Paradise in Punta Cana

Second year visiting Punta Cana with the family and first year at Grand Palladium Bavaro. Perfect resort, gorgeous beach, nice rooms, fabulous food and great staff. Highly recommend for families. The year prior we stayed at another 4.5 star resort however it was more commercialized and definitely a 'party atmosphere'. GP is not that type of resort though there's sure plenty of fun to be had. We absolutely loved the beach, long stretch of sand with plenty of chairs and beach huts to go ar [... read more]ound. The resort complex is huge and you'd think it would be hard to find spots at the beach or pools but due to its' size it was never a problem and never felt crowded. We travelled as a family of 4, son is 13 and daughter is 11. Both kids had a blast, they didn't bother with the teen's club as crashing the ocean waves and swinging in the pool hammocks was more their style this year. Evening shows were fun, entertainment team is solid. Food was very good. Buffet's standard fare and didn't have a bad meal, ala carte's were really tasty. We loved El Dorado (my son's favorite by far), nice that it isn't reservation based just be prepared for a bit of a wait if you don't time your visit properly. Rooms are nice, clean and well set up. We were steps away from the beach and one of the pools so couldn't ask for much better. Resort is very big, we didn't mind walking though and only rode the trollies a couple of times. For anyone who is concerned about getting around there's lots of trollies to take get you where you need to go. Service was top notch, staff are very friendly and always with a smile. We absolutely loved every part of our visit.

Good resort

Hotel overall is good. Especially the service staff. Beaches: very high waves and strong currents, beach rescue teams were non existent. Lot of peddled on the beach. Beach bars did not come around to serve beverages or fruits.

Grand Palladium Bavaro is excellent

We had a couple issues with the room the first day, but they rectified the issues and all was good after that. The beach was amazing, they bring a tractor and attachment down every morning to clean up any remnants of seaweed. The food was fabulous, especially the Ala Cartes, Steak house, Spanish, Mexican, Asian, Japanese, Italian and so on. Entertainment in the Theater every night, we spent a couple hours at the Sports bar just before each show. Lobby had music entertainment every night, it was  [... read more]wonderful. The grounds are always spotless and well kept. My wife and I had really good time and will definitely go back.

Very nice resort. Beaches and water 2nd to none.

Clean resort. Food good and lot's of choices. Japanese and Mexican a la carte restaurants the best. All staff very friendly. Rooms needed some maintenance - pull out bed broken, electrical plugs loose and not hold plug, fridge not cold. Staff fixed issues over a few days. Very helpful. Overall rating would be a 4 1/2 because of the required room maintenance and some a la carte restaurants not the best.

Palladium 2018

We travelled with friends who were 13 time returning guests. The hotel upgraded all of us to VIP status, even though this was only our 9th Palladium visit. We had access to everything that only Royal Suites guests usually get. There were some new restaurants this year. We tried a couple of them and were impressed. Overall dining experience was excellent. Our initial room was quite musty and Ruth suffers from asthma. The porter arranged for us to be moved and we were pleased with the new room.  [... read more]It was in the same building as last year's room, and very close to our Bavaro pool. Total experience was very good.

In a nose dive. Good care taking of gardens and beach. Visitors not a priority but rather resort policy. Fourth Time there but now the last. Resort seemed extremely empty compared to last 3 visits. Food quality way down. Rooms 3rd one of this holiday sub standard. Rooms we always had and requested were " not" available but were no problem if we paid for an upgrade of $ 500.00 for the 10 nights. Asked for bath robes 6 times but never got them. They promises are hallow.

Grounds good . Beach good. Visitors not first priority. Food poor to fair. Rooms are below 3 star. Rooms we request are not available unless we were to pay an upgrade fee of $500.00. 50$ per night. No rum and fruit basket in room, no bathrobes, not even after 6 times promised, one by manager who was in our 3rd room due to Safe not opening. Worms on room floor. Many room problems and half assed bandage type fixes. Done visiting and promoting this resort.

