One of the reasons many guests flock to the Baha Bay resort is the access to the many pools available on-site.

View other posts in this series:

• Trip Introduction: Thankful in The Bahamas
• WOW: Delta One Lounge LAX is Incredible
• Review: Delta One 767-300ER LAX-JFK
• Review: Delta One Lounge JFK
• Fun in the Sun: A Review of Grand Hyatt Baha Mar
• Grand Hyatt Baha Mar – Breakfast Restaurants
• Grand Hyatt Baha Mar – Dinner Restaurants
• Grand Hyatt Baha Mar – Activities
• Grand Hyatt Baha Mar – Pools and Beach (this post)
• Wet and Wild Excitement: Baha Bay Water Park
• Grand Hyatt Baha Mar Thanksgiving Activities
• Review: Copa Airlines 737-800 Business Class NAS-PTY
• Review: Copa Club PTY Terminal 2
• Review: Copa Airlines 737-MAX 9 Business Class PTY-LAX

PSA: Free Sunscreen at Towel Huts

Before getting too deep into this section, I just wanted to point out that the hotel does offer water refill stations (both still and sparkling water) and sunscreen. It’s not clear what the SPF is, but free is free. It’s a far more economical option than paying $34/bottle for Banana Boat sunscreen in the hotel’s convenience store.

One other note about the towel huts while we’re at it. The towels are only to be used at the pools and the beach, not at the adjacent water park. Also, if you’re coming here when the pools are closing, attendants will claim they ran out of towels. I asked for four towels when I approached by myself as the pool was closing (I rushed off ahead to get towels for us as we didn’t plan ahead and get them before going into the water this time). The attendants claimed they were all gone. I paused, thinking of what to do next, and he gave me two towels, saying that’s all they had. That’s fine, but someone else came up right behind me and asked for two towels and then the attendant gave out two more and avoided eye contact with me. Moral of the story is not to wait until the end of your visit to the pool to request your towels.

Pools

The Baha Mar resort has a wide variety of pools (their website lists 10), but note that not all of them are going to be available for every guest. There are some pools that are only available if you reserve a cabana adjacent to that pool (those pools are adults-only). There are also two pools that are exclusive for Rosewood hotel guests. Of the pools here, we only visited three of them (which are bolded in the list below).

• Dean’s Blue Hole
• Drift
• Elixir (cabana guests only, adults only)
• Fortune
• Out Island
• Reflections (cabana guests only)
• Bungalow
• Privilege (adults only)
• Lagoon (Rosewood guests only)
• Quiet (Rosewood guests only)

While Privilege is officially the only pool to limit occupants to adults and not require renting a cabana, don’t expect a serene vibe here as it’s more of a party scene with a DJ keeping the good times rolling.

If you’re like us and came here to stay at the Grand Hyatt with no intention of booking a cabana or leaving the kids behind, you’ll only have five pools at your disposal. To be sure, it’s still a good number of pools and kept us entertained for our stay.

Oh, and for those wondering, during our late November stay, we can gladly report that all pools were heated to a reasonably warm temperature, making it an excellent place to pass the time along with plenty of sun.

Dean’s Blue Hole

Hanging out at Dean’s Blue Hole was a family favorite for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it has a couple of spots where you can dive off the cliffs into the water below. Alex enjoyed jumping, though it took a little bit of encouragement before he had the desire to do it. As you can imagine, it’s a good idea to know how to swim before giving it a try.

What else made this pool fun? There was a cave protected by a waterfall, with spots that looked into the neighboring Exploration Center. If you’re lucky, you’ll see lots of sea life passing by, but of course when I took a picture, there wasn’t much to see. There’s also an observation window that peeks into the aviary, which is nice if you want to see birds but don’t like to risk getting pooped on by them.

A word of warning for those looking for serenity here, the lifeguards here are extra happy to use their whistles to corral the swimmers. This makes sense given the jumpers into the water, but it felt fairly constant at times.

Out Island Pool

The other pool where we spent most of our time was Out Island Pool, which is right next to Dean’s Blue Hole and quite honestly I assumed they were the same pool until I look at the hotel map that suggested otherwise. There is a small bridge that separates Out Island from Dean’s Blue Hole. The real benefit of this pool is the zero-entry section, making it an excellent option for very young children not yet accustomed to the water. Given the relatively shallow depth of the pool, this one also felt the warmest.

