Atlantis/Paradise Island Family Trip Report (Plus Universal Orlando)

Thanks. It made no sense to me that the restaurants share their menus but not their prices. I knew it was going to be expensive to ear here, but I think its reasonable to share just how much it costs to try to feed a family after mandatory gratuities and VAT...

 

Yeah, I guess it could also have been nice to watch the cruise ships come in and out.

The cup was $17, and is free soda refills at all water park restaurants. Several of the water park restaurants have self serve soda fountains in front of them, and no one is checking what cups are being filled at those. But some restaurants you need to hand them the cup and they will fill it for you.

A $2 tip may be what we needed to do. Or at least $2 for the first tip is something I have done at other places to get good service.

If we ever go again, we are definitely going to pack a LOT more (legal) food in our luggage!

 

I agree these aren't bad games, but I think they are at best fair games. And yes, I have definitely seen plenty of places with much much worse...

My guess would be a lot of people, as in the USA its so natural to want to leave tips for people they think are living off of tips to survive. Burger Shack was a table service sit down restaurant, but the mandatory gratuities are even added at the counter service restaurants in the resort...

 

DAY 4

This morning we would head to the Dunkin Donuts (this location hasn't changed their name to Dunkin yet) that is across the street from the Marina Village off resort. This is the shopping center across the street from Marina Village:



There was about a 15 minute line at this donut shop, but at least prices were reasonable and no mandatory gratuity. There was also a mini grocery store in the little shopping center. At the shopping center you could buy a half gallon of milk for around $6, or a six pack of soda cans for about $8. They also had a lot of fruits, breads, peanut butter, and jelly, and other random groceries. We would never get to the larger grocery store on New Providence Island, but we heard that the foods were a bit more reasonably priced, even though all the foods were imported.

We spent the better part of the first half of the day at the Aquaventure water park. I finally got the hang of the rapid rivers, only tumbling over one time. We also checked out a few swimming areas we hadn’t been to the previous day. There was a wooden step bridge to the main beach we would cross. On the resort side of the bridge there was a large sign warning that any vendors on the other side of the bridge are not related to the resort, and there was also a resort guard checking for wristbands for anyone returning.

When we got back to the room, we caught some photos of some para-sailors from our window:






We would have an early dinner at the Marina Pizzeria that was outside the hotel before crossing into the Marina Village. By this time, we were all in agreement that we would save money here and eat well during the Orlando half of our vacation, as we just weren’t getting many good reviews for anywhere to eat inside the resort. The large Pizza (for $32 + 15% Mandatory Gratuity + 12% VAT) would feed us all. And yes, there is mandatory gratuity at all the counter service restaurants in this resort…






The Pizza wasn't bad, but it just wasn't worth the price. The Atlantis Resort has a teen club called Crush. It’s about $20/teen for the evening and they have a live DJ. Before they opened we took a tour with our kids, and tried to see if they would be interested. While it is a popular spot for teens at the resort, our kids weren’t interested telling us it was too similar to the social events they have at their schools. But here are some pictures we took of the place:







The kids just wanted to relax in their room, while my wife and I decided we would head back to the Marina Village to see if the same band from the evening before was playing again. On the way through the lobby, we observed a crowd of people overlooking the aquarium level. What was going on was the hotel (?) put together a path of floor lights out of the aquarium tunnel across the aquarium level, to a heart made of floor lights on another part of the aquarium level floor. Some young Romeo was planning to bring his girlfriend from the Aquaventure park, through the underground aquarium tunnel, into the aquarium room, down the lighted pathway, and onto the big heart of lights to propose to her. There was a professional photographer at the bottom level steering other guests coming out of the tunnel away from the path to the heart. My wife wanted to join the mostly women crowd who were crowded up to watch this event from the overlook. I thought my wife took some pictures, but she actually took a video of the whole thing, showed it to our daughter, and then erased it because it took too much memory on her phone. I couldn’t find any photos of it, but I did find this photo of what the aquarium level looked like from the hotel lobby:



The tunnel to the aquarium is behind the pillar on the far right, and his big heart was in the open area of white floor on the left. We got there about 10 minutes after the proposal was supposed to have happened, but we would wait another 20 minutes because the young couple had absolutely no consideration for the waiting onlookers. I was standing in the back with some other husbands and we were talking about how much this Romeo must have spent reserving this floor in preparation to destroy his life. Finally the young couple came out of the tunnel, walked to the heart, and the crowd of onlookers would applaud as young Romeo knelt down and presented her the ring old fashion style. The girlfriend took the ring, which we understood to mean she accepted. I sure hope Romeo has deep pockets, because he is going to have some high expectations come anniversaries.

