Wet and Wild Excitement: Baha Bay Water Park

Between the many waterslides and other opportunities to get wet, Baha Bay offered a fun way to spend the day. We made good use of our time here by coming early to hit the more popular rides first.

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Admission

Admission is free for Baha Mar resort guests, with the park being open from 10AM to 5PM daily.

How much does it cost if you want to come to the water park but are not a hotel guest? An arm and a leg, even by Bahamian standards. If you explore the Baha Bay website, you’ll find a price of $160/adult or $65/child. If I look at what cruise ships are selling admission for, I’m seeing a current rate of $199/adult or $99/child, including transportation and lunch. Depending on how many people are in your party, it might be cheaper just to book a night at the hotel to gain access that way.

Don’t use any of the dollar amounts to assume that by booking a stay here, you’re getting somewhere in the range of $500-$600 in saved admission fees for a family of four daily. The real value is far less, because if the hotel moved away from giving hotel guests free admission and charged for it, few would show up at those rates. The rates being that high are intended to control the number of non-resort guests to a smaller number and offer some benefit to hotel guests.

What would I pay if I had to pay access daily? Probably somewhere closer to $35/day/person. That said, it’s a real value-add for anyone looking to use Hyatt points at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar and get water park admission on top of your room rate.

Baha Bay Water Park

We entered the Baha Bay water park via the Resort Entrance. You’ll need to scan your wristband on entry but not on exit (despite there being a scanner when exiting). You can bring bags and outside food, but be prepared for a bag check to ensure no glass is being brought in.

Once inside, you’ll find some signage to help you get to where you’re going.

The Guest Services huts are where you can request towels. It would have been easier if towels were just laid out already for guests.

If you need to refill your water bottles, stop by any restroom facility which has a water bottle refiller there.

If you need a locker (such as if you’re not staying at the resort), you’ll find some lockers available to rent at a price of $15 or $20, depending on the size you need. I didn’t see any that would store a carry-on.

Each water ride has a cubby in case you want to temporarily store your belongings as you go on the ride. You could alternatively put your stuff down on a chair, but sometimes it was simpler just using the cubby.

The kids enjoyed looking at the sign showing how far away other cities were from Baha Bay.

The Rides

Throughout the water park, you’ll find maps that help give you a lay of the land in case you get lost.

The Surf

The wait for The Surf can be significant since much of it depends on the ability of each rider. There are two lines, with the left section more intended for beginners where staff is able to help assist and the right section where you’re pretty much on your own. It can be fun but be prepared to eventually wipe out like everyone else giving this a try. You can try your hand at surfing or boogieboarding.

Pirate’s Plunge

The Pirate’s Plunge waterslide will take you on a twisty-turvy ride that makes you feel like you’re going very quickly, and then dump you out above the water so that you’ll splash down into the 12′ deep water below. There are two slides, with the difference mostly being how high above the water you end up falling from. Obviously, knowing how to swim will help you out considerably given the depth of the water below you when you fall. The lines on this ride never seemed to be too bad as it’s sort of hidden in the corner of the park away from most other rides (aside from The Surf).

Baha Bay Lagoon

We came here the first day, but I’ll be honest we didn’t stay too long. The Baha Bay Lagoon is your typical wave pool with gentle waves that get you wet. Of course, with the real beach not too far away, I’d say that is a better place to catch some waves. The water here is quite cold and the lifeguards love to blow their whistles at anyone standing too close to the walls. Also, the waves are only generated for about 5-10 minutes at a time, and then you need to wait another 5-10 minutes for the waves to start up again. I’m not sure the intent of the long pause, but just go to the real thing outside the resort.

Hiding behind the Baha Bay Lagoon is both the Devil’s Backbone and Thunderball, which are your nearly 90° drop waterslides. Perhaps thrill seekers would like these, but it was a hard pass for us. Our nieces went on these rides but they preferred other rides at the water park more than these. Aside from the big drop, there’s not much else to it.

Dueling Riptide Coaster

This ended up being a favorite ride for both me and Jenn. Eight-year-old Alex also enjoyed this ride, though he preferred Cyclone Rush a bit more just because of the big drop there. We didn’t encounter much of a line at the Dueling Riptide Coaster in part because of the need to carry your own tandem innertube up the stairs. If you go on the ride, be prepared to get absolutely soaked from the water jets that help push you uphill in spots. You can’t ride this one alone.

Hammerhead and Cyclone Rush

This should be the first ride you do at Baha Bay if you get here right around when the water park opens at 10AM. The lines for Cyclone Rush in particular were consistently the longest each day we came here. You’ll find that both Hammerhead and Cyclone Rush are pretty similar rides: both entrances are near each other, the rafts each fit up to five riders, and they both exit at the same area. The real difference between the two is the big drop and subsequent climb up a steep hill on Cyclone Rush. The Hammerhead ride is a much milder version of the ride, and as a result, the lines for this one are almost nonexistent. Cyclone Rush is the better ride. As with the Dueling Riptide Coaster, you can’t ride either of these rides alone.

