My Personal Review:
We live in Northern Ontario and stayed at Grand Palladium Palace in Punta Cana from March 22, 2006 thru April 5, 2006. We have visited Punta Cana before and other various Caribbean islands since 1981.
Overview: This resort is four resorts all next to each other. (Grand Palladium Bavaro; Grand Palladium Punta Cana; Grand Palladium Palace; and Royal Suites). It is huge. There is a tiny train to take one around – use it to get to know all of the areas of this resort and where the restaurants/shops/sports centre is. (Best value shops are the ones in the Bavaro resort section.) Most of the guests are either Italian/German or French. Not many Canadians or Americans when we were there.
Flight: took only 3½ hours from Toronto –customs fast and bus ride of only 45 minutes to hotel.
Reception at hotel: Fast and efficient. Envelopes with room keys and info about resort was all pre-prepared. Since the renovation in 2005 they have taken three blocks (numbers 67, 68 and 69) that were previously under the Punta Cana resort section and they now label these blocks as Grand Palladium Palace. These three blocks are in the very noisy area of the night time entertainment area. (If you want to party – great – but if you want peace avoid these rooms.) The blocks for GPP are numbered in the 80’s and 90’s.
Rooms: all rooms have a whirlpool which the resort refers to as “hydro massage spa”. The cleanliness of all of the rooms and grounds in the entire 4 resorts is spotless. If I were giving out stars I would class the hygiene of the rooms/grounds/restaurants as 10 star. The rooms have a mini-bar that is stocked with water/pop/2 beer every two days. (Note: I would not bother to pay extra for any of the rooms in the “Royal Suites” section. Firstly the buildings are 4 stories high – lots of steps! Secondly they say “no kids” but we only counted in the GPPalace area 3 kids. The other “advantage”? to the Royal Suites is free champagne and a small buffet continental breakfast around the pool. One still has to go to the other resorts for all of the other meals.)
In each room is an electronic safe – you code in your own password. This is very nice as no keys needed. There is air-conditioning and a fan in each room. The balconies were really nice also. While we were there it rained 9 full days out of 14 days and all of our clothing, even in our room closets, was wet and damp for days on end. It was so rainy that the Entertainment group was giving lessons in the main lobby area during those days.
Beach and Sailing: The beach is fabulous – wide and soft and the sailing, when the wind is down, is great. You have to book your sailing time 24 hours ahead for each day. The one bad thing is that there is not enough lounge chairs all along the beach. I had to get up a 5:30am to walk down to the beach to put towels on the lounge chairs under shade. By 8:30am all lounge chairs were taken. The blue beach towels, if lost or taken, cost $20 each so take care of yours. We take down old t-shirts and towels to place on our chairs. Early one morning the t-shirts were taken and never to be seen again. It really is unfortunate that more shade palm thatched huts are not built. People get quite possessive about their shade huts!!!! Many people were laying on their towels on the sand. There are beach bars for drinks but if you want some peace stay away from them as they blast out noise all day long. The beach in front of the Bavaro resort was especially crowded as that resort has many rooms and many people there.
Pool: we never use pools at busy resorts. It is so hot around the pools as no breezes reach them and all of the people at the swim up bars spill their drinks in the water amongst other things. Plus it is just so very loud and noisy with the so-called “Entertainment” – but lots love that so glad it is at the pool area. So we only use the ocean. Again not enough lounge chairs around the pools. Many were laying on towels on the grassy areas around the pools.
Entertainment: Very well attended by many. But why they have to scream and turn up those noisy music speakers all day long till 6pm I don’t understand.
Shopping and Village: On the resorts ground there are two shopping areas. The best is in the Bavaro place near the Sports Bar. Facing the beach, to the right of the Royal Suites is the tiny village/market place of El Cortecito. There is an excellent beach restaurant there called “Captain Cooks” that sells a great variety of seafood. Lobsters are $50 US each there. There is a small (only one person) bank in the village where you can get money in Pesos from a credit card as long as you take your photo ID or passport. They you can change the Pesos into US currency. But the line-ups are long!!!! We waited 45 minutes in line. And the people selling items in the stores were very aggressive and it was not nice – you had to barter for everything. We found items in the Bavaro store lower priced than items in those shops.
