Sunny places in winter is what gets many of us Seattleites through the long dark season. And once you get into the school age zone, these trips often get squished into holiday breaks where you find everyone you know in the city on the same flight to Hawaii. That’s why my ears perked up at a Nassau Tourism Lunch I went to in January where I learned that there is now a Seattle to Bahamas nonstop flight with Alaska Air landing at Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau. This nonstop flight to Nassau only takes about 6 hours from Seattle and 7 hours back. I always thought the Bahamas was in the 10 hour range from our city so my family was intrigued enough to try this flight for our mid winter break.
How long do you need for a trip to the Bahamas
After two nights in the warm weather we could have gone home and been incredibly pleased with the sunshine we soaked in-we are really loving our short trips lately. But flights don’t fly to the Bahamas every day to or from Seattle so we managed to get a flight there on a Saturday and back on a Wednesday. This gave us four nights total. When we were at the airport we saw a family from Boston who had just missed their flight and it sounded like there wouldn’t be another flight back to Boston for two days, so this is something to keep in mind if you only have a short time.
We were also considering booking our whole trip at the Atlantis Resort so that we would have four nights in the same place. We ended up staying two nights in downtown Nassau at the British Colonial and two nights at the Coral at the Atlantis and having two distinctly different feeling stays is one thing our whole family enjoyed about our trip. We traveled with our twin 15 year old boys and noticed that Nassau and Paradise Island would have been great places for a multigenerational trip or a trip with friends with kids too.
If you have early risers going from Seattle to Bahamas is a great idea
We loved our travel to Hawaii when the kids were little but they would always wake up way too early because of the time change and nothing would be open. Even if they woke up at 4:30am Seattle time in the Bahamas, this would be 7:30am and most of the cruise ships arrive in port at this time so everything is bustling and ready to go. I think this would make things really easy for parents. Another thing for parents of young children just in case I forget to write this somewhere else- we noticed that the pools at both of our hotels had beach type shallow entry areas which is something I looked for at the places we stayed when our kids were little too.
The Bahamas are islands so expect higher prices for food and imported things
Many people told me that going to the Bahamas is spendier than they were expecting for food and that is probably true. We saw many prices similar to what we see in Seattle in Nassau and on Paradise Island and many also had a 15-25% automatic gratuity added. The food stores we went into were in tourist-filled areas and had really high prices especially for things we are used to getting at home. I didn’t do any research to find out where we might look to find more reasonably priced food so I am not sure if this is the norm or if we had gone to other parts of the islands we might have found more reasonably priced eats. So I think this might be where a trip to the Bahamas can get spendier than a family Hawaii trip especially if you’re like us and often rent a condo in Hawaii and pick up foods at Costco on the first day of our trip. That said, with this short trip of only four nights there was a bit of savings with our flight (it cost less than a trip to Hawaii when we checked) and most activities were included in our hotel stay (Atlantis Water Park was included at our hotel) so we didn’t have these usual expenses we might have had on a comparable trip to Hawaii.
Seattle to Bahamas might be Alaska Airlines longest flight
I’m hoping someone writes me to verify this because my son insists that the nonstop Seattle to Bahamas flight is longer than the Anchorage to Kona flight that might be Alaska Airlines current longest flight.
Have you ever been to the Bahamas? And are your also excited about this Seattle to Bahamas direct flight with Alaska Airlines too? (I really hope they keep this route!)
PS if you are curious about where we stayed, we spent the first two nights at the British Colonial Nassau and the last two nights of this trip at the Coral at the Atlantis. We were tempted to spend all of our stay at the Atlantis but ended up really appreciating our stay at the British Colonial because it gave us a different area to explore for two days too.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
3 thoughts on “Seattle to Bahamas – a nonstop flight to Nassau I wish we had when my kids were small”
Comments are closed.