Atlantis Hotel Bahamas - Paradise Island

Atlantis Paradise Hotel – Disney for Adults

In my youth, I worked for a man, Sol Kerzner, who went on to build the best theme hotels in the world. The Atlantis Paradise in the Bahamas is one of them. If you are in need of a vacation to change your life, then just five days at the Atlantis Paradise Hotel in the Bahamas will change your life. The Atlantis Paradise Hotel does not belong to Disney even though it is a theme hotel.

Sol Kerzner is a South African who specializes in building world class international hotels that are mystical – probably much in the same way that Disney builds fairy tales for kids. He is extremely successful at it, essentially because he seems to be in touch with a secret yearning that most adults have.

Each hotel always has the essential casino, the rock pools, water slides, the animal park, enormous architectural themes that stun (be they a long lost forbidden city or a future city still to come), many eating venues, and both formal and informal settings. They are probably the best resorts in the world.

There are Atlantis Paradise Hotels in both the Bahamas and Dubai, but for the purposes of this article, I am going to focus on the Atlantis Paradis Hotel in the Bahamas. The hotel, incidentally, is affectionately known as the Atlantis. There is no other Atlantis Hotel in the world. Not one like this, anyway!

A Truly Unique Experience
The Atlantis Hotel is built on 65 acres, has 25 restaurants and bars, 6 pools, 11 lagoons, and probably more fish, sharks, dolphins, and sea life in general, than all the world Aquariums put together. It also boasts the largest casino in the Caribbean. If you’re looking for the most exclusive suite in the world, then you have found it.

The Atlantis Paradise Hotel cost $1 billion dollars to build in the 90s. It opened in 1998.

The video below shows what words cannot describe.

Underwater Passageway
Imagine walking underneath the sea with the fish swimming around you and a clear view of exactly how they interact. The video alongside will show you far more clearly than I can explain it to you. However, all those that have walked through a glass passage with water on either side, and fish swimming in their natural habitat have placed it as one of the life experiences that they will never forget.

The only other glass passage underwater that I have walked through is in Barcelona, Spain.The major tank at the aquarium has a glass passage built built through it. It is so large that one cannot see the other sides of it. This is the same with the underwater passage at the Atlantis Hotel.

The Bridge Suite
The Bridge Suite is 5000 square feet – more space than most Mc Mansions. It is situated on the 17^th floor, with windows allound gazing down at paradise. The views from all the windows show something of the sea as the hotel is built on an island. In addition, the architecture of all the buildings is stunning so that everything that meets the eye is truly beautiful. It is probably the honeymoon suite to beat all honeymoon suites.

It costs approximately $25,000 per night and is recognized as the most expensive hotel 'room' in the world. The

Aquaventure

Just to make sure that you never get bored, in 2007, Aquaventure opened on 141 acres of land. It has everything an imaginary journey into the heart of a mythical kingdom would have. There is a mile long water ride that has artificial waves and artificial tidal surges. For those interested in a bit of Sol’s history. He tried those artificial waves first in Sun City in Botswana, one of the original homelands, in South Africa. It also has four waterslides. Water slides are big at Atlantis. Here’s a video of one of them. The Royal Towers was built in 2007 and it has four water slides, each of them with a theme. These are the Leap of Faith, the Challenger, the Serpent Slide and the Jungle Slide.

Water Slide through Shark Pool
The Shark Pool Slide is a particularly wonderful experience. One slides through an enclosed tube with sharks swimming all around. See the video below.

Aquariums
Sol Kerzner outdid himself in the design and creation of the world’s largest open air marine aquarium. There is an enormous manta ray which is more than ten feet long, together with hundreds of different species of fish. The aquarium is style according to the lost city of Atlantis so the bottom of all these aquariums have the detritus left from the destruction of the mythical city of Atlantis.

There are eleven different lagoons, including one which has barracudas and stingrays. It is here that a 100 foot see-through tunnel permits one to walk through and see what a lagoon looks like from the bottom up.

The Atlantis Paradise Hotel built on Paradise Island would, in another time and place, be considered one of the wonders of the world. At this point, I think it fair to say that it is one of the wonders of architecture and grand holiday living.