Great location and facilities, but unfortunate mishaps caused issues

Beautiful location and facilities, and most service was excellent. Bad experience on check-in with upselling of rooms that were not as promised. Then a dangerous (electrified) hot tub in the room that was never fixed (and kept us waiting on maintenance for hours. Buffet meals were passable, but the a la carte dinner restaurants were mostly just plain disappointing. Overall, 95% of our time there was really good, but the 5% that was bad was key and really frustrating so damaged our enjoymen [... read more]t of the whole trip.

WOW !!

Its only 3.5 hours to paradise !! Everything was amazing . We had much to learn as this was our first all inclusive getaway . The restaurants were top notch with amazing 5 course meals and very friendly staff .

Grand Palladium Bavaro

Hotel and rooms are tired, but were under renovations. Staff was very good and friendly. Beach was excellent, but too many vendors selling on it. It will be very nice after reno. Others in our party had some room issues.

Amazing Resort****

This resort is is 1 of 3 together, located at Bavaro Beach and IT IS THE BEST. I have stayed at the Palace also and the Bavaro is a 10. The rooms are very spacious with a balcony and you overlook luscious grounds that are very well maintained. The pool is great with a swim-up bar and the beach is one with soft white sand. Also lots of shade areas. Swimming is great, no rocks etc to surprise you in the water. Occassionally you have nice waves to jump thru with no undertoe and you can w [... read more]alk along the water's edge for miles, if that is your wish. The hotel staff is very friendly and always there to assist and help. In my opinion, the bavaro area is the area with the BEST BEACHES.

Great Vacation for a family!

Great location! One of my big worries on an all inclusive (other than hoping to get good weather) is "Will it be too crowded?" Our trip was Feb 5 - 12, and there was ZERO overcrowding! No trouble getting a spot around the pool or at the beach any time of day. Food was both good and bad: Breakfast - Terrific buffet! Lunch - Decent quality and variety but ONLY buffet options - would be nice to have some a la carte lunches. Dinner - All fantastic. Accommodations were very nice,  [... read more]but starting to show a little bit of age. A little to over the top with the presentation / pressure to join the vacation club.

Good Resort

Our room was excellent. The only problem we had was getting English channels on the TV. The food was good in all the places we went except for the Bavaro buffet and they weren't able to keep the food hot. Overall the resort was very good!

Great Resort

We were very pleased with the rooms we received this year. The in room amenities were great. The rooms were within a short walk to the pool, the beach, and the Bavaro lobby. Staff were very friendly. We look forward to returning next year. The Palladium is our report of choice in Punta Cana. We had a rather bad experience in 2016, but our issues were addressed by management before we left the resort.

What a nice resort

Just came back from spending 7 days at the grand palladium bavaro The resort was clean and absolutely amazing no complaints whats so ever . Great for couple and families Would definitely recommend this resort to anyone The palladium has plenty of bars pools and over a dozen restaurants

Great Resort

Resort is large but still has a personal feel. Lots of variety in the food choices - we went to 6 a la carte restaurants and each was good. Would recommend reservations for the more popular Brazil and Japanese spots (do this on day one). We enjoyed the activities (pool aerobics and exercise bikes in the pool). Word of caution on the beach activities, staff are very enthusiastic and want you to write a review then and there. One actually "helped" and took our phone and deleted what we wrote  [... read more]and made their own review (in Spanish no less so we couldn't even read it). Beach is fantastic. Ample chairs and lots of shade to move in and out of at will. We had a bit of a issue at check in. Our room was musty and we requested a new one. Our bell boy abandoned us and we had to cart our luggage all the way back to the lobby to start over. Was disappointed with that piece of the service. But all other servers were very friendly and helpful.

Nice resort

The Resort and the beach was nice but the food wasn't the greatest, every buffet had the same food every day of the week.The night entertainment wasn't too good also....and when there was entertainment it was all in Spanish , not much for teenagers to do in the evening. There was no variety of different beers at the bars, always the same kind of beer...

