Paradisus Punta Cana Rating: 3.5 Pearls

Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

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Guests mingle in the pool

A little techno beat -- unst unst unst -- plays through the lobby speakers, and potent incense blows through the air, while a line of 14 guests wait to check in. At 684 rooms, this is one of the largest resorts in the D.R., and it can get packed.

It's a mixed bag. Couples young and old, families, and college kids on spring break commingle over dance contests and cocktails. At the main pool, college kids (and some high schoolers) line the pool bar drinking heavily to celebrate spring break. (Drinking age in the D.R. is 18, drawing a number of college and even high school spring breakers in March and April.)

Though some quieter VIP-section upgrades are available, the hotel is typically pretty loud and extremely crowded, especially at the mediocre main buffet. For an equally lively resort with similar features (and less fighting for a lounge chair), check out the Grand Palladium or Majestic Colonial mega-resorts.

Check-in tends to have long lines

The Reserve, a VIP section of Paradisus, is a much-needed upgrade here. The staff in the standard section is scarcely equipped to handle the thousand-plus guests. But in the Reserve, there are simply fewer people to oversee, meaning someone's actually on hand to answer questions or make a cocktail. Elsewhere, the service can make you feel like herded cattle.

Lines are common at the front desk, the bar, and the buffet. To eat at the a la carte restaurants, you need to line up starting at 8 a.m., which usually means standing in line for upward of an hour just to put your name on the list. Even with a reservation, some guests are stuck waiting two hours to eat at the restaurants. All of the bars are perpetually understaffed. During my stay, there was only one person handling 12 people in line at the beach outpost of Gabi Bar. (Most guests were there just to get some bottled water.) Even in the Reserve section, guests complain that there aren't enough bartenders at the swim-up bar.

Restaurant service is often equally inattentive. At La Palapa Grill, it took more than 20 minutes to flag down a waiter to put in an order, and he never returned with my drink order. On several occasions, guests had to sit down at tables with dirty plates since the waitstaff didn't have time to clear the tables. However, for dinner at Vento, the Italian-themed a la carte restaurant, my salad arrived in two minutes and the pizza only 16 minutes later -- not bad for a packed restaurant.

View on a Larger Map

The Paradisus Punta Cana is a bit like its own neighborhood, with two massive pools, 11 restaurants, a spa, and a great gym, but there's not much to do elsewhere in Punta Cana -- just some cockfighting rings and local restaurants.

The beach

With the exception of a few cigarette butts and some plastic straws and cups left here and there, the beach is soft and clean. Lounge chairs are lined shoulder to shoulder, but there are also Balinese beds available -- a huge plus if you can snag one in time.

The beach is divided into three sections, the largest of which is for guests at the main resort, and then two smaller individual sections for the Reserve and Royal Suites. The latter have cushier lounge chairs and drinks service, but otherwise the beach is the same.

Boogie boarding was popular among the younger guests, but the waves were really too intense for very young children. I saw one woman lift her small daughter out of the water so she wouldn't get completely doused in water.

Some guests complained of broken lounge chairs on the beach and a lack of convenient bars. To solve the latter issue, all of the buffets have Styrofoam takeout containers so you can grab food on the go and eat on the beach.

The Garden Villa

Standard rooms like this one come with king beds or two queens and a sunken living room, and most have courtyard views. Bathrooms are small, the décor is tired, and the rooms are generally in need of maintenance. Guests and TripAdvisor reviewers reported problems with hot water and mildew.

The Reserve opened in 2007, and its junior suites (the smallest rooms, which are more than 600 square feet) are significantly better appointed than the ones in the standard section and include a full kitchenette, a pull-out couch, spacious his and hers sinks in the bathroom, a Jacuzzi, and a very comfortable bed with crisp sateen sheets, firm pillows, and a soft duvet. (It was synthetic but felt like down.) The downside to the Reserve is that it's a 15-minute walk to the beach.

TVs in standard rooms come with CNN, BBC, ESPN, Fox, and Nickelodeon, among many other English-speaking channels, but no pay-per-view movie channels. The Reserve rooms come with 26-inch flat-screen TVs and Samsung DVD players (even though you have to bring your own DVDs) as well as JVC stereo CD stereo systems, but nowhere to hook up an iPod. My suite had three phones, but none of the preprogrammed buttons worked.

