My husband and I booked villa 9A for 7 days over march break; traveling from Canada. We have 2 small boys under 7. This villa is the perfect set up if you want to experience tranquility and privacy while still being close to the action! The comfort of 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, plus kitchen, patio etc cannot be beat when traveling with small children. We were steps from a gorgeous essentially private stretch of beach. The kids didn't even want to go to the pool given how awesome the beach was!
John made excellent suggestions about the island and was readily accessible before and during our stay. The villa has everything you would need for comfort-ample towels, beach chairs, umbrella, ice machine, water filter. I was pleasantly surprised with all this! It is 700m to the Atlantis marina village so we could have some dinners and feel some bustle of activity, but I loved not having to fight throngs of people for a pool chair or wait for an elevator to drag my tired kids up a hotel tower to a small room at the end of the day! The view from the villa is lovely and relaxing, and you will feel like you are on an island, and not a commerically cured resort tower that could be in any other North American city.
The on site restaurant Violas had great food, more authentic options, very good prices compared to other places, but service was often quite slow. This was frustrating for the kids sometimes but I loved the open air seating where again I felt I was on an island, not mega chain restaurant. This is nice for lunch. We were also walking distance to the Ocean Club by Four Seasons, and had a nice dinner there. Prices on the island are steep for what you get, especially if you are used to excellent innovative food in your own city. This is the same for Atlantis restaurants, but all in all was part of the experience and worthwhile. We liked having the flexibility of a kitchen to make a couple of breakfasts and coffee. As John warned, grocery options very limited on paradise island and expensive. Bring snacks, coffee, oatmeal etc if you want to use kitchen more.
The villa is a little dated and a few things could use a bit of TLC and extra cleaning, but overall we were so pleased with the space, comfort and ease of everything. John was incredibly responsive and attentive: when we needed paper towel it showed up in 10 minutes from the housekeeper!
Do not hesitate in booking this villa for a relaxed vacation in Bahamas!