Deen on Deck. It's a travel blog.

If you’ve ever sailed into Port Nassau, Bahamas, you can’t miss the two giant, sand castle-hued towers connected by that signature bridge, looming impressively off in the distance. The place looks like King Triton himself designed it on a budget of 3 billion gold galleons. Or platinum shells, or Apple shares or whatever mermaid money is. No one can deny, it’s breathtaking — at least from a distance.

But for me, the price-tag has always been a big turn-off. Full access to Atlantis Resort starts at $200 a day. Per person. That does not include an actual hotel room, any food or beverages or transportation there (from a cruise ship or anywhere else). That price gets you into the The Dig (a sort of archaeolgy-themed aquarium, and the Aquaventure water park.

Now, I live in Florida within an easy drive to all the Disney and Universal parks/waterparks (if fact, I may have been called a full-on Disney nut job, by some, in the past…) While exhorbitant in their own right – their day rate is still way more reasonable than Atlantis’s. So, could it possibly be worth it?

Well, I went there today, with my team of trusty cruise friends to find out. And we didn’t pay one penny (or platinum shell) to get in. No laws were broken, nor time share spiels heard. There’s an amazing hack for doing this that I will share in its own blog post within the next week. Anyone is eligible to do it, and again, it is WITHIN the bounds of the law (I know some of my friends are already suspicious. Look, the past is in the past, guys…) But anyhoo, stay tuned for that!

Getting back to the program, is it TRULY an experience worth $200? Well… I’m going to say… yesssss. It’s worth it. Atlantis is absolutely stunning and I don’t think you’ll ever forget it. If you want a really memorable day with the family chock full of wow-factor — Atlantis delivers, in spades. The Dig was easily THE coolest aquarium I’ve ever seen, and I’m a nerd who loves aquariums. It was like if Indiana Jones happened to discover the sunken city and took us with him and it was just the coolest thing we’d ever seen. I really REALLY enjoyed it, and so did my entire party.

The waterpark is a different experience altogether, but still great. Some water slides were pretty standard, others dramatically different than anything we’d seen before (one takes you through a tunnel of SHARKS). The lazy river was absolutely awesome – the best we’d ever been on (and actually kinda more thrilling than lazy) and the Atlantean theming was detailed and on-point throughout. The adjective that keeps coming to my mind is “memorable”. It really is. The all-around quality and attention to detail was amazing.

So, is it worth the $200? Yes. Should you PAY the $200? No, you should not. We didn’t and you don’t have to either. Although I’m raving on and on about how great it was, it wasn’t COMPLETELY without flaws, and not everyone has $200 pp to burn in the first place. So stay tuned for my Atlantean budgeting secrets for visiting without taking out a second mortgage (coming within the week, I promise!)