Our honeymoon trip could have gone smoother. While the wait staff were always extremely friendly and pleasant, the concierge caused us great stress repeatedly. Telling us upon arrival all our dinner reservations were cancelled and they closed the only fine dining restaurant after confirming via email that week, and also taking 4 or more days to reply to any emails asking for reservations. The woman in charge of seating for La Palapa on social night and the fine dining restaurant "mediteraneo" was the worst and rude to us at every interaction. We made rsvp 2 weeks before our stay to eat at certain restaurants as its advised on the website. Every time we would show up she would tell us we didn't have an rsvp and we would be asked to prove it by having to pull it up on my phone, embarrassing in front of everyone in the restaurant, this happened many times.
All of that unnecessary drama aside, the hotel is gorgeously placed with a great beach and our room had a great view, we were in a private ocean front bungalow. Our room came with a golf cart which was very fun to ride around in. The Riva bar was great, and the bartender was always friendly and made the best drinks. We loved the piano player which always made it feel special.
It was advertised "breakfast served in the villa daily" which only applies to the ocean front bungalows, but when we got there we were told its $20 a day for this.
If you want to leave the resort for anything, even the nearby supermarket it is $80 round trip for a 15 minute drive, so be aware of that. Water is $4-8 per bottle and you drink a lot more in the sun and heat, these are regular prices and practices for a resort so we came with our own reusable bottles and we usually get our own from a store and refill ourselves. The extreme taxi tax made this a little hard. (you can go 15 minutes inside cap cana for $3.50 but if you leave to a store or shopping its $80, despite the miles and driving time being the same)
We loved chatting with Milton and Juan at Blue restaurant and Rosie on the beach who were all extremely pleasant. Social night is a live music event on Friday's which tons of locals come to, it was spectacular even though we were denied seating despite having a reservation. He had to argue with them showing them our confirmation and still she would only let us sit in the very back away from everything and everyone so we left, and came back later and stole a great front seat and enjoyed the rest of the night- by force! all in all this hotel has a lot of potential if it wasn't run so poorly. My husband did get sick from the food twice, throwing up all of his dinner within an hour after eating. The firs time management said "it is hard on the stomach to be drinking all day and in the sun" which we thought was odd, and he had only had 2 alcoholic drinks at lunchtime. The second time he had nothing to drink the entire day besides water.
This hotel is only a 2 hour nonstop flight from us, and we would of preferred to of had a better experience so that we could come back often. We would not recommend this to our friends or family, especially for the price.