There's scant soundproofing between rooms at the Reserve, so at night I listened to my neighbors watching a serious action movie.

The Reserve (VIP) - Junior Suite

The 180 rooms in Royal Service and the Reserve, the VIP sections of the resort, are located inside their own, private sections. The Royal Service suites are located a minute or two from the beach, but the Reserve is about a 15-minute walk (or a few minutes via an unreliable trolley).

Guests at the Reserve and Royal Suites have access to their own pool, which has a fountain and several in-water beds that look pretty but are made of concrete and, predictably, not that comfortable. There's also name-brand liquor available and a separate restaurant for VIP guests only, which is considerably less crowded than the main buffet. The suites in this section are much cleaner and have better electronics like flat-screen TVs in every room. The multiroom suites also have private bedrooms, which can be great for families. But most guests don't feel the upgrades are really worth an extra $50 to $110 per person per day. Check out the rooms at the Majestic Colonial, which are also spacious.

Because the standard rooms were full, the resort upgraded me for free to a luxury junior suite (No. 3437) at the Reserve. In the junior suites, the bedroom is divided from the common area by frosted sliding-glass doors, and there's a separate section for an in-room Jacuzzi. The lighting is soft, thanks to quality lamps and the sliding-glass doors that lead out to the balcony. All suites have a kitchenette with a two-burner electric stove, an LG microwave, and a four-cup stainless steel Sunbeam coffee pot -- but no pots, pans, or silverware. (There's not much sense in cooking at an all-inclusive, anyway). The free mini-bar in the cabinet comes stocked with an assortment of sodas, two sugary juice boxes, a bag of Lay's, and a Milky Way.

In the suites, the beds have clean, crisp, white sateen-striped sheets, firm pillows, and a soft synthetic duvet that feels like down. They're comfortable and, despite the air conditioning vent directed right on your face, warm. At night, in the Reserve's suites, you can fall asleep to the sounds of a waterfall in the courtyard (if you're home early enough).

Bathrooms in the suites are much larger and cleaner, with his and hers sinks and a Jetsons-style shower with a lot of fancy dials. However, the water pressure didn't hold up to the frivolousness of the faucet.

The rock climbing wall

The property is huge -- it takes a good 10 to 15 minutes just to walk from the main lobby to the beach.

Unlike any other Dominican resort, the Paradisus has its own "adventure park" with its own batting cages, Ping-Pong tables, foosball, bikes to rent, and even a climbing wall.

There's only one pool on the main property, but it's gigantic and clean, and because of its layout, it feels like four smaller pools. The perpetual problem, however, is securing lounge chairs. (This is a common problem at most all-inclusive mega-resorts.) One of the pool areas is zero-entry, meaning that the water tapers off at the ends, making it especially shallow and great for small children.

The fitness center is separated into two sections, one for spinning and yoga and the other for weight training and other cardio workouts. The spinning side has 15 Lemond bikes and a spacious area lined with mirrors for yoga and stretching. The other wing includes three LifeCycle treadmills, three ellipticals, and one StairMaster, plus an assortment of free weights and multipurpose weight machines. There are three large, wall-mounted flat-screen TVs but no personal video monitors. A personal trainer is also on hand every day (for an additional fee). Free yoga and spinning classes are held every day in the gym, while other free classes -- aerobics, merengue, salsa, and bachata -- are held on the beach.

The Yhi Spa is clean (though it goes a bit too heavy on the patchouli incense). It offers a full range of spa services, but they're all considerably more expensive than at most resorts: $55 for a 25-minute peel, $50 for a manicure, $95 for a massage, and up to $290 for some of the packages. The spa has a private pool and several outdoor, enclosed cabanas for massages, but it's not the quietest or most relaxing of places -- I frequently heard the grating engines of dying golf carts on the street out front.

One round of golf at the Cocotel Golf Course is included in the price of the room. Cart fees run $37 per person per day. Guests say the Cocotel course is in great shape, but isn't meant for serious golfers.