Stingray Cove

Stingray Cove was a fun family area to hang out, with a variety of waterslides for beginners, longer waterslides that took you on a small tour of the cove, and plenty of water being pumped on you at all times. Five-year-old Char loved going on the simpler waterslides, while I could always find Alex checking out the bigger waterslides here. This ride does close down periodically throughout the day for maintenance, but when it does close, it reopens after about 15 minutes.

The River

The River is your typical lazy river ride that takes you around half of the water park. We went on this one quite often, as it was relaxing to just float along. There is an avoidable waterfall along the route and also a couple of wave generators to keep the river moving. There are single and double innertubes, but note there is a difference between the blue and clear innertubes. The clear double innertubes have one hole plugged, making it much easier if you’re bringing a younger child along.

Should you need them, life vests are available for people of practically all sizes.

Turtle Beach

Turtle Beach is the place to go if you have little ones. The water here is not any deeper than 18 inches, making it perfect for wading. There is a zero-entry section as well for the youngest swimmers. The waterslides here are very tame and allow for multiple users to go down them at the same time (just not on your lap). If you go down the waterslide with your child, be prepared to land on your knees given how shallow the water is here. As with Stingray Cove, this ride does close periodically for maintenance, but returns to operational status after about 15 minutes.

With the water so shallow here, it will feel like it’s heated. If colder water temperature scares you off, this is the place to be for you. I found it easier for me to adapt to the colder water elsewhere at Baha Bay if you first start off here and get yourself wet from head to toe, then get out of the water (don’t dry yourself off) and walk over to Stingray Cove and get yourself wet there, and then lastly go to The River and stay in the water (don’t get on an innertube). That procedure worked like a charm for me and then I was comfortable experiencing everything Baha Bay has to offer without worrying about water temperature.

Baha Bay Beach Club

Back by the Baha Bay Resort Entrance is the Baha Bay Beach Club. What is it? It’s a spot where you can lounge on some chairs or in a cabana and enjoy a couple of pools. The cheapest option to get in would be booking a lounger for $125 (of which, $100 would be returned to you as food and beverage credit to use that same day).

We didn’t pay for access here for a few reasons:

We didn’t want to pay $125/seat to gain admission to this section, even if $100/seat is then available as food credit.
Since we had breakfast already covered thanks to Hyatt Globalist status and dinners already planned on the resort, we weren’t looking to spend a lot of money at lunch.
Since we were guests at the Grand Hyatt, we would already have access to the extensive number of pools at that hotel and it seemed silly to us to pay to use a pool here. This might be a better deal for someone visiting the property by purchasing a day pass as they wouldn’t have access to the rest of the pools at the Grand Hyatt.

Food

A bit of a foreword before talking about specific restaurants: cash is not accepted here. If you’re a resort guest, you can charge your food and drinks to the room. If you do a room charge, Hyatt enthusiasts should know that the charge will state “third party” on your room bill and you won’t earn any Hyatt points from your purchases here. You can also pay by credit card or with your digital wallet.

Umami Burger

We had a small lunch at Umami Burger one day, deciding to share a burger and some chili fries amongst the four of us (we were still full from breakfast). It’s been a while since we dined at an Umami Burger back in the USA, but the flavor was good and it didn’t seem that overpriced relative to either regular Umami prices or what we became accustomed to in The Bahamas ($27 before VAT and service charge for the meal). We did find the service here to be a bit slow.

Sam’s Crispy Chicken

Another day we chose to try out Sam’s Crispy Chicken for lunch, ordering a chicken sandwich and a side of fries for $22 before VAT and service charge. Again, I didn’t think the price of the meal was all that egregious and the food itself was enjoyable. It’s hard to mess up a fried chicken sandwich and the fries were good.

Based on the price of the two meals we purchased, it would seem that if you wanted to get your money’s worth with those loungers at the Beach Club, you’d need to purchase a lot of alcohol to break even…

Other restaurants

We didn’t get a chance to try everything here. There are more casual versions of restaurants found in the Baha Mar resort (such as a to-go option for Sugar Factory and Cleo). There is also a spot called Barracuda that has hot dogs, nachos, chicken tenders, and burgers. You should find what you want in here. If not, I’d say go check out Marcus Up Top located just outside the Baha Bay water park.

Stay tuned for the next installment where I’ll talk about what was offered at the Baha Mar resort for Thanksgiving…

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Chris Wada

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experiencing the world via gastronomy with our children