I found the island of Atlantis... it’d better stay lost!?

Named by the famous ancient fictional island mentioned by Plato, it is a great illustration of a quote from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills I just heard on the TV in our airbnb room: “I believe in excessive everything except moderation”.

We visited it by accident when we took the wrong path on our way back from the Cabbage beach on the Paradise Island. Once you enter the complex it’s a maze that’s really difficult to exit.

Atlantis is a complex of multiple buildings, a waterscape park with lagoons, pools, hot tubs, marine habitats, water slides, a marina and a shopping village. It is one of world’s 15 most expensive hotels with the bridge suite, named after Michael Jackson, which costs $25,000 per night with a minimum stay requirement of 4 nights. It has 3805 rooms and suites.
It’s quite hard to find who the architect of the complex was, but it seems to have been built between 1998-2007.

This sanctuary of commerce and money hurts to look at when confronted with the beauty of surrounding nature. It is located by a beach and a natural park which look like this:

As I said, on our way back we were looking for a shortcut and entered one of the buildings of the complex to get to the marina and to the ferry that was supposed to take us to our airbnb room. We entered a labyrinth that included a hot tub, pools with turtles and manta rays, waterfalls, caves and tunnels, and temples. All of it fake. We walked through a casino and multiple restaurants and we weren’t even close to the main buildings. We finally found an exit through the marina where the marina village was located. The village consists of countless stores, restaurants and bars located along the walkway, including Starbucks where we got coffee and rested for a bit. The village was the only place in the Bahamas that we’ve seen open so late - it was 7pm and in Nassau everything closes at 5 or 6.

It may be depressing coming from an architect, but unfortunately I believe more often than not in places like this no project is better than any project. This is one of the cases.