Good Family Resort

Went with a family of 5 (3 kids under 11) and we had a good time. There are pros and cons to the resort. With access to all 3 Palladium resorts there were many pools/pool bars and restaurants to choose from and a long sandy beach (no rocks - great for kids to swim). There were lots of activities by the pool and hot dog/popsicle stands that the kids loved. It was relatively easy to find seats by the pool/beach everyday. The food was so-so. After a few days we were sick of the buffets - there was  [... read more]a large variety but there was the same food selection everyday. There were 45-60 minute wait times at several of the a la carte restaurants as you could not make reservations in advance. This wasn't a problem for our family as we were always full from lunch and happy to wait it out in the bar. A few staff were great but overall most staff were not very friendly/helpful and there was a language barrier (limited English). There were vender stands on the resort and they were very pushy, grabbing even the kids and trying to get us to buy jewelry, wood carvings etc constantly - same with the beach. The grounds were really well kept but several pools were quite dirty (likely due to rainfall overnight).

Fantastic resort

Good food, rooms great, staff very helpful and courteous. Only negative comment is WestJet rep. Was not there for presentation. Waited 30 minutes but he never came. Called him third day and he sais he would come in 10 minutes but he never came. Day before departure, we wanted to confirm our pick-up but he wasn't answering his phone. We had to ask the hotel to call him the morning of departure. Really bad experience with him.

De bonnes vacances

Un resort qui nous a donné des vacances reposantes. Nous nous sommes bien détendu. Côté chambre rien à dire. Côté restauration les buffets je les trouvent relativement bon. On y trouve son compte. Les restaurants sont très bien décorés mais ils manquent de raffinement par rapport au cadre. Le kids club est disons correct. Le baby club reste moyen. Cela manque de jeux pour les plus petits et de personnels content de les recevoir. C'est un peu le travail à la chaîne pour certaines pers [... read more]onnes. Le service de manière general est bien, les gens sont très souriant et serviable. Ils le sont plus avec des pourboires. Le voyage etait bien organisé- avion air transat génial - transfert bien- Check in & out bien aussi. La plage est bien egalement. Les piscines sont bien. Les toilettes sont très propres. L'hygiène du resort en générale était très professionnelle. Femme de ménage de la chambre très bien. Activités nocturnes animations bien. L'alcool à volonté c'est bien mais autant le faire moins à volonté et avoir de l'alcool de qualité. En gros moins boire et mieux. Excursion faite monkey land pour les enfants c'était bien: nota ils abusent avec leur photos à 10 dollars la photo c'est un peu de l'arnaque bref. Dans l'ensemble je suis satisfait de mon séjour. Je retournerais dans un palladium avec plaisir.

