Arrival: June 26 – July 01
We flew on a 6:00am flight on Apple Vacations charter airline, USA 3000. The check in at Philadelphia was chaotic. Nothing is computerized. Other than that, the flight was uneventful, which means great. The flight attendants were extremely friendly. Our return flight was also great. Again, the flight crew was excellent.
Rooms::
We were a group of 8, in 4 rooms. Two of these 8 were my 24 year daughter and her friend. The front desk had a lot of problems handling this. They wanted to put us 8 rooms apart. We had requested connecting with our travel agent, and it could have been her mess up, but the front desk wouldn’t even try to move us next to each other. We ended up in building 8, while the other 4 in our group was in building 6. It appears that nobody is allowed to think with the permission of their manager. It took a few hours and they finally put us in adjoining rooms. One small problem, the door from our room to the girls room was bigger than the frame, and therefore wouldn’t close. They said they would fix, so we left and headed out to the pool. When we returned, the door was closed. Of course it was jammed closed, so now we couldn’t open it. Kinda defeats the purpose of connecting rooms. We waited 4 days, but they did fix it for our last night. For our second day, we returned from the pool to find out that we had no shower. Maintenance did some sort of jerry rigging and we had a shower a few hours later. Yes the shower set up is pretty stupid, and the floor gets soaked, put a towel on the floor. Problem solved. Just to top off our room problems, my wife went back to the room during the afternoon of our third day and the toilet didn’t work. It took a while to fix this problem. Then of course later that night, when we returned from the casino, our toilet didn’t work again. I spent the next few days lifting the float and repositioning the flapper. To be fair, Jose the day time front desk manager offered to move us to a honeymoon suite, and move the girls close to us. We really didn’t want to pack and unpack again, so we said, no, please just fix the room we’re in. We did ask for and receive access to the preferred club so our girls could use the internet. Unfortunately, our room issues never stopped. Our mini bar was never stocked. No matter how many times we called, we would return at the end of the day to an empty mini bar. Every afternoon we called for a refill. One night, we returned a little after midnight and called the front desk. They connected us to housekeeping who told us that the mini bar service was closed for the evening but they could transfer us to room service. Room service was gracious enough to tell us that we could get drinking water in 60 minutes. A little talk with the front desk sped up this process. The next day, empty mini bar. They told us that they had restocked it at 2:45. They told us this same answer for the next two days. Our housekeeper was very good about forgetting to bring us towels. Most days we received two towels, no floor towel and no hand towels. We had to make daily calls housekeeping about this. A couple of days we received the paper with the next day’s events, but not every day. Cesar at the front desk was about the only person who was able to get anything done for us. He was also probably the only person who cared. The rooms themselves are fairly large and the A/C worked great.
Restaurants and Bars::
The main buffet has some great choices. The breakfast buffet is your standard, omelet station, pancakes, waffles, bacon, sausage, fresh fruit, etc. At lunch, they had absolutely delicious grilled shrimp and mussels. There was always a fresh fish being grilled. Other than the heat, since it is open air, the breakfast and lunch buffets were great. For dinner, we never ate at the buffet. We ate at 4 of the 5 specialty restaurants. We did not try the Italian restaurant since we heard from numerous people that the food was awful. Our first night we tried Himitsu, the hibachi side of the Asian restaurant. Our chef was Acevedo and our waiter was Danny. They were great. Since the show is a big part of Hibachi, wanted to mention them by name. We loved it. The food and the interaction was great. Again, I don’t know what they do to the shrimp, but they are amazingly good. The caramel bananas and the fried ice cream are the winners as dessert choices. The next night we ate at the Seaside Grill. This was a big disappointment. The food was not good and the service was terrible. Most our group got the shrimp cocktail and the (gotta love this translation) Tibon steak (T-Bone for the rest of us). The shrimp was over cooked and chewy. The steaks were like half a cow. They were bigger than the plate, burnt to a crisp and full of fat. I personally got the rib eye. It had a lot of fat, but the when you cut off the fat, the meat was pretty good. El Patio, the Mexican restaurant was next. This was a lot of fun. Everybody enjoyed their diners except for my nephew who didn’t listen to our waitress, Noami, and ordered the tacos. She was best waitress that we had at any restaurant. Great service and a great personality. The manager, Carlos, was also phenomenal. The dessert here is the Tree Milk Cake. Not sure what it means, but it was very good. Don’t miss this restaurant. The French restaurant, Bordeaux, isn’t really French food, but it was pretty good. The only problem here was that it took 2 ½ hours. We returned to Himitsu to try the Chinese side. It’s not really Chinese, but once again, everyone enjoyed their meals. Very good service. Overall, the food is very good for an
Beach/Pools/Grounds::
The grounds are very nice. The pools are large. I think the resort was very full, so chair and float saving was a very big issue. We were up at 7:30 to make sure we got floats and lounges. The beach is powdery soft white sand and the ocean is crystal clear. It’s probably just the time of year, summer, or maybe just all those people sitting at the swim up bar and not moving all day, but the pool water was warmer than the air. The ocean is cooler and more refreshing.
Activities on and off the Resort/Hotel::
We did the parasailing. They promise you 12 minutes, but they only deliver about 6-8. Still, it was fun. We also went deep sea fishing. You have to do a lot of negotiating to get a decent price. After 3 hours of boredom, we did catch a 6 Marlin, so in the end it was worth it.
Other Comments::
This resort is next to the Grand Oasis which was the Sunscape Punta Cana Grand 4 years ago. I stayed there when it was Sunscape. I loved it. I wrote a great review about it on Debbie’s website. While Dreams might be considered a better resort (both AMSTAR properties), we had a better time at Sunscape. Supposedly there was an activities team at Dreams. This was the first resort that I’ve been to in the D.R. (or any Caribbean resort) that had no music playing at the pool during day. They also didn’t try to get any activities going. They did activities with 2 or 3 guests. They had very little interaction with the guests. We hardly saw them and we were at the main pool all day. The entire team should be replaced. I was also a little shocked by the bar service. Yes, they had some top shelf liquor, Absolut, Stolichnaya, Kahlua, Baileys, etc, but they almost always only had one bartender so there were always long waits. They also never had cold water at any bars, only like warm. The bartenders also were devoid of personality except for Clemente at the lobby bar who was loaded with it. We spoke to couples who had their rooms changed, some twice. Many who had previously stayed at Barcelo, Melia Tropical, and Paradisius, all of whom said they would return to those resorts before Dreams. I love the Dominican and Punta Cana, but there is no way I’ll stay at Dreams again.