My wife and I would go to the Marina Village afterwards. There was a different band there, we didn’t think they were as good as the one with the young woman singer, but they were still pretty good.

Later in the evening I would text Kevin (our cab driver from the airport) and we agreed on a time to meet at the hotel so he could bring us back to the airport.

END OF DAY 4

This family vacation is just about half over. But I still intend to finish this TR...

 

Boy, you're not kidding there

 

This is a great trip report. Your reports are always very well written, with lots of detailed information. Looking forward to the rest.

 

Day 5 (Last day in Bahamas, First day in Orlando)

Taxi Ride: We would meet Kevin at 8:00 AM at the taxi gate in front of the resort. There were plenty of taxis available, but we had arrangements with Kevin so he could come to the front to get us. After we started driving I told him the suspicious incident with the bus driver taking us straight to the Twin Brothers restaurant and Kevin just laughed out loud. While he agreed Twin Brothers was a very good restaurant, he also confessed that all drivers get “three dollars a head” for bringing visitors there, bus drivers included. That’s just how the economy works here but we were certainly happy the bus driver at least recommended a good place. Before Uber and Lyft, Las Vegas taxi drivers were notorious for this practice, but they would take undecided tourists to the worst of places where they could pocket the most money. Kevin told us if we had gone with him, he would have brought us to a lot of good places on the island, and he said would have never dropped us at the cruise ship port at Nassau Harbor. If we ever go back we will probably look him up.

Airport: We arrived at the airport around 9:00 AM for a noon flight. When flying out of NAS/Nassau to the USA, it is recommended to arrive at least 3 hours before the departure time. Passengers actually go through US customs and immigration at the Nassau airport, so the flights from Nassau can arrive in the USA at any standard gate of any domestic USA airport. A strange system, but flights will not hold up for passengers in line through US immigration. All 4 of us have Global Entry (we got them all free as credit card perks) and while there was about an hour long line for immigration, there was no line at all for the Global Entry kiosks, so we had plenty of time to relax at the gate as opposed to standing in the US migration line.

Bahamas Air: We could have flown from Nassau to Miami on American Airlines for 7500 Avios per person (it used to be just 4500 Avios before a degradation just a couple years back) which would seem like a good value. However, each of those tickets would cost an additional $110 per person in airport taxes not covered by the reward miles, and then Miami is 4 hours south of Orlando where we planned to go next. By flying on Bahamas Air direct to Orlando, the total fare was $196 per person (airport taxes included, so the fare without taxes was under $100 per person), and because Bahamas Air is an airline we can purchase on Ultimate Rewards points, I was able to get all 4 of our tickets for 52,000 UR points without having to pay any additional airport taxes. This airline had no silly extra charges like for luggage or to sit together as a family, and it seemed like a fine airline.

END OF BAHAMAS PART


So that’s the end of the Atlantis portion of this TR. I am going to go ahead and finish up this TR for the remainder of our vacation at Universal Orlando. There are no casino stories from here on out. I believe Orlando is considered the Las Vegas for children (or something like that...)

I have never written a theme park Trip Report before, but there are tons of them on other forums. Years ago members of the disboards (Disney forums) got upset with me for a few opinions I posted, but I feel more comfortable posting my opinions of things here. I will assume the reader has no theme park experience.


START OF UNIVERSAL ORLANDO PART

When we have taken our kids to Orlando in the past, we had either gone All Disney World (because Disney World has 4 parks, and after the initial 3 days, each additional day costs only a tiny bit more) or No Disney World (because those first 3 days in Disney World parks are VERY expensive!) We had been to Universal Orlando in 2014 (combined with a trip to Cocoa Beach, a day at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, and then 2 days at Sea World Orlando and Aquatica) and our 2nd trip in 2016 (combined with the Tampa City pass which included Clearwater Beach attractions and Busch Gardens Tampa.) Lots of visitors mix Disney with Universal which gets very expensive. However what made this trip different from our previous Universal trips is that our daughter had become a Harry Potter super-fan, and since she finished reading all the books she really wanted to go back. She can actually tell you anything and everything different between the 6 movies and the 7 books…

