Caribe Deluxe Princess — Hotel in Higüey

We have recently returned from a 10 day family trip, including our sons aged 18 and 14. This is an honest review from a seasoned traveller. I generally don't like all-inclusives as I find them boring, but as our kids are now older I thought I would chance it again with the idea of leaving them at the hotel and exploring the country on our own.||The grounds of this hotel are beautiful as is the beach (minus the seaweed). If you just want a relaxing break in the sun and don't wish to explore - this hotel might be ideal and the rest of my review will probably not resonate for you. We had two interconnecting rooms, which were generous in size, well designed with lots of storage space and were kept very well cleaned by the maids. There was no problem with the air con and the temperature was cold enough. I'm not sure why others are moaning about this.||The buffet is inadequate for the number of guests staying at the hotel and there are simply not enough staff to cater for drinks requests. If the hotel invested in self-serve soft-drinks, this would really help to solve the problem. The food at the buffet is very samey every day and is adequate at best, most of the deserts don't actually have any taste!||As we had two rooms we were able to try most of the al-la cartes, with the exception of the Italian. Honestly, we enjoyed them all. We never had any problem booking them, so again I'm not sure why some people moan about this.||The beach is very beautiful but the seaweed was a huge problem whilst we were there, the sewage smell that other guests complain about, is in fact the decomposition of the seaweed which smells quite strongly of sulphur and is quite unpleasant. The hotel were trying to clear this, but it is a natural phenomena and the scale of the problem was just too big. On our last day they finally managed to clean part of the beach and this made a big difference.||The train around the hotel - it takes 4 minutes to walk at a leisurely pace from the pools to the reception area. SO again I don't understand why people complain about this, just walk!||The major issues for us were the currency, the cost of things on site and the lack of options to travel (outside of expensive excursions).|They operate on two currencies, Dollars and Dominican Peso's, great for American tourists but not so much for us Europeans!! I was advised to take both currencies with me and some Sterling. I tried to change some Stirling for Dollars and the hotel offered me $90 for £100!!!! Obviously i rejected this and changed to Pesos instead but when I went to spend them in the on-site shop, they apparently could only give me Dollars as change?? This seriously makes no sense.|As a tourist you will get better value if you pay in Pesos as they round everything up in Dollars. Furthermore the on-site shop which stocks things like sunscreen, snacks, souvenirs is absolutely ridiculous in terms of pricing. We ran out of sunscreen and the cheapest bottle was $28, a bar of chocolate $15!! Absolute rip-off, no wonder the shop is empty for most of the day.||Punta Cana has no town centre, it is a series of gated hotels, gated communities and American-style shopping malls. We did leave the site every other day on excursions.||ATV tour - good enough activity, but there are several companies all doing the same thing to the same place, so every where you go on the tour is jammed with hundreds of people all doing the same thins. There is no cenote, it is a little cave. The 'farm visit' where you get the chance to apparently buy direct from the farmer costs $15 for a jar of any one thing!||Saona Island - looks beautiful, but again there are hundreds of people and loads of boats all doing the same thing and there are NO fish here at all. so if you plan to go snorkelling - don't bother.||Snorkelling tour on coral reef - this trip is worth doing if you want to see fish.||Scape Park - absolutely fabulous, the highlight of our holiday.||There were no options for us to get public transport and explore on our own.|Overall i left feeling that the DR had no soul and was very Americanised. I will not return and not recommend it as a location for my friends to visit. I found this trip extremely frustrating as I like to visit places to learn about them. And I will never go...

