TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

We are currently at The Reef and having a great time!! Clean, up to date and comfortable! We rented the 2 bedroom topaz suite! It is just as pictured! 1) One bedroom with a king and a sectional sofa, small kitchenette with en-suite (separate shower and tub). 2) living area, dining area, kitchen (equipped with everything to cook a meal). The living area has another full bath! That’s right - 3 full bathrooms! 3) 2nd bedroom with a king bed and a lounge chair with en-suite (huge with separate shower and tub). The larger bedroom has a wall of glass looking out to the ocean. The smaller bedroom has a pool view with the beach just past the pool! Property has been great! No wait for elevators, there are beach chairs and pool chairs available, plenty of towels! Plenty of water pressure! Shuttle to dinner at the marina village was super easy! Unit has a huge wrap around balcony with lounge chairs and a table and 4 chairs.

Sadly, the consensus of the criticisms hold true. The lines are intolerable. And there are lines for EVERYTHING; towels, breakfast, Starbucks, buffet, you name it. The food is pretty bad, the bathrooms at the pools are disgusting (on par with the truck stop bathroom). The rooms are fine and the Dolphin Cay experiences are cool but very pricey. The known restaurants like Fish and Nobu and Shake Shack are all good and so that’s where we focused our meals. But you can’t get a table at ANY restaurant unless you made a rez well in advance. I find that very frustrating, there are over a dozen dinner restaurants on property and you can’t get a table at any of them unless you made a rez weeks ago. My biggest complaint is that you have to wait in long lines to get less than food and the dinner restaurants are always fully booked.

We are a family with a 1.5 year old. We booked the Reef for the private access to the near pool and beach. However the experience was very disappointing to say the least. Many people here have said getting chairs on the beach and the pool is a war, so this was in a way expected but I didn’t know it literally meant I would be entering into arguments. The staff at the pool and beach seemed overwhelmed and/or were challenged in helping guests. Over the course of our 6-day stay, we were told by multiple staff to just grab the chairs we see that are available. And this happened when we were at the beach one afternoon. A staff told us there are no chairs at the moment so go ahead and grab if any become available. A group of guests confirmed they were leaving, asked me to give them sometime and I waited aside to grab those chairs. As those guests left, a staff came over said we cannot use those chairs because there were other guests waiting for them (neither the staff nor the other guests were near the leaving guests while I was standing there). I told this staff we had been waiting for them as well. Once the argument escalated, I asked the staff and the other guest that since we have a baby can we use just one of the chairs. The guest seemed to be agreeing but the staff continued to use an aggressive tone and asked us to show him the baby. So I called my husband who was walking around the beach to show him my 1.5 year old. But the staff continued to say that the priorities are given to reef and cove guests. When I tried to tell him that we are guests there he raised his voice and said “stop talking and let me finish”. As the other guests saw what was happening, another family with a young baby came over and told us that we can use their chairs. It was truly disappointing that this staff assumed we were not guests at the reef, did not bother to check our wristbands, had no regard for young baby under a scorching sun, and used inappropriate tone making us feel like uninvited guests at the beach. Furthermore, after we settled in different chairs, he never came to give us towels or any assistance. I have this staff’s name but will avoid publicly shaming him. I decided to leave this review so that Atlantis is aware and better trains their staff to avoid something like this happening and ruining another family’s vacation experience after spending 10k. In the meantime, I would recommend going to Baha Mar which my friends raved about the kids’s play area, cleanliness and most importantly, excellent service.

I hesitate to give this place a good review, because I want to keep it all to myself. Honestly, there's nowhere else to go but here. It's simply the best. For us, anyway. From the moment you arrive to the moment you leave, you feel like it's yours, and you don't want to leave. And the moment you do leave, you want to go back. This was our tenth visit to Atlantis, and we'll be back soon.

Close to everything but much quieter & less busy than the rest of the resort. Suites with full kitchens are the best. Pool & beach were much more enjoyable & had great service. Shuttle was convenient to all other parts of the resort.