Universal Orlando and Harry Potter: Universal Orlando has two theme parks, and both of them have Harry Potter sections. The Universal Studios Florida theme Park has Diagon Alley, and the Universal Islands of Adventure theme park has Hogsmeade. Guests with Park Hopper passes can travel between parks from the Harry Potter sections through a train attraction called the Hogwarts Express. Guests like myself unfamiliar with Harry Potter are frequently called Muggles by the Universal Team members in the Harry Potter parks.

Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure: In early June this year (only a couple weeks before we arrived), The Islands of Adventure opened a brand new Harry Potter attraction called Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure. It was not a very smooth launch, attracting huge lines with tons of unforeseen technical difficulties and outages. For other Muggles like myself who saw the movies but don’t remember who Hagrid was (I needed a refresher myself) he was this friendly Giant:



And one of our goals for this trip would be to try to visit this new attraction if possible.

Theme Park Tickets: Universal’s latest promotion was get a 5-day ticket for the price of a 2-day ticket. This worked well for us even though we would only be there 4 days (a partial arrival day from Atlantis, 2 full days, and then a partial departure day before we fly out.) We have never bought “Park Hopper” tickets before (“Park Hopper” tickets allow guests to visit multiple parks on the same day; a gimmick that allows them to charge more for guests who want to visit multiple parks in the same day), although the “Park Hopper” ticket is required to ride their Harry Potter themed Hogwarts Express train. I was originally only going to buy this only for my daughter, but ultimately gave in and bought them for all 4 of us (It added about $35/person or $140 for the 4 of us.) We bought the tickets at Undercover Tourist using a link in the Mousesavers newsletter (the cheapest way we found to buy theme park tickets through a reputable re-seller) for a total cost of $1118 for 4 sets of tickets (more than we spent for room and airfare for the entire Bahamas part of our vacation…)

Hotels: The 3 most expensive hotels at Universal Orlando Resort (Portofino Bay, Hard Rock, and Royal Pacific) come with free Universal Express Unlimited Passes for hotel guests from their arrival day through their departure day. The Universal Express Unlimited Pass is an add-on, not included with theme park tickets, that allows the owners to skip the regular guest lines for attractions in favor of much shorter express pass lines. During the off season, these are considered a waste of money, but during summer and holidays, these can be huge time savers, as lines that are 60-120 minutes for general guests are just 10-20 minutes with the express pass. The price varies depending on time of year, but the time of year we were there these passes would go for over $100/person/day. We would stay at the Royal Pacific for only our 2nd night, so that we could get the Express Unlimited Passes for all 4 of us for the 2 full days we would there. For the 1st and 3rd nights, we would just stay at inexpensive Orlando hotels. While the Royal Pacific is the cheapest of the 3 flagship hotels, it still runs $450/night (more than the Atlantis Royal Towers without comps, but no at least no resort fees!) I got the room for 30K UR points. The 2 days of Universal Express Unlimited Passes for all 4 of us would make this worth it for us.

BACK TO TRIP REPORT:

We landed in MCO/Orlando, where we would pick up a Dollar rental car for another 9K UR, and as soon as we got out of the airport we went straight to an Orlando Taco Bell where we could eat cheap. We would check in at the Super 8 Universal Studios (which was $90, or I got for 6K UR points.) Then we would park our car and take a Lyft to the park. Parking at Universal Orlando is $25/day, while we can park for free at our hotel as guests. It is about a 15 minute walk from the hotel to Universal Studios, but in the June Florida heat, a Lyft ride for $7+tip was what we would do.

Our first stop would be Islands of Adventure, where we would head to the back of the park to Hogsmeade. The Hagrid ride would report a 180 minute wait, so we would pass on that. We would get our daughter an “Interactive Wand” from Olivanders (the Wizard store.) The interactive wands unlock cute little mini-attractions throughout the Harry Potter sections of both theme parks, and with each of these sticks being unique, are extremely popular to Harry Potter fans. The wand also comes with a map where all such attractions are:



The costs of these “magic sticks” are $46 for non-interactive that can’t be used with the attractions, or $52 for interactive. I wonder how many of the non-interactive sticks they sell.

