My boyfriend and I booked a vacation to Punta Cana thru Cheap Caribbean. We stayed at the Iberostar Dominicana for a week February 3-9 2013. The check in process went very smooth and the room they gave us was very nice. It was a supposed upgrade to a junior suite. There is a lot of walking at this resort from your room to the pool to the restaurants to the beach. But after all the eating that you do it works out pretty good. All the staff are great and make you feel special. We spent most of our time on the fantastic beach opposed to the pool. We went to a couple of the shows which were entertaining. The biggest problem was that because of the blizzard on the east coast. I called Cheap Caribbean to find out what we should do because there were no flights in or out. We managed to get on a flight by calling USAirways but it wasn't until Feb 12th. Cheap Caribbean told us to go to he front desk as they would be better to assist us. Olympus Tours is Cheap Caribbean's tour operator in Punta Cana so we got in touch with them as well. They told us we were all set with staying in our room for another 3 nights at a distressed rate. They told us to now go back to the front desk which we did. The front desk had no idea what we were talking about. We dealt with all of this for about 4 hours. We kept getting the run around from the hotel and Olympus Tours. We waited until 6 pm that night until they found us a room. It was not at Iberostar. We had to move the next day to The Tropical Princess. We were grateful to get a room at this point. But going from a five star Iberostar to about a 3 star Tropical Princess was a huge disappointment. It pretty much ruined the last days of our vacation. Even though the Tropical Princess was nice and we had an Ocean view room, it did not compare to Iberostar,especially the beach area. The beach was full of cigarette butts. I highly recommend the Iberostar resorts, just hopefully you don't need to stay extra nights!

My girlfriend and I had an all-around great trip to Punta Cana. One nearly life-changing incident, however, made us really aware of just how dangerous the country is!

We loved staying at the Iberostar Dominicana. We found the staff to be really nice and the beach was just amazing, as detailed in most of the reviews here. Our only issue was that some of the buffet food was not that great (pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs tasted weird); def not up to the standards of the last cruise which we went on.

We went on two excursions: (1) a catamaran to Saona Island, which I would highly recommend; and (2) a 1-hr horseback ride with Rancho Cabanero.

To make a long story short, two natives tried to rob us while we were on the horseback ride. We reserved the horseback ride from an Iberostar Dominicana rep near the pool and scheduled it for Sunday afternoon. We started at the horse farm and rode through a few rural roads and ended up on the beach. After riding a couple miles on the beach, we turned away from the water to a narrow 4-ft wide path, which was covered by trees. After about a quarter mile on the path, we arrived at a small sandy area that overlooked where a small river connected to the ocean. We stopped for a few minutes while our tour guide took pictures of each of us on our horses. We began riding back through the path on our way back to the beach. I was first, my gf second, and the tour guide third. About halfway through the path, a guy with a huge 4-ft long log, which was sharpened like a pencil, stepped out onto the path. I was pretty startled, but immediately knew this wasn’t good. My horse pulled back as the guy stepped directly in front of me. He stepped to my left side, swung the log, and hit me as hard as he could across my back, as to try and knock me off the horse. I looked to my right immediately after he swung and remember seeing another guy hiding in the brush with a huge knife! When I saw this guy, I realized that we were in pretty big trouble. The next second, though, I realized that our tour guide had already jumped off of his horse and had wrestled the log away from the guy who hit me. He chased that guy away and luckily, the guy with the knife followed his partner.

When we got back to hotel, we told the front desk and they seemed to take it pretty seriously. We ended up speaking with 4 or 5 managers in all. The one thing that really bothered us was that they told us the horse farm tried to explain the attack away by saying the attackers had a problem with our tour guide. I’m pretty sure this is incorrect, given that we asked the guide right after the attack if he knew them and he said he didn’t. He also said that those kinds of attacks occurred every once in a while. I think the horse farm company was just saying that b/c it wouldn’t be great business for them if people were trying to attack their tourists.

In any case, I’d def think twice about going off of the resort property! I’m about 5-10, 200lbs and in pretty good shape and can’t imagine what would’ve happened if (1) I were any smaller or (2) the attacker had hit my girlfriend instead.

My wife and I stayed here for 2 weeks, Jan 23 to Feb 6 and enjoyed our trip very much. We had stayed on the Iberostar Punta Cana side about 8 years ago so we kind of knew the resort layout and beach. We were not disappointed as the resort was just as good as we had remembered. Great food, fantastic beach (can walk for miles in either direction) and great entertainment. The adjoining golf course was a big change from our last visit there. I didn't play a round but it looked in great shape.

Did some snorkeling off the beach just to the right of the dive shop and it was ok as there is a small reef there. I went on the snorkeling trip to swim with the Sharks and Stingrays and that trip was great. The dive shop offers a day long snorkeling excursion to the south side of the island for $100 which I think would have been a nice trip for a day as well.

The one thing I wasn't crazy about was having to get up a little early to reserve a chair with shade at the beach. There are a lot of palapas and lots of chairs but unless you reserve one by 8:00 am you will likely be sitting in the sun all day. The pool doesn't get booked as fast as the beach chairs

That is my only small complaint, otherwise I would recommend this resort very highly.

The hotel is situated on very well maintained grounds--just wish there were more tropical flowers. The food was much better than I expected---especially the speciality restaurants. The room--a jr. suite-- was pleasant, if not a little dated. I'm not a "drinker"- but if you wish, you could imbibe all you would like. The staff was 100% respectful and wonderful--from the check in to the wait staff to the maid service.