Kids playing on the beach

Cots and cribs are free -- and fit into rooms of any size -- but there's a fee for each additional person.

Unlike at most of Punta Cana, waves are pretty intense here -- good for boogie boarding, bad for young children -- but the intensity can vary seasonally. The water is much calmer on the southern coast around La Romana; check out Iberostar Hacienda Dominicus and Viva Wyndham for kid-friendlier beaches.

There's a big, beautiful kids' zone with a great kiddie pool, an air bungee, a jungle gym, a game room with a Wii video game system, and an indoor reading room and sitting area for parents. However, Gerda and Mark, parents visiting from Staten Island, N.Y., told me the center is "more like a baby-sitting club than a kids' club." They complained that there aren't many organized programs for kids and that the counselors didn't speak English very well. I also spoke to some parents from Philadelphia who remarked that their au pair, who speaks fluent Spanish, went to drop their kids off one morning and overheard the counselors bickering.

Kid-friendly foods, especially at the a la carte restaurants, are hard to come by at the resort. There's a kid-friendly grill with burgers and hot dogs at La Palapa during lunch, but otherwise parents have to scrounge up pasta and fries during odd times of the day.

The grounds were well maintained

The grounds are well kept, but the lobby and most common areas have seen better days -- stained upholstery, drink rings on the coffee tables, and broken or moldy lounge chairs.

My room at the Reserve section of the resort, was clean enough, though there was a blood stain on the couch and some unswept debris gathering in the corners of the bathroom. Also, the shower fixtures had water stains that needed to be wiped off. Many TripAdvisor reviewers also reported maintenance problems and mildew in their rooms. At least the sheets were clean.

The buffet

"Have you seen 'Groundhog Day'?" a guest responds when I ask about the food. "It's the same thing every single day." Even with 11 restaurants on-site, most of the food looks and tastes the same each day, and this reviewer on TripAdvisor liked the resort but wouldn't return because of the food.

Six of the restaurants require reservations, which can be a major hassle. You can only book them between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., which usually means standing in line for upward of an hour just to put your name on the list -- or to be told they're already fully booked. Several guests said they were told just this, only to show up later and find half-empty restaurants. There truly doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to the system, and every day feels like some kind of mass chaos.

This TripAdvisor reviewer didn't even bother eating dinner one night "because we didn't want to deal with the stress of convincing three children to wait two hours at one of the non-reservation restaurants and we couldn't stomach another terrible dining experience at the buffets."

Hybiscus, the main buffet, has a decent quality and selection (compared with most all-inclusives), but during peak hours, the lines get especially long and no one has anywhere to stand. The bread is located in its own walled-off area, where even more people congregate.

There's no fresh-squeezed juice anywhere, unlike at the Grand Palladium resorts, but you can at least get some crisp lettuce (iceberg), cucumbers, carrots, and buckets of olives. There's a safe, semi-reliable pasta station, although my chef didn't thoroughly heat my penne through twice in a row. The desserts were also pretty poor, unlike at the Iberostar and Grand Palladium Punta Cana resorts.

La Palapa is a buffet lunch by day and a seafood restaurant by night. It has a nice grill at lunch where kids can line up for burgers and hot dogs, and then take the food back to the beach or pool in Styrofoam containers.

The service is prompt at Vento, the Italian-themed a la carte restaurant, but my pizza tasted like it was once frozen. And the black tagliatelle with squid ink was virtually inedible. Most guests also complained about the quality of the food.

Brunch at the Gabi Restaurant at the Reserve (not available to all guests) includes fresh eggs, trays of camembert and brie, and fresh juices (though the orange came from a can). The rest of the food, like waffles and pancakes, is the same as at the standard buffet, but there are far fewer people to battle in line.

The Lobby Bar

Other than the sometimes excruciating long lines at the bars, the drinks are fine, though they're all made with generic-brand liquor. Bartenders can handle basic requests for gin and tonics or vodka and cranberries, but my request for a Manhattan got some puzzled looks.

Beware of the free house wine served at the a la cartes -- it's horrible, even by all-inclusive standards -- and it's definitely worth paying for wine off the list.

Name-brand liquor like Absolut, Johnnie Walker, and Dewar's is included at the Reserve.