Perhaps to recover from the loss of her beloved dog Paw Paw, Martha Stewart took her crew to the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas and she even blogged about it! (You know Martha, you could have just submitted a VIP Review to HotelChatter.)
Anyways, Martha's short on text but long on photos and photo captions. After looking at all the pics on her blog, we gathered this is what she did at the Atlantis resort: made a meal with executive sous chef at Jean George Vongerichten’s Café Martinique, tried on straw hats, checked out the garden at The Cove, observed architecture, bandaged her friend's hurt leg, went for a swim in rough seas, pitied her make-up assistant who got seasick, took a lot of pictures on the boat and fed some manta rays.
Go Martha! That's way more action than what we experienced at the resort last year.
As for accommodations, we're guessing Martha et. al. were put up in The Cove which is the newer and more pricier tower.
See what Martha's hotel digs probably looked liked here.
File this one under Major Bad Rate. The Atlantis in the Bahamas is offering a "Paradise Getaway" of 4 days/3 nights from $439. This sounds amazing, right? Well here are some caveats:
· You must book by Feb. 29th, so you have one week left. · Rate is per person, double-occupancy, based on Sun. or Mon. arrival. Got that? · It's effective for travel 4/27/08-6/15/08, basically when it starts to get warm where you live. · It's only for rooms in the Beach Tower Terrace which is the cheapest tower on the property. · Don't forget to add up to $81 per person for mandatory taxes, mandatory housekeeping gratuities, and utility service fees. Yikes, good thing we told you about hidden fees. · Weekend, holiday & peak period surcharges apply. So basically you have to ask for vacation days from work. · Worst of all, we searched several dates online and not once did we see the $439 deal. Unless the deal is $439 per night which isn't really a deal here.
We are suckers for a room with a killer view. We find that we are even more likely to forgive some minor hotel inconveniences if we can stare out the window at something pretty--yeah we are that shallow. Let's help out our fellow hotel mavens by uploading rooms with killer views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. We will feature our favorites in this space from time to time. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number of the hot view.
Thanks go to jyanich for dropping this killer view into the HotelChatter Flickr pool. The view belongs to the The Cove Atlantis in the Bahamas. It's a paradise kind of picture looking the other direction to this video, and shot from higher up--from the Club Level, in fact. A couple of perfect pools to dive into, a really inviting-looking ocean--that's pretty much enough to satisfy us any time.
If you want your own piece of this paradise, The Cove is running a Paradise Getaway special at the moment starting at $899 for 4 days/3 nights per person; although if you click through to reserve the special, you'll see that it's not available on too many dates in the near future. But if you get there, you can be fairly sure to have a pretty special view, at least.
On our way back from Eleuthera, we decided to spend the night in Nassau. Afterall, who knows when we will ever get back to the Bahamas? And if we do get back there, we already know where we are going.
So we shacked up at The Cove on our own dime and not part of the scheduled press trip. We've been dying to check out The Cove since it opened last year--it must have been the initial celebrity draw that got us hooked. And we were expected to love the place, especially after a few days of idle island living on Eleuthera.
But the thing is, we really missed our stripped-down, laid back, easy come, easy go days on Eleuthera. And the Atlantis Resort is anything but laid back.
The Cove at Atlantis is a 600-suite luxury hotel within the family-oriented Atlantis Resort which recently opened on March 28 in the Bahamas. What sets Cove apart from the rest of the lodgings at Atlantis is its "grownup taste", meaning that it's adults only, the room prices are higher (suites start at $735 in the high season), there's a swank restaurant by celeb chef Bobby Flay and a hotspot from Cain, who own the storied Cain outposts in Manhattan and the Hamptons.
Cain at the Cove is an outdoor pool and beach club that will feature:
22 fully-staffed cabanas with personal butlers and include plasma TVs, private bathrooms with shower, and a stocked mini-bar chose by the guest. The Cain experience will include international DJs, entertainment and the service it is known for in NYC.
During the day, Cain will serve "daytime elixirs" that will cure you of last night's hangover so you can keep the party going. Also, available will be spa coordinators to set up any spa treatments you might want. So pretty much anything you can dream up poolside, Cain will try to get for you, so long as it's legal of course. The bad news is you still have to wait until May for the pool club to offically open.
As for staying at the hotel, there's no discounted introductory rates but they are offering the fourth night free when you book three nights and the going rate for this spring is $660. The offer is good until April 30th. But beware, construction still abounds according to recent guest reports.
Page Six has a dishy item today about the suits at CNN who were spotted partying like its 1999 at the Atlantis Beach Resort in the Bahamas.
According to FTVLive.com, Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, and Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. were among the 100 CNN execs who got to go on vacation this week on the company dime. And that dime must go a long way as rooms at the Atlantis, which has an onsite casino, a Nobu restaurant, nearly 6,000 rooms and an open-air marine life habitat, can hit up to $10,000 for a week.
Naturally, this has the employees stuck in Atlanta pissed, especially since most of them won't be getting bonuses this year.
While we are sure, no one would pass up a free trip to Atlantis, this is still supreme, big-resort cheesiness. One example? Reality TV couple Rob and Amber from Survivor got married here. Another example? The Aquaventure water park, bound to be filled with children.(See picture above.)
Smart Money runs the numbers at five big resorts--and it's not a pretty picture.
You know the scene. You sleep in late since it's vacation, eating a leisurely breakfast and then sauntering out to the hotel pool to relax and read a book. Only one problem: there's not a lounge chair to be found.
At far too many resorts, this is the norm, not an exception. The January issue of Smart Money, which is not online yet, runs a whole feature story called "Musical Chairs," with tales of guests at $600 resorts not being able to find a place to lounge and stories of people lining up at Mandalay Bay in Vegas before 8:00 a.m. so they can get through the gate at opening time to snag a good spot for the day. (Story is not online yet.) At the Westin in Aruba, the hotel hands out free coffee to those in line and the first one through gets a t-shirt that says, "First in Line." (No, it doesn't say "I'm still a loser" on the back.)
More on the hotel lounge chair crisis after the jump.
2 Comments - Add Yours
by juliana