We would also buy a frozen Butterbeer in Hogsmeade:



A frozen non-alcoholic drink that taste like some type of butterscotch soda (In the June heat, we will take any frozen drink, but I thought even non-alcoholic this was better than the comped drinks we could get at the Atlantis casino.) We would eat at Three Broomsticks restaurant in Hogsmeade. When we finished dinner, the line for Hagrid attraction reported as closed for the night as they were expecting their existing line to go well past park closing time:



We would then take the Hogwarts Express to Diagon Alley in the Universal Studios Florida park, so our daughter could try out her wand on the interactive attractions over there. Because we knew we would be getting Express Pass’s the next day, we didn’t go to any attractions with long lines, and just enjoyed the other stuff to do at the parks. We would leave through the Universal Studios Florida park, and then take a Lyft back to the Super 8.

END OF DAY 5

Sure hope I am not losing anyone with all this theme park stuff... As always, feel free to chime in...

 

JFO, loving the two phased report. Your Atlantis one was spot on!! This Orlando one is also very informative, thanks. Last couple of time we stayed Sapphire Falls, real nice hotel and the boat to Universal was excellent

 

Sapphire Falls is a part of the Universal Orlando Resort, but as a less expensive hotel doesn't come with the free Express Unlimited passes which was why we would spend just one night at the Royal Pacific.

Which makes me wonder.... if a family booked alternating nights between Sapphire Falls and Royal Pacific (Sapphire Falls for low cost and Royal Pacific for the express passes) would their luggage services move their luggage for them each day while they are in the parks? I would admire anyone who pulled that off.

I know that at Disney World, families might spend 4 nights at one hotel and 3 nights at another, and the resort would have no problem moving their luggage for them between hotels while they are in the parks.

 

DAY 6 (Orlando Day 2)

We decided we didn’t like the Super 8 Universal that much, so we would check out and cancel our reservations for our final night. We would all wear our water park clothes and sandals in the morning, as this day we planned to go on the attractions that would get us soaked. While we had permission to leave our car at the Super 8 overnight, I decided for simplicity to just take our rental car to the Royal Pacific parking lot where parking would be $25/day. The gates would be up at the Royal Pacific’s private lot because the card readers were malfunctioning, so parking would be free. We would check into the hotel early, and they would give us our room key cards which would also be our Express Pass’s even though our rooms wouldn’t be ready until later (the parks now uses photo recognition on each ride tied to the express pass to make sure the right person is using each pass.) We’d take the boat to Universal City Walk, and then walk to Islands of Adventure.

At Islands of Adventure, the attractions that would get us soaked were Jurassic Park River Adventure, Popeye and Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges, and Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls. Some guests at these attractions wear bathing suits or water park clothes like we did, some will wear ponchos over their clothes, and many others just get soaked inside and out, and spend the rest of the day with the outsides of their clothes drying off and their socks and inside clothes wet and damp. The lines for these water attractions were around 30-40 minutes for park guests, but with the express passes we could pretty much walk on them with little to no wait.

We would head to Hogsmeade again, and saw the status of Hagrid’s was:



We would learn is the attraction would run so late finishing guests from the previous night, their maintenance teams would use the mornings for repairs, upgrades and finishing touches. The attraction would frequently go into some type of alarmed status forcing them to close down for extended periods, and guests waiting for long hours would get turned away, and only those who waited in line and got turned away for closure could get special express passes for that ride only if they could return another day. However there was still a horde of Harry Potter faithful packed in line at the adjacent The Lost Continent section of the park, many lining up outside the park before the park even opened, with no idea at what time (or if) the attraction would open that day.

We be able to use our express passes for the Skull Island: Reign of Kong and Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey attractions. We would have lunch at Blondies: Home of the Dagwood



After lunch I received a text that our room was ready, so we would head to the hotel for a nap and to change into dry clothes. While the rooms here are small, they are nice. When we walked in, the TV would come on and automatically turn to the hotels welcome channel. They gave us a ground level Terrace View, and because I missed the snapshot of the “Terrace View” at the Atlantis, here was the view from the Royal Pacific which was about the same:



We were only in this hotel for the express passes. Because this would be our last day for getting wet, we would also go to the hotel’s very nice pool for a little bit before changing into dry clothes.

