Helicopter from Miami to Atlantis Bahamas

This is what people mean when they say Atlantis. The waterscape covers 141 acres in the middle of the resort, with a river ride about a mile long running through it and more than twenty swimming areas around that. It is also the single subject guests raise before they raise anything else. A family can spend a full day inside it without doing the same thing twice, which is why the return hour matters more here than the outbound one. Access comes with a room. Day passes exist for visitors who are not staying and those rates move from year to year, so that part is worth settling with the resort rather than with us. Say how many are swimming and how old they are when you send the date: it changes the hour you want to be on the ground, not the flight.

The sand on the ocean side of the island runs about two miles and the resort sits on a stretch of it. That is the short answer to why a day here needs no boat to work at all. The water on that side stays calm for most of the year and the bottom runs out flat, so it suits a party with small children as easily as one that wants a lounger and nothing else. The quieter stretches belong to the individual properties rather than to the resort as a whole. The sand has a name: Cabbage Beach, about two miles along the northern shore. Paradise Beach, at the western end, is about a mile and quieter. Every beach in the Bahamas is public, so the sand past the gates is open to you whether or not you are staying behind it. Here the point is that the water is a five minute walk from the room.

The course at the eastern end of the island is eighteen holes and a par seventy two, laid out by Tom Weiskopf with the sea in view on both sides for much of the round. Play is not open to the public. It is for guests of the resort or of the club beside it, and that is the reason it stays quiet on a Saturday morning when the rest of the island is full. Clubs travel within the payload for the day, which is a weight rather than a bag count. Say they are coming when you send the date, the same way you would flag a pram or dive gear, and it is settled in the baggage guidance before you book.

Dolphin Cay sits on the resort's own ground and is built around conservation and rehabilitation work with dolphins and sea lions rather than around a show. Encounters run on time slots and the good ones fill first. This is the one part of an Atlantis day that genuinely has to be arranged before the flight rather than after it, which is also why the departure hour is set around it and not the other way round. It is part of why a number of these charters happen at all. A family that will not put small children through a terminal queue will put them in a cabin that seats five, seven or nine people, depending on the helicopter and leaves when they are ready. A meet and greet on arrival takes the rest of the friction out of the morning.

Underneath the resort runs a set of open air habitats holding more than 250 marine species, among the largest of their kind anywhere, and you walk through them rather than look down into them. The Dig is the half built as the streets and tunnels of a lost city, with the exhibits set into the walls. The predator lagoon is where people stand longest. This is what an afternoon becomes when the weather closes in, which counts for more on a day trip than on a week. A departure that moves for weather runs under the weather and delays policy, and because the aircraft carries only your party, a new slot is agreed rather than assigned.

The marina lies on the harbour side of the resort with 63 slips, and a fair share of these flights end there rather than at a front desk: the guest is joining a boat. If that is the day, say so in the first line of the enquiry. A yacht transfer is arranged around where the boat is actually lying, and a dock pickup can meet you if it has moved somewhere else in the harbour. A helideck on board is a feature of the vessel and a question for its captain, never a promise from us. Crew changes work the same way, and they are the reason the return leg is often the important half. Freight that has to travel separately goes by island logistics rather than in the cabin with you.

The restaurants run from a counter by the water to rooms booked weeks out, and the casino sits in the middle of the resort rather than off to one side, so the evening needs no taxi. That is the argument for staying over rather than flying home the same day. Customs on the Bahamian side keeps normal hours, so a day trip ends earlier than the evening does, and the difference in what the day feels like is larger than the difference in cost. If dinner is the point of the trip rather than the resort, a fly and dine day is the shape for it, and catering or a private chef can travel with you instead.

Across the bridge is Nassau, about ten minutes by road, with the harbour, the old town and the fish fry underneath it. Further out the same aircraft carries on to Harbour Island, Andros, Staniel Cay and the Exumas once the first clearance is done, which is what turns one resort into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. Blue Lagoon Island lies on the same run and is where the dolphin and sea lion encounters are, and further down the chain are the nurse sharks in the shallows at Compass Cay. The packaged version of this resort is the Atlantis getaway, the island around it has the Paradise Island getaway, the town across the water has its own Nassau explorer day and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.