Security: This resort is very safe and secure. Uniformed guards patrol all over day and night and even some “plain-clothed guards”. They, like everyone on staff, are very nice and helpful in any way.
Tours: We never bother as they are all the same everywhere. On the beach there is Para Sailing/Banana Boat rides/ and other things to do.
Free Trip to Santo Domingo: Guests were offered a free bus ride to Santo Domingo and free overnight stay at a Hotel there. Firstly the bus ride each way was 3½ to 4 hours and the hotel is not on the beach. The hotel is a high-rise with only a pool. Just not worth leaving the resort and beach for!
Now for the Food: The food display is tops – if only it tasted that way! We seemed to live on soft ice cream and produce for days at a time. If your eating habits are McDonalds/Wendys and pre-prepared frozen package type of supermarket foods then you will probably like the food at the resort. But if you cook your own food from scratch and use herbs and spices then the food at the resort is boring/tasteless/tough and dull. I think that the reason is that so much is cooked in a cheap vegetable oil and is served cold and slimy. At the buffets, as they put out the food at least a good ½ hour before the doors open, the food is cold. Most of the foods were in a tomato type of sauce and the food was from frozen packages and tasteless. There were lots of high carb breaded foods and tons of rice in everything. Many guests were amazed at the lack of seafood available. Examples: the Roast Duck was only the backbones and legs and wings – no breast meat. But the display was excellent. They actually served my husband a back!!!!! The “Shark Fin Soup” was just broth with soya flavouring and frozen vegetables and the “Won Ton Soup” had no won tons! There was rarely any mango or payaya’s and no coconut even though coconuts were everywhere overhead in the resort! One good fruit was their Passion Fruit. No garlic is used at all. On the Friday “Gala Night” tons of meat available but all tough and tasteless. The “beef” whether roasted/hamburg/sliced was rubbery, tough and horrid. The joke going around was that it was ground up rubbery goat. The buns on the hamburgs were about 3” thick – again tons of carbs and fillers! The best night is Sunday nights at the buffets where they serve ribs – the only edible meat besides the lamb. And one day they had fried chicken at the lunch grill – that was good. Each day is a different “Potato Salad” – the mayonnaise used is horrid and the potatoes tasteless.
At the Friday night theme night they have one tray with ½” thin slices of lobster in it. They tray is hard to locate! But as usual the lobster/meat is cooked so far ahead of time and is tough and rubbery.
There is a Saturday night beach BBQ – but as it was so windy and rainy we cancelled as not our idea of eating food with sand in it sitting on a wet beach.
At the beach lunch grills – some “peel and eat” shrimps on sticks were served and they were not cooked long enough on the grill. The two types of cheese available was tasteless as was the Gouda but at night blue cheese was presented and that was good.
The desserts were nice with a good variety but the soft ice cream was the best. At the station that cooks up pasta – well the pasta is very “al dente” – most North Americans like their pasta cooked more. So what I would do is have the cook heat up a half portion of chopped seafood in a white sauce and then use that over other food.
I have no idea what they made their “sausages” out of but they were the worst we have ever eaten in our lives. The breakfast “ham” was that extremely thin sliced cheap type that was burn to a crisp – as was the bacon.
Boose: no name brands but their beer is super. Lots of “Cerveza” pronounced “Sir-veza”. We found the nicest bar to be next to the Punta Cana reception. It was quiet and peaceful with lovely comfortable chairs.
Sports Center: Lots to do here: Tennis; Mini-putt; badminton; air-rifle shooting; ping-pong, soccer; basketball, archery, etc. And even oil painting around the pool.
Leaving Dom. Republic – make sure you put aside $20US each for departure fee at the airport.
Overview: If you love noise and frenetic activity and have children/teens to be entertained then this is the resort to go to. For us we just found it too noisy and crowded. No peace at all. Just one continuing loud party place.