We would then head to the Universal Studios Florida park and use our Express Unlimited passes for attractions such as Minion Mayhem, Fast and Furious, Harry Potter Escape from Gringotts, Men in Black Alien Attack, Revenge of the Mummy, and The Simpsons Ride.

We would also check out a recently opened attraction Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon. For this attraction, guests could reserve their spot in line with their online app. I actually found the NBC Tonight Show mini-museum in the queuing areas for the ride more entertaining and memorable than the ride itself. These are from the mini-museum:




We would head to Universal City Walk for dinner. Universal City Walk is an area outside the theme parks with free admission and has some free entertainment and lots of stores and restaurants, including some major tourist traps of Hard Rock Café, Bubba Gump Shrimp, and Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville (yes, we also saw these same restaurants in Nassau…) However, this well recommended place at City Walk would not be found anywhere in the Bahamas:



This restaurant called itself a “Sushi Burger Bar” and does pretty good with both. While not inexpensive, this restaurant was dirt cheap compared to the restaurants in Paradise Island. It had an animated bar:




My son and myself got burgers:



While my wife and daughter would get Sushi. Here is one of their fusion Bento box’s with a cheeseburger slider, sweet potato fries, cucumber slaw, edamame and sushi:



END OF DAY 6

Still trying to finish this up.....

 

DAY 7

This deep into this report I probably completely lost all of my poker friends. However, there is a term used frequently in poker circles, which is to SPEW. It basically means making poor choices for spots to play over-aggressive, and effectively just giving away your chips. (Similarly, a spewtard is a player who plays in this manner a lot.) Well my daughter came to this trip with numerous Harry Potter themed clothes, including this t-shirt that my wife apparently bought for her:



Among Harry Potter fans, SPEW stands for the Society for the Promotion of Elvish Welfare, which I believe is some type of advocacy group for elves. In my mind I was thinking this shirt might make a good poker shirt, but as I thought about it more, if I ever ran into a real Harry Potter fan at a poker table while wearing such a shirt, they would determine right away I am a muggle.

So this morning we would wake up in our very nice room at the Royal Pacific. After we got dressed, my son and I would take our luggage to the car so we could check out of our room, and then we would head to Marvel Super Hero Island at the Islands of Adventure park. We would use our express passes to hit Doctor Doom’s Fearfall, Storm Force Acceleration, and The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman. While we had express unlimited passes for all of these and could walk straight to the ride part of the attraction, the queuing area’s for the Spiderman attraction was filled with classic comic book references, and was worth letting others with express passes just pass us so we could appreciate all they had put up.

Universal has a bunch of attractions they call “4D adventures”, where they give guests 3D glasses, put them in a giant “salt shaker” surrounded with video screens, and then shake them up in sync to the video screens for what could be called a "virtual ride experience." Maybe I am getting old, but I really don’t care for these artificial ride simulations. However, The Incredible Hulk Coaster has no 3D glasses nor video screens, and is very real powered accelerated roller coaster with an incredibly smooth fast ride. This ride gets my approval. my daughter and I would ride this several times, there would be a 30 minute wait for regular guests, but with our unlimited express passes there was very little waiting between consecutive rides.

In the comic book gift stores here, I talked to several of the Universal Team members about their park's status with Marvel after their rival Disney bought Marvel Studios. They told me that their section is now under very strict rules to keep everything under the comic book theme only. We also shared strong agreement over our opinions of the direction Star Wars had gone since it's purchase by Disney.

We would have lunch at Mythos in the Lost Continent, which we recommend as a very good theme park restaurant:






We would then head to the Harry Potter parks and hit the attractions there again (with the exception of Hagrid’s of course) crossing over to the other park to reach the other Harry Potter area. We would also repeat some attractions in the other park, including Men in Black Alien Attack (my wife is the champion of this game) and The Simpsons Ride (here is a tip for this ride if you ever ride this, when in queue, tell the team members you want the middle level, as you miss a lot of the attraction in the upper and lower levels.) This appropriately named attraction we would skip:



A number of Universal Orlando attractions that were based on movies that haven’t held in popularity had been been permanently closed. One of the permanently closed attractions, Terminator 2 3D: Battle Across Time, still had it's gift store open. The gift store was had no other guests when we visited, but I did see this T600 relic that has always been here:



I asked a team member in the store if anyone had ever just made an offer on that thing, but he replied that they actually have a good number of them in the back and they still sell pretty well at $1500 each. Maybe that is what is keeping this store open?

