This review will be pretty long as I like to review the entire vacation from start to finish including any goods and bads.
We traveled to the Paradisus from July 22 - July 29 and I booked the Oceanfront Suite in the Reserve Beach area (only opened in December of 2014). Travelling were My wife and I, and our 2 daughters (9 & 12).
We left out of JFK airport and arrived in Punta Cana a few minutes before scheduled time. You exit the airplane directly onto the tarmac and are loaded into buses. The bus then drives to the terminal. The distance from the plane to the terminal is such a short of a distance it was a bit of an annoyance to have to sit on bus with no air conditioning and wait for passengers to debark the plane, for a ride of about 45 seconds (literally). Since we traveled on a Wednesday (I picked the slowest travel day), the airport was pretty slow. We went through Immigrations pretty quickly, be prepared to pay $10 per person as an entry fee. We had prepaid car service through Otium which was part of our room booking. We went to the Otium booth and within about 5 minutes we were in the transfer to the hotel and arrived in about 20 minutes. The driver pointed out some tourist spots as we drove.
We arrived at the Resort and it was just beautiful. We were dropped off at the main reception area where we were met immediately by a representative of the Reserve. The Reserve is a different section (or really classification) of the Resort. Our bags were taken directly to the room and we were placed into a golf cart and we were driven down to the Reserve Reception area. We were given cold drinks and cold towels. We were then introduced to Luis Polo who was our concierge for the week. Our room classification came with a family concierge who made all reservations and made sure that if we needed anything we got it. Luis gave us a little information about the resort and informed us that our room was ready, he also gave us a cell phone to call him if we needed anything (we used it once the entire week). We had originally booked a room in the Reserve Section (away from the beach), but I upgraded our room to the Ocean Front Suite (Room 6007) as a surprise to my wife. We were taken to the room and it was absolutely outstanding. The door opened from the hallway and all we saw was the ocean out of the sliding glass doors across the suite.
The suite was 2 rooms, one bedroom with the bathtub in the same room (separated by curtains), and had 2 sinks. Behind that is the shower (dual shower head), toilet, and another sink which is separated by sliding doors. The other room had a table for 4, and a pull out couch with a TV. The mini-bar was located in this room also. Each room has a sliding door that leads out to the terrace. Our room was on the 2nd floor of a 3 floor building. The 2nd floor rooms had terraces and the 3rd have balconies. It seemed that 4 of the rooms like ours had the same terrace setup (I could not see the others). The terrace has a bali bed, 2 rocking chairs, a table for 4 and a jacuzzi. The room was stunning, there is separate air conditioning units for each room and they worked well. One of the issues is that there are an abundance of light switches all over the place. in the 2 rooms there had to be about 15 switches all over. Figuring out what they all did took some time. My only real complaint about this room selection is that we were right above Gabi Beach Bar (on 1st floor). This is where they had entertainment, it was LOUD, while they say that 11 pm is when it shuts down, we found that there was music playing much later than that. If you like to relax in your room or have young children who may go to bed early, this may not be the room for you. This is the most expensive room in the resort (Outside of the Royal Service, which I am not sure of prices of), and we could not really enjoy the use of the terrace to relax in the evening.
We ate dinner the first night at Olio (Italian). I have to say that this was my least favorite place that we ate at. The portions were tiny (I ordered the beef scallops, I got 2 which were maybe 4 bites total. My family was not very impressed either.
We ate breakfast daily at the buffet. The selection of foods was enormous, there was something for everyone. I had an omelet or fried eggs daily, with a nice selection of fresh fruit. We also ate at the buffet for lunch which again had a huge selection of food and it was all very good, no real complaints.
The next evening we ate dinner at Fuego. The food there was just ok. I ordered the grilled lobster and it was overcooked. The scallop appetizer was very good though.
The next evening we ate at Rare (Steakhouse). The food was great overall. I did have to send my steak back (I ordered medium rare and it came out more like medium well). We again ate at Rare our last night and again my steak came out over cooked.
Bana was our next meal which is a Teppanyakiy (Hibachi) style eatery. The food was very good, no different than any other Teppanyakiy in the area where we live.
Vento has to be our favorite restaurant. The Mediterranean type food was outstanding. I had a beef filet that was cooked perfectly. The waitress there also made our night (I wish that I could remember her name), she made a point to ask our names and remember them not only throughout dinner but also the next day when we saw her in the morning at the buffet.
Blue Agave is the Mexican style food. The food was well cooked and no real complaints about it.
Beach/Pool:
Each day Luis would reserve a palapa at the beach for us. When you arrive at the beach you are escorted to a palapa by a beach employee. Tipping here does help. These same employees will bring you drinks on the beach. Felipe is one of the guys that helped us throughout the week.
My biggest complaint is regarding the pool. We stayed in the Reserve Pool for the week. We would go to the beach right after breakfast at about 9am. We walked past the pool and there were already towels on the great majority of the chairs. We would then go and eat lunch at about 1pm and then after lunch we would goto the pool. Most of the towels that were on the chairs were undisturbed (I actually took note of some of them). We would have to find chairs that were not claimed to enjoy the pool. Some of of the reserved chairs would never have been touched all day long. I wish that there was something that could be done about this to make it fair to all the guests who actually wanted to sit in the chairs.
Here is my biggest problem of the entire vacation but it is no way controllable by anyone other than mother nature. I have read other reviews about seaweed (I thought to myself, I could not be that bad). Well it was worse. It was out of control for the most part. The seaweed would be piled up on the beach every morning which was then gathered by someone on a tractor pulling a huge machine to rake the sand. But the amount of seaweed in the water was just too much for my family and I to enjoy the water. I would like to have just floated around in the water for hours on end, but the seaweed just made that impossible. This was up and down the entire beach. I have to say that the seaweed alone is a big reason that I may not go back to the DR.
The resort itself was just absolutely gorgeous. I cannot say anything bad about it. The cleanliness of this resort tops most other resorts that I have been at. Everything was well manicured and if there was anything lying around, any employee that walked past it, cleaned it up.
There is also free wifi throughout the resort which was not that bad of a connection. Early in the morning it was very good, but in the afternoon was not as good. It was strong enough for video chatting and voip phone calls.
Tipping:
While this is an all-inclusive tipping is obviously a big part of service. I do not have any issue with giving tips to anyone who deserves it. But in my opinion a tip comes from giving good service, not good service coming from a tip. The language barrier was sometimes hard since English is obviously not the broadly spoken language on the resort. I understand that it is a Spanish speaking country. There is an appearance that Spanish speaking guests get better service since the communication is easier. This is not a blanket statement across the board for all employees though.
The week ended with a trip to the Airport. I have to say it was the least stressful travel day that I have ever had. From getting into the Otium transfer to the airport and through security and sitting in the food court of the airport was an astounding 50 minutes. I guess traveling on a Wednesday is a big help, there were no lines with airport employees actually waiting for us.
I want again to thank Luis Polo our concierge who made our week very enjoyable. Along with all other employees who made our trip one for the books!!!