Out Island Bar is also where we ended up using most of our Globalist drink vouchers. As a reminder, for each night of our stay, we were offered a voucher good for two complimentary drinks from any pool bar, including Out Island Bar, and that includes cocktails, beers, mixed drinks, mocktails, and non-alcoholic pina coladas and daiquiris. Despite the listed terms, we didn’t ever have any problem using more than one voucher per day (but we didn’t use more than one on the same trip to the bar). The kids loved their ultra-sweet strawberry daiquiri to share.

We also ordered the kids macaroni and cheese one time from the restaurant. It seemed like the process of ordering food was a bit troublesome, as it was hard to find the right people to flag down to place an order and when we tried going to the restaurant to order, they told us to go find a chair by the pool instead. You have to be aggressive in getting the attention of employees by the pool to place an order, and despite the fact that there are flags on the back of the pool chairs, they didn’t make any difference. What we got wasn’t worth the wait, with a very over-cooked macaroni topped with a bland cheese that just didn’t taste satisfying. If you want mac n’ cheese done right, go to Marcus.

Fortune Pool

This pool is probably best known for two things–the swim-up bar and the waterfall. The kids enjoyed the novelty of being able to sit on an underwater barstool. This pool is a little bit deeper than the other pools mentioned thus far, but still fairly shallow if you avoid the center. Mixed drinks do vary with each pool bar, so if you don’t like the selection at Out Island Bar, come here to see if there’s something you would prefer instead.

The kids also loved going under the waterfall. The water wasn’t cold as it ran off from the level above, making it a good place for amateurs to practice their takigyo (waterfall meditation).

Cable Beach

The Baha Mar resort is right up next to the water, with the public Cable Beach in between the resort and the ocean. For those wondering, yes, since the beach is public, expect to see merchants walking along the beach (and sometimes between the chairs) asking if anyone needs any services (hair braiding, water sports, miscellaneous food). At no time were they invasive or distracting, but they did pass by several times as we were there.

The beach itself has plenty of soft white sand. The kids spent a lot of time here digging in the sand and enjoying the gentle waves. If you want sand toys, you’ll have to bring your own.

If you’re looking to snorkel, you can bring your own gear, but we didn’t see too much out in the water. We didn’t see any coral and there weren’t many fish (the best viewing seemed to be by the rocks). It looked like there would be a lot of coral given how dark the water looked in spots, but that wasn’t the case as it was just seaweed. If we come back, we wouldn’t bother bringing our snorkel gear.

Out on the beach, we found a large surplus of available chairs. There were also two-seaters available to rent but they were definitely not needed during our stay. I imagine that might be a different answer during the summer.

If you want to have some fun in the water with rents, the water sports rental facility is open from 9AM to sundown. The following items are complimentary for resort guests:

• Stand-up paddleboards
• Kayaks (both single and double)
• Water hammocks
• Floating lounges

Everything is available on a first-come-first-served basis. And note that even though you might see a surplus of items just sitting around, the team here let us know that they only reserve a subset of the water sports gear for complimentary use. You’ll have to just chat with the team to find out what options you have.

We did get out on a double kayak, which was fun.

Walking along the docks by the beach was also nice, especially after a heavy meal.

If you’re hungry on the beach, there are a few hotel-affiliated options out here in the permanent food trucks. We tried out El Jefe, a quick-service Mexican restaurant, which does allow charging to your room.

We were hoping for a lighter meal, and went with the nachos and some quesadillas. We thought they were just fine–nothing all that memorable, but it works if you’re looking for Mexican food at the beach.

Do you need to reserve chairs?

One bit of advice I received before coming here was to reserve chairs in advance. If you want to do that, there is a simple website for you to pick out your preferred seat. Reservations are available two months in advance.

We didn’t find it necessary at all to reserve a seat. Why?

• We tended to jump around between pools, making it inefficient to limit us to a specific spot for the entire day.
• Many seats were easily available–at no time during our stay was it difficult to find a spot to sit by the pools or the beach
• We preferred to save our money where we could and spend it on things we preferred to do (mainly dinner).

This all said, I can imagine that there are indeed times when the resort is more crowded and it becomes a challenge finding spots to sit. I feel like I would still take a risk as I’ve been to plenty of other resorts where there is a real shortage of seating by the pools and this didn’t feel like one of those places, perhaps aided by having a lot of pools at the resort.

Scoops

Out by Marcus is Scoops, which tended to have a lengthy line even in late November. I had heard that the ice cream here is more expensive than Pizza Lab (as much as double the price). I was hoping that the prices would be listed on the menu but they were not, so I can’t confirm if what I heard was true, but we did avoid coming here and instead stuck with Pizza Lab for ice cream and we were happy with the choice.

Stay tuned for the next installment where I’ll talk about the Baha Bay water park…