My boyfriend and I stayed at Dreams from March 21 to 28. Prior to our trip I read all the online reviews and was very worried to say the least about our vacation due to the many bad reviews. People made the resort sound horrible and I was quite concerned about the possibility of overbooking. Now that I have returned, I cannot imagine how these people had such a horrible time. We absolutely loved the resort and had an amazing vacation.

Rooms – At check in we asked if there was a possibility of a free upgrade and were given a 1 bedroom suite at no extra charge. I was very excited about that. Our room was on the 5th floor in the new part of the resort. The room was beautiful and huge! We had one big room with kitchen, table, sofa and tv and a second bedroom with king bed and tv. We even had a walk in closet! Also our room had two balconies! Loved it, definitely try to get the one bedroom suite when you check in. Also the room was very clean. The maid cleaned the room in the morning/afternoon and then came back in the evening to clean again and turn down the beds. Also the mini-bar was not really a mini-bar but an actual small refrigerator. It was restocked daily and had soda, corona, pacifico, juice and water.

Pools – There are two pools at the resort. There is a main larger pool with an infinity edge and a drop down with a smaller lower pool area. This pool has a slide and a swim up bar. We found this to be the pool where most families gathered so it was sometimes noisy with children. The pool also played music which could be a little loud. Absolutely beautiful view from this pool though. The second pool is on the side of the resort and designated as the quiet pool. We spent most of our time at this pool. The water was very warm and the pool usually did not have any children or only a few at a time. This pool also had a swim up bar.

Restaurants – First I would like to say the food was way above our expectations. We stayed at the Secrets in Dominican Republic last year and our only complaint was the food was only so-so. We did not have high exceptions for the food at Dreams and were very pleasantly surprised. There were two buffet restaurants open for breakfast, the restaurant next to the main pool, Seaside Grill, and the main buffet restaurant, El Patio. El patio was our favorite for breakfast. They had made to order omelets, eggs and fresh waffles. There was also a smoothie station. El Patio is situated next to the beach overlooking the ocean… very pretty views. For lunch the two restaurants next to the pools are open… Seaside Grill and Oceana (next to quiet pool). You can also have any of the lunch foods brought right to your lounge chair. Lunch had pretty good selection. Nothing amazing, but pretty good. For dinner there are 4 al a carte restaurants and one buffet restaurant. On previous reviews I read that the restaurants weren’t always open and there were sometimes buffets only. We did not find this to be the case. All of the restaurants were open on every night we stayed. The restaurants are El patio (buffet with show every night), Hitmashu (Pan asian), Portofino (Italian), Oceana (seafood) and Seaside Grill (steaks). We ate at all restaurants except the buffet. Hitmashu was way above our expectations. Portofino and Seaside Grill were also very good. Definitely recommend the salads and stuffed chicken at portofino. The pasta there wasn’t very good but I am used to eating at Italian restaurants in NYC so my expectations might have been too high for that. Overall we found the food to be very good… not quite what you would get at a five star restaurant in a major city but pretty close. Also all the restaurants and bars had top shelf liquor. The lobby bar even had martinis.

Service – We read in previous reviews that the resort was understaffed and I cannot disagree any more with this. We found the resort to be very well staffed. There were resort employees everywhere. All of the staff were very friendly. We brought $100 in ones for tips and although none of the staff expect them, we thought it was a nice gesture and made for even better service. My boyfriend was very friendly with the staff and that went a long way, the staff remembered us all week and went out of their way for us. Look for Raquel at the beach and lobby bar and Saulou in the Seaside Grill. They were especially nice to us and extremely attentive.

One tip… the only problem we had was there are not enough lounge chairs. Actually not so much there aren’t enough but everyone reserved chairs very early with towels and then seemed to leave for the day on excursions. The first day we were there we got down to the pool around 10 and could not find 2 empty chairs anywhere, eventually just moved 2 towels and sat there. No one came all day for their towels. After that we got up by 7 or 8 everyday just to put towels down and had no other problems.

Overall the resort was absolutely beautiful and we were very impressed. We only left the resort once to go on a sunset cruise because we really found no reason to leave the resort as it had everything we could need. We would definitely return to Dreams in a second! If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.