Another permanently closed attraction was Lucy – A Tribute, replaced with a Hello Kitty store. I have always thought of Lucy as a timeless classic, so I would ask an older team member in the new store why they closed this one. The team member told me Universal actually did not want to close the attraction, but something about one of Lucille Ball’s granddaughters getting married and the other descendants wanted her wedding ring and all her artifacts back. The very friendly team member also gave me a special dedicated hotline phone number with information updates on the Hagrid ride where we could find out about the attraction and it's status.

We would have Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Milkshakes at the retro:



Then we would head back to the Harry Potter world and to the other park to see The Nighttime Lights at Hogwarts Castle projection and fireworks show, which was a pretty neat show. At the Hagrid ride area, they would allow us to cross the ropes to sample ride seats to see if I would fit.



The sidecar was a little snug for me, but I fit in the motorcycle seat just fine.

At the end of the evening, my son and I would need to help my wife to the front of the park and outside the park. Instead of walking to the crowded boats where there would be a long line for the boat taxis, I would hail a bicycle taxi and pay the rider to take my wife and daughter to the Royal Pacific lobby while my son and I would walk. I would go straight to our rental car (the card readers were still broken in the guest lot so the gates were still up and parking would be free), pick them up in front of the hotel, and take them to our final hotel which would be the Four Points Sheraton Universal, a Bonvoy CAT4 that I got for 25K Bonvoy points.

END OF DAY 7

Thanks for all of you who have been keeping up. Just one more day in this vacation. As always, please feel free to comments or if anyone has any questions about any of this!

 

OK, finally ready to finish this thing up.....

DAY 8

In our opinion, the Four Points Sheraton at Universal has really gone downhill in the past few years. We have a long list of concerns and complaints about what has been done to this hotel, but we’ll just say it’s not worth 25K Bonvoy points (especially in Orlando) and for the cash price the hotel wants for their rooms, guests are better off just getting one of the lower tier hotels that are part of the actual Universal Orlando Resort. This hotel does have a free shuttle to and from Universal, but due to its irregular hours, lateness, and additional stops, guests would be better off just spending the 7 bucks and taking a Lyft (or even walking…)

We wouldn’t have our Universal Express Unlimited passes today, and having done everything else we wanted to in the parks, we decided we would try to catch the new Hagrid’s attracion.

We would get to the park a little after the park opened at 9:00 AM. The line for Hagrid’s that started outside the park was already moved inside the park, to the queuing area from the permanently closed The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad Stunt Show in the Lost Continent Island:



There may have been 70 or 80 guests in line when we got there. We would find a shaded spot under this archway to sit down:



We saw some very prepared families and groups who brought all kinds of fruit and picnic items into the park for waiting in line, and the guests waiting were a very friendly group. We played some of the “What Am I” app game with the other guests, although I had no idea what any of the words were from the Harry Potter category. There was an outdoor fan that blew cool mist, but then a vendor truck moved in front of it. Here is how much they sold snacks for inside the line:



There was also free jugs of cold water with cups for the guests in line, which I thought was very classy of Universal. At the front of the line, there was a statue that would talk to guests as well as play music:



And sometimes pee on guests who got in the statue’s line of fire:



Several of the guests in line would actually ask the statue to squirt so they could wipe the cold squirt substance on their faces. There were team members watching the ropes at the front of the line, and every day there would be a different password for guests who would want to leave the line for whatever reason and return. The password for the day we were there was Hufflepuff (one of the 4 houses of Hogwarts school...) I would have trouble saying and remembering that, but the team members watching the rope allowed me to get in and out with saying H.R. Pufnstuf, as they were from my generation and understood me. (This drove my daughter nuts.)

