This Thanksgiving holiday, we chose to spend time in the sun at the Baha Mar resort in The Bahamas. Of course, some of the fun was also spent getting to and from our destination.

This trip occurred in November 2024.

View other posts in this series:

• Trip Introduction: Thankful in The Bahamas (this post)
• 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
• 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

Reason for the trip

It’s no secret at this point that we enjoy traveling together as a family. Given we didn’t spend too much time at the beach this past summer, I wanted to go somewhere warm over Thanksgiving (not that it gets cold in Los Angeles, but I digress). We’ve never been to The Bahamas before—or any island in the Caribbean Community, for that matter—so this seemed like the ideal time to give it a try. I debated expanding this trip to other islands or locations but wanted to keep it easy this time.

On the plus side, we were able to get other family members to come join us. As I get older, I appreciate more and more the time we’re able to spend with family and I hope to instill that value in my children from an early age. The fact that they joined us made us truly feel thankful.

Flights

Perhaps you’d think I would choose a direct routing for this trip? Between LAX and NAS, there’s only one airline that flies nonstop (Alaska) now that JetBlue mostly pulled out of the Los Angeles market. But the timing of that flight didn’t work for when I had hotel nights booked. Routing through Miami would have been the most direct routing, but American Airlines pricing (both cash and awards) left a bit to be desired.

I did stumble upon an Air Canada award flight routing through Panama on the way back on Copa Airlines (35,000 Air Canada miles per person in business class). The price seemed absolutely reasonable for business class (with the longhaul segment on a lie-flat seat). Naturally, I took it, but still needed a way to get to The Bahamas.

Readers might recall that I recently took a Delta flight bump that left me with extra money. While I could have chosen from a variety of gift cards in exchange, I ultimately just redeemed them for Delta gift cards to help make this trip a little more fun and cost-effective. We then paid cash for Delta One between LAX and JFK, with a connection to NAS in economy. Thanks to the lounge access rules, this enabled us to visit both the newly-opened LAX and JFK Delta One lounges on a single trip. I’ll go into more detail in future posts, but wow I’m impressed with the LAX lounge in particular, though some of it might have to do with the time of day we were at both of the lounges (in the evening at LAX and in the morning at JFK).

When you route out the flights on a map, you get a pretty looking triangle. Somewhat surprisingly, JFK airport is nearly as far out of the way as PTY airport:

• LAX – JFK is 2,475 miles
• JFK – NAS is 1,096 miles
• NAS – PTY is 1,105 miles
• PTY – LAX is 3,010 miles

I say this because people turn their heads a lot when I say I came back from the trip via Panama and I get looks like I’m crazy. Maybe everyone is a little bit crazy, but I don’t think it’s much different than routing through JFK in this case. Perhaps people just need to work on their geography skills and I won’t look so crazy? Granted, this type of routing probably only makes sense if you’re going to LAX, SFO, or LAS airports (Copa west coast destinations in the USA).

While we didn’t get a chance to see any of the country aside from the airport while in Panama, we did see the Panama Canal when landing, which was neat.

Hotels

Given our flight to JFK was a redeye, there wasn’t a need for us to get a transit hotel. The only nights we needed would be in The Bahamas. I debated between the Atlantis resort (Marriott affiliation) and the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar and ultimately settled on the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar. Why? Mostly because of the excellent treatment Globalists get while at Hyatt hotels. I’d say things weren’t perfectly seamless here, but we did get daily drink coupons, free breakfast, and a room upgrade to The Reserve (the hotel within the hotel).

The Baha Mar resort boasts over 45 restaurants, bars, and lounges. As you might expect, we certainly are not capable of eating at every restaurant during this trip. But we did get the opportunity to try quite a few. I have some honest opinions to give about each place that we tried. We even tried our hand at cooking too.

One nice thing about going during Thanksgiving time was the combination of the weather and the crowds. The weather (low 80’s) made it quite pleasant at both the pools and the adjacent water park. And based on the lack of any lines at the water park and how easy it was to find chairs by the pools, it seemed like the hotel wasn’t near capacity.

Thanks for reading along

I like putting these trip series together as a way for others to instill a little inspiration in others as they try to piece together their own vacations. Part of the fun of going on trips isn’t just at your destination, but also the path you take to get there and back. I feel fortunate to be in the points and miles game as it allowed me to branch out of the norm and route through Panama on the way back. I can safely say that after visiting the airport, I feel inspired to make a trip out of it in the future and spend some time in that country. I never would have come to this realization if it weren’t for this hobby taking me to interesting places.

As always, we will give you the good along with the bad to help you make an informed decision for yourselves.

Thanks!