We have taken many family vacations to a variety of resorts over the years (Disneyland, Disney World, Kenya, Ecuador, New York, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Freeport and Marsh Harbor in the Bahamas, Playa del Carmen, Hawaii, among others) and have never felt compelled to complain or write a negative review until now.
Our problems at Atlantis included:
-Check-in took over 3 hours – despite being promised a room in 15 minutes… then 30 more minutes ("I am a supervisor, I guarantee your room will be ready in 30 minutes…")
-When we called the "Prompt Response" line we listened to a recording for over 10 minutes.
-The helpful people positioned in the two key locations in the lobby to help the guests find their way around (at least that’s what the front desk personnel told us) are actually not part of Guest Services – They are timeshare salespeople and they will accost you every time you pass through the lobby. Guest Services is hidden away in a location that we never found. The timeshare salespeople will direct you to restaurants that are closed.
-The manager promised us a $50 credit added to our bill for our inconvenience, but did not actually give us the credit.
-The bell service will not deliver luggage to the room so as to not miss the opportunity to receive a tip–even though a mandatory tip is already added to the hotel bill.
Some of the other (too numerous to remember or recount) events include:
- Seeing an employee run pedestrians off a walking path while driving his cart forward and subsequently backward to chase down an attractive guest who had politely refused to talk to him.
- Walking 20 minutes through the resort and its construction site to get to the fitness center to find several other guests waiting at the golf cart that is used to shuttle people to the basketball court (they had already informed the fitness center employees of their need for transportation)… Waiting 10 more minutes and then going inside to remind the employees that there were now 7 of us in need of transportation… Waiting 10 more minutes to see the cart driver (who had been standing inside the fitness center shop the entire time) emerge from the fitness center with a family of 4 to tell the 7 of us to get off the golf cart so he could take the family to play tennis… He then took that family on the cart and left 3 seats empty while taking them to the same location as the basketball courts!
-The beach and pools are closed while the sun is still up so that (as one employee informed us) people are more likely to spend more money in the casino.
- As the temperatures were somewhat marginal for swimming (approx 70 F) the only hot tub on the property was not working.
- Finding very small insects (ants?) crawling in the bathroom and in our toiletry bags on the day of checkout