They finally announced the attraction would open at 11:30 AM and the guests waiting would applaud and gather their stuff together. There was a roped off walkway from the Lost Continent into Hogwarts to a “free locker” area outside the attraction. No bags or loose articles are allowed on the ride part of the attraction (so guests with nothing to lock up could get way ahead of guests who had to stop at the lockers.) Then after loose articles were put away, we would be allowed into the main queuing area for the attraction. Inside the main entrance, there was a split-off area for the regular guests, single riders, and there was an express pass line which was closed. We would continue through the main guest line. This was a very fast moving line (given the time of day), and I tried to encourage our family to take it slowly to appreciate the artistry of the queuing area. Here some shots of the queuing area:





And here is what the ride itself looked like:



I won’t give away any spoilers about this ride, but I will say they put together a pretty awesome indoor/outdoor roller coaster attraction that does not take any Harry Potter knowledge to appreciate, it does a few things I never knew a roller coaster could do, and I expect it will edge ahead of Expedition Everest at Disney’s Animal Kingdom as arguably the best roller coaster attraction in the country, and I believe it might compete one of the top theme based roller coasters in the world. We were all very glad we could ride this in it's first month, and I predict lines for this attraction to be quite long for this for at least a couple years.

After we got back to the park, we would be allowed back behind the ropes to get our stuff. I asked if we could ride again as single riders, and they gladly approved, so my children and I would go back a several more times, getting paired with random guests who came in groups of odd numbers.

After we were finished the ride, we would be done everything we wanted to do in the parks. We still had plenty of time to kill before our flight. We would head back to Universal City Walk and eat at the new NBC Studio Grill. Not the most healthy of choices, but for some reason the burger and barbecue between two grilled cheese sounded like something worth trying for our last day of vacation:



And this Turkey sandwich my daughter got was almost a Dagwood:


We would do a little shopping at Universal City Walk, take a Lyft back to our car parked at the hotel (no way we would take that free shuttle again.) Then we would drive around Orlando stopping at some off resort Orlando gift stores before returning to the airport (our flight back would be 7500 Avios per person.)

END OF TRIP REPORT

Yes, I understand this trip report went in a completely unexpected direction from a CET Atlantis promotion, but I still wanted to touch on the rest of our vacation in this trip report. I guess my final thoughts on the CET Atlantis promotion is if you like water parks, Caribbean beaches, exotic marine life, or exploring islands, this could be a pretty good promotion to take advantage of. But if you don't care for any of that, and are hoping to for a casino vacation with friendly dealers, good casino games, table poker, good drink service, or affordable food options, this promo might not be such a great idea. I think my kids and family really enjoyed the non-casino parts of this resort, and we are very glad we took advantage of this promotion.

As always, if any of you have any questions or comments on any of this, please feel free to post here, or also feel free to PM me direct. Thanks very much for reading.

 

Hi JFO, really enjoyed your report from Atlantis to Universal. Hope you had a great flight home. Thanks again, very enjoyable!

 

My brother's family was there about the same time as you, and even though we have family in the area, they got a room for a few nights on property for the Express passes. They went one morning to the new ride before it opened and ended up getting on in under 2 hours somehow. They said some effect or another malfunctioned during their ride, and when they mentioned it to staff while exiting the ride, the attendant apologized and let them ride again immediately. Sounds like they got pretty lucky. I grew up in the area and still have a large number of friends down there. I've seen a lot of social media posts about this ride and the difficulty of getting on it, but everybody loves it! Love this TR too!

 

On the nose. Was there 2 years ago and thrilled to find $1 15/9 (airport) deuces. Word that there's a new member promo now that can add 0.4% is even better.

 

Caught back up to this. Nice report! Bummer to hear that Hagrid's ride has been suffering some issues, but glad you got on it!

Totally agree with you about not mixing Disney and Universal. The multiday Disney discount is too great. But when we went to Universal in October 2016, we spent one evening at Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, a separate ticketed event. We also were the 2nd to last flight out back to Chicago before Hurricane Matthew. Both worked out pretty well for us!

And I never knew the more expensive resorts got free Express passes. Very good to know! Thanks for sharing!

