

Now here is Baha Mar.

Baha Mar actually has two splash zones with various slides and boy is it a lot to do.

We sometimes had trouble finding a lounger to put our stuff on as these are popular spots, but, most importantly, there was a ton to occupy our son. The two zones are slightly different and I think intended for slightly younger children at this one…

The other zone was clearly for older small children – maybe ages 2 and up?

As an example, we found the smaller zone to be really hard to do the slides with our son because it was so shallow, obviously intended for kids even younger than ours. But that’s why you might at first think that the big purple enclosed slide is too much for a younger child until you realize they land on a splash pad, not a full on pool (which also makes it much harder for a parent to land!) 

In that older splash zone, he had 4 slides appropriate for him plus all the other things you can see. (You can’t see the back side slide in the photo above – it’s the other side of the purple double slide.) But it also had 4 slides that were way too big for our son, so we had to keep him from wandering up that way.

You can see a few of the larger slides in the last picture above that I would think you’d only send a bigger kid on – maybe 4 years old or so.

This “bigger kids area” was the area we spent most of the time with him. The slides do land in shallow pools in the bigger one vs the maybe 1 foot deep splash pads in the younger part.

Our son was really somewhere in between and I’d imagine that overall these (both sides combined) are meant for something like 1.5 years old to 4 years old – with parental supervision at all times, of course.

One warning: for us parents, this is exhausting!

If your child is the same age or younger than ours (I can’t speak to older kids and when they can do what for themselves) it was a full time job for both of us to keep an eye on him.

Generally one would man the top of the slide and come down after him (this was to keep anyone from jumping in right behind him where they could hurt him at the end) and the other would be at the bottom waiting to whisk him away quickly. 

We found that a nice mix at Baha Mar was to go to a pool in the morning, relax there until around lunchtime and then head over to the waterpark. We tried both lunch by the pool and then the waterpark and the waterpark with a break for food and the former definitely turned out more relaxing.

The smaller kid’s area at Atlantis meant it was also a bit less exhausting for us, but in the end it’s all about our son with this kind of experience so we would choose Baha Mar over Atlantis if we could only choose one.

PS: While Baha Mar doesn’t have an on-site dolphin experience like Atlantis, they can arrange one off-site. 

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