Punta Cana Trip Aug 2016

OK. let me start by saying this was our honeymoon resort 10 years ago. We returned here 10 years later with the kids (three girls 7, 4, 3) - Aug 2016. We flew Air Transat. Only good thing was registering for their Kids Club -- totally free and fully worth it. You get your kids seats selection for free (basically only pay for the two adults). You can use the club class line to check in. You get a snack coupon for each kid since they dont give out snacks on these flights unless you pay for them.  [... read more] Got to the Bavaro resort lobby around 1:30. Got our check in documents/keys, etc and received a cold welcome drink. Concierge said the room will be ready only around 3:30--that's how it started. Believe me I know what i'm getting into with All-inclusive trips and realize there will be minor little issues here and there, so keep this in mind while reading. I will "TIP" along the way for useful things we learned that you could take advantage of. TIP: if you love walking this is the place to go. If you have little kids that don't like walking, try a smaller resort. This place is pretty huge. Take the little coach train that drive around every 20 minutes to get from one spot to another. TIP: use the map they give you -- you will need it. We walked around and took the train to the first dining spot we saw -- Las Torres buffet. The whole resort is divided into four sections (Bavaro, Punta Cana, Palace, Royal Suites). You can make use of most of their facilities. Went back at 3:30. Got to building 26 to see the room was not even ready. They moved us to the adjacent building (building 24). Standard Room (Master Junior suite: two double beds, pullout couch, separate washroom and a small balcony facing the grounds. Sink got clogged the first time we used it. We all went swimming and walked back around 7. Key didn't work. Tried a bunch of times. I then had to leave my wife and 3 kids standing there wet and ran in my slippers all the way to the lobby (about 15 min walk). Later that night we moved to building 17 (Room 1712). TIP: Building 17, 18, 19 are luxury buildings at Bavaro -- Building 19 I think is for Travel Club guests. When we came back with the kids asleep we went into the new room and only then I noticed there is no separate washroom--this was some sort of couples room--couples who don't mind going to the washroom in an open concept room. The closure was a frosted glass door that was open at the bottom and top and the shower was the same. You can see pretty much everything. When we went to the washroom we had to send the kids to the outdoor patio. We thought we should be grateful and didn't want to say anything. (this was night 1/day 2). Day 2 night-- the power goes off twice only in our suite -- we called for repair at 8 and when we came back to room at 11PM it was not done. We called again and repair man was in our room from 11:30PM - 12:15AM. Day 3, I had enough and we were moved to building 30 -- this was an upper room with an ocean view. It was a blessing. I hated to complain but we couldn't stay without a closed bathroom. Restaurants: We tried El Arrecife (buffet), Tapeo (spanish), Sports bar (bar food 24 hrs), Rodizio (Brazillian), Las Torres (buffet), Adelita (buffet). TIP: dont waste time at Tapeo -- it was like some weird try at modern spanish fare. There was gray paste on our plate that was supposed to be a sauce. It tasted like you would image gray paste to taste. Rodozio was okay. Meats were not great but the chicken at the steakhouse was good :-) The indian (Bhogali) was the best meal. Great curry and tasty naan break. Although the second time the curry had too much garlic salt. TIP: The buffets are nice-- there is las torres in the punta cana side and then the main Adelita in the Bavaro lobby. The mangos is what drove me back to punta cana. i ate so much fruit for practically every meal --mangos, papaya, watermelon, passion fruit. The Arrecife is crowded and open (no AC). Food wasn't so good here. Guy at the grilling station was switching from cutting raw chicken breast to flipping burgers and didn't really wash his hands -- salmonella for sure. He got busted by a guest so he grabs an egg, crushes it in his hand, uses that as soap and rinses it off. Island sanitizer? Pools: If you have kids, spend your day at the Kids club pool area (punta cana section). There's a big pool (shallow and deep end) as well as a splash pad area with a big pirate ship and small water slides. This is in the centre of the resort. The kids club is also very nice. It was a drop in sort of program but a lot of people left there kids there the whole day--weird. but i'm sure they had fun. They had a small rock climbing wall and a small zip line section and a movie theatre. The Bavaro side pool is crowded and really dirty. the other pool in the Punta Cana section closer to the beach is also crowded and dirty. All the pools had tiles missing here and there and two of us cut our feet on these -- no good. TIP: Bring lots of bandaids. Beach: The beach was amazing -- can't complain. The water is a little mirky, closer to the shore so you can really see much when under, but i'm sure it is clear when you go past the safety buoys. The chairs do get taken fast but we weren't there to sun tan, so all good. The sand is incredible, soft, and white (or yellow, i couldn't tell). Souvenirs: The resort has souvenir shops and also some vendors that come to the resort and setup tables. These are not locals but are employed by the hotel to sell--you really wont get a good deal or anything. The gift shops are okay for little magnets ($3/$4) but frames, shirts, etc are expensive. The day before we left we found out about a free van that takes you off the resort to a local gift shop to buy souvenirs. We go to the little "strip mall" and went in. It was a clean mall like store. When we go in they said, "once you finish we will take you outside--more stuff there". So we bought a few magnets and went outside--we were ushered into another store--no price tags, so i figure this is the place to bargain--and it was. TIP: Buy one or two small things in the first store and wait to shop at the second. We got tshirts, little glass bottles with sand, purses, etc. Other: The resort had a claim your prize thing on our door so we went to see. It was a sales tactic to sign up for their Palladium Travel Club. They took us to a staged room in building 19. It was the most amazing place i've seen. Honestly, take the tour for curiosity sake. After rejecting their sales pitch of $17000 membership, I asked for the prize. It was $100 off at the spa. My wife used it for a $99 massage. Fully worth it. Muguel and Francisco from the front desk were very helpful in resolving any issues that arose.