 

We did Atlantis at the end of June. My niece and her husband have always wanted to check the property out; I am 7 Star so we had the Cove. I was here two years ago (also on a 7 Star trip), but this one was the first time we did three adults in a room. The extra charge was $75 plus tax, etc. for a total of $96 a day for the third person. I knew prices for dining were high from the previous trip so we did bring stuff from home for a quick breakfast in the room - protein bars and instant oatmeal. They wanted to hit the water park so they headed out by 9 every morning so they could be there when the towers opened - they managed to do all the rides, even though we had one day that was rainy and some thunderstorms. I just brought my book down to the Cain Pool (adults only and I believe it's only for the Cove or the Cove and Reef). Great service there, pool personnel ask you how many chairs you want, the area you prefer, sun or shade - set you up on a very comfortable lounge - drink service available at the pool - very relaxing. Lunch at the various little beach hut restaurants was not horribly expensive and portions were generous. We ate at Murray's Deli a couple of times - very large sandwiches and generous portions of side salads. Had a late lunch one day at Olives and check for three was around $120. We did Carmine's in Marina Village the evening they had the Junkanoo Parade (Wednesday). I've never been to the Carmines in NY, but the kids have dined there and they said this was pretty comparable for size of meal and about 25 percent higher because of the VAT and gratuity. I played quite a bit on the $ 9/6 DDB and lost every day, but not horrible amounts. Last night I stopped at the desk to see if I qualified for anything off of our charges - it was 8 PM and she told me I had to come back at 9 because that's when the info is compiled. Grumbled under my breath about losing more money, went back to the machine and hit 4 Aces without a kicker, a royal for 4K, then switched to deuces and hit 4 deuces. Immediately cashed out, went back to desk, she looked up the info and told me I had played 17 hours and 32 minutes and I had "substantial" wins and they couldn't do anything for me. Happy to leave with a profit so no complaining.

I am on a cruise in November that stops in Nassau. Normally I never get off the ship at that port but this time I think I'm going to check out BahaMar. Our cab driver to the airport was saying that Atlantis is the resort that is like Disneyworld and BahaMar is more like Vegas. BTW, cab driver also mentioned that electricity on New Providence and Paradise Island is shared - at some point power goes off and generators kick on, including the big casinos. We had the same problem with internet cutting out on us and I think it might be related to this.

Enjoyed your report - we weren't quite as frugal, but we did some cost cutting. Thanks!

 

You will love BahaMar, very much like Vegas. Very expensive though. Cab ride isn't too long either. If you ever played at Atlantis , you should try and get a room for that day. We have been able to do it a lot.

 

I am thinking they may be exaggerating wait times for the ride, in an attempt to discourage all but the true Harry Potter faithful from getting in line. I heard the day it opened guests waited as long as 10 hours to ride. I believe the shortest they will advertise the wait time is 180 minutes, even when the actual wait time might be less. And then there is the risk of burning a lot of time in line only to have the ride malfunction or go into an alarm state they can't resolve, and they really don't want that happening to too many guests, so they advertise a longer wait.

For a while I was thinking the launch was gearing the ride for local residents with Annual Passes who were either out of school or who could take a day off work. This wasn't a ride you could get in line for early before "rope drop" and then ride it when the park opens and have the rest of the day for the park, but instead the situation forces guests to wait in line during park hours. I am glad we had a day to dedicate to this, we did get on after only waiting a couple hours in a very friendly atmosphere, and then we could use the single rider line to ride more times...

 

Yeah, they are the Magic Your Way tickets that are very expensive the first three days, but then each additional day only costs pennies more. And there really is a lot to do in those parks other than just the major rides, and our kids always enjoyed hitting parks for multiple days on a trip. I always felt it was burning money to take a trip to Orlando and spend a just couple days at Disney with one day at Universal, but that's what tons of people do.

We did the MNSSHP once while staying at Disney, and yeah, that was kind of a waste of money considering we were already there. We did learn that the least crowded day to go to Magic Kingdom was when MNSSHP was going on in the evening, or we could also do Magic Kingdom when they had evening Extra Magic Hours (exclusive to resort guests) and find lightly crowded conditions.

We would always take the kids out of school to go in September, as during Hurricane Season and the first month of school we could get the bests deals. There would frequently be a late afternoon thunderstorm that would come and go that we would be prepared for, which would also clear out parks. Even when hurricanes hit South Florida, it is pretty rare they get up to Orlando.

Yeah, and the price has sure gone up at these places! On our first trip, the Royal Pacific ran about $290/night, but we got 4 nights for the price of 3 as a benefit from the Citi Prestige card. We watched prices for this place after we first reserved our room, and it held at a solid $450 until about the month before our trip when it sold out. And then visitors from Europe and Scandinavia will stay at this place for weeks at a time. (Most of them Harry Potter extreme fans...)