My friends and I stayed here for four days for a bachelor party, and I feel horrible that his (hopefully only) chance at a bachelor party in life was at this resort.||When you check in, the lobby is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. You’ll think to yourself, “oh wow it’s beautiful here, the rest of the resort must be the same”. Boy, were we wrong.||||Facilities/Grounds: the entire property, while visually striking, is unfortunately an assault on the rest of your senses. While walking the grounds, you’ll find yourself smelling the sweet scent of sewage, which seems to follow you wherever you go. The pool is fun and clean, probably because it’s the main attraction, so that’s where all the energy is focused. Other portions of the property are falling into borderline disrepair. You’ll find plenty of vents with black mold, holes in the ceiling of the sports bar, and leaks freely dripping on to the floor from the moldy vents. The staff trying to sell you excursions will also harass you nonstop, constantly bothering you to see if you’ve changed your mind and want to book an overpriced half hour snorkeling trip. I will say the beach was beautiful, but the experience was ruined by outside vendors approaching you every 5 minutes trying to sell you random items that they probably bought in bulk off alibaba. You literally can’t be left alone to enjoy your time at the beach.||||Rooms:||if you enjoy a personal safari of nature’s worst insects, you’re going to absolutely love the rooms. Every single one of our four rooms had mosquitos and flies. You’ll be eaten alive while you’re trying to sleep, and wake up every morning scratching a new part of your body. I had a friendly lizard roommate in my room as well, despite never opening the door to the porch, so who knows how long he was in there. The rooms were also incredibly dirty. I found hair on the floors that definitely didn’t belong to me, as well as dirt and strange rust-colored stains. The bedspread smelled musty, and I found a few stains on my sheets as well. The second morning of my stay, I woke up to find that my bathroom counter had turned into an ant colony, and that they were entering and exiting my room freely through the space between the counter and the sink. Also, my entire room smelled overwhelmingly like cat urine, to the point of where I seriously considered sleeping in one of my friend’s rooms instead.||||Food & drinks:||Food: the food here is absolutely abysmal. I’m talking worse than prison food. The buffet serves the same items every single day, and none of it is good. The meat is all very chewy, and is mostly fat. The pasta is overcooked and mushy, and somehow the veggies are all undercooked. For breakfast, you’re going to want to stick with the omelette bar…nothing else is edible. There were cats roaming freely through the dining room during dinner, which as a cat person I loved, until I remembered what a cat’s job is when it’s working. If the cats are that close to the dining room, I can only imagine that the rats must be as well. The reservation-only restaurants aren’t much better. We ate Italian and Mexican, and both were incredibly underwhelming, bordering on awful. ||Drinks/Alcohol: If the bottom shelf of their liquor cabinet was seven miles underground, I wouldn’t be surprised. This resort spares no expense when it comes to sparing expenses. All of the liquor is incredibly cheap bottom-tier liquor I wouldn’t have been caught dead drinking out of a plastic water bottle while pregaming for a frat party in college. If you want anything name-brand, even bottom shelf liquor, they’re going charge you an arm and a leg for it. The drinks might be free, but they come at a hefty price of your enjoyment of drinking them.||||Safety:||Don’t leave the resort, you will most likely get robbed.||||The one silver lining of this place is the staff. They were all very friendly and attentive. If you’re at the pool bar, make sure Wellington pours your drinks, he always makes them nice and strong.||||Americans traveling here, beware: the locals will see you as nothing more than a financial lemon to be squeezed dry of every cent you have, and will stop at nothing to part you from any amount of money you might...

Warning! Do not book this hotel! We are here right now and it is one of our worst stays, even though we've visited over 50 countries. Absolutely DO NOT book the Royal Suite. We paid an extra $90 per night to upgrade. We deeply regret it! They don’t clean the room properly. The balcony door is dirty, and all the windows are filthy. When we arrived, we found black hairs everywhere. Sometimes the staff forgets to clean. I called the reception one day at 5:00 PM to ask when they planned to clean, as we had just come back from the beach. The woman at the reception responded, “Did you order cleaning service?” I have never encountered a hotel where you need to order cleaning at a four-star hotel. The cleaning staff is rude and uninterested in doing a good job. They clean some areas but not everything. The wifi doesn't work in the rooms! When you arrive, they will try to sell you the "platinum package." I warn you, DO NOT BUY THE PACKAGE. The hotel promises you premium wifi, but it doesn't work at all. The air conditioning sounds like an airplane. You won’t be able to sleep. It sounds like a massive jet engine running full force. It’s a horrible noise. The AC also emits a smell. Probably because they haven’t cleaned or replaced the filters, so our room smells like a farm / horse manure / cow dung. The premium package includes fruit every day, but it's just misleading marketing to show you how much extra they offer if you buy their premium package. They promise fruit in the room every day. We’ve had it 1 out of 6 days. They are not honest, and they don’t care if you get what you paid for or not. They only care about getting paid. If you want cheap food, the hotel’s buffet is perfect for you. Tasteless and disgusting food. Even a simple dish like pasta tastes awful. Very few vegetarian options. There are no gluten or allergy-friendly options. The food is AWFUL. They’ll lure you with the idea that you can eat at other restaurants, but it’s just a scam. We were supposed to eat Teppanyaki yesterday. The manager in charge of the Tao restaurant was rude. He ignored some guests and paid more attention to others. We arrived at our table, and there was so much dirt on the table where we were supposed to eat. We panicked and changed tables. No one asked if we wanted drinks or gave us any information about how it works. The chef started cooking and mixed rice with eggs, shrimp, chicken, and beef. At no point did they check if we had any allergies. I am allergic to eggs, and I had to tell them, and they made a separate dish for me. You can sue the hotel if you inform them of allergies and they ignore it, and I encourage you to take legal action immediately. It is unacceptable for them to take over $10,000 from us and not care about our experience. A La Cava was a disaster. The food was awful, and there wasn’t a single vegetarian option. Everything was seafood, and if you're allergic to seafood, it's very difficult to find something to eat. The Platinum restaurant is OK, but they are very slow. The staff (all men) stand around chatting for a long time before they take your order. They are slow and disengaged. The drinks at this bar are disgusting. Wine and beer are OK. The rest is a disaster. The lunch menu is gross—pasta with olive oil and crushed garlic? What is that for lunch? No, no, no— I warn you with all good intentions: DO NOT BOOK THIS HOTEL. On the beach, there is an area for platinum guests. They promise you sunbeds, but there are not enough for all the platinum guests. You have to wake up at 4 AM to ensure you get one. There are no rules, no structure, no policy. SPA: You are promised 10-15% off SPA services if you buy the platinum package. They bring out the card reader right away and want you to pay, but they don’t tell you that if you’re pregnant, you are NOT welcome at the SPA at all. I asked why I can’t get a foot or hand massage. The answer was that they might press points that could harm the fetus. This is an unfounded claim. Room service is included in platinum but they never pick up when...