Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Punta Cana — Hotel in Higüey

We left Hard Rock Punta Cana today after 9 nights of our 14 night holiday. We would have left sooner had our travel agent allowed. We visited the resort to celebrate our honeymoon and to say we were disappointed is an understatement. This resort is NOT a five star resort. If you are considering booking here, please, please, please look at other resorts. This is simply not in any way worth the money.||To start with the air con in the rooms is terrible, it does not get below around 23°C. We actually had to send our baby daughter home early with her grandparents as the air con was not sufficient enough to have her sleep in the room. We had to call maintenance multiple times during our stay as the air con and the flush on the toilet stopped working. We know the rooms were recently updated but if you walked into them not knowing this you would think they were at least 10+ years old. The showers were disgusting and very grimy. The mini bar was not properly restocked once during our stay. The room was not well cleaned either, we think it was just a case of the bed being made and bins emptying, nothing else. The jets in the bath on the balcony didn’t work. There were multiple lifts not working across the hotel. We asked for extra coat hangers on the first day and they arrived 8 days later. You are supposed to be able to control the TV and order room service on the iPad in the room but neither of these functions actually worked.||The food at this resort is absolutely terrible. I know a lot of people say that all inclusive resort food tends to be mediocre but I have never had any complaints on all inclusive food until we visited this resort. The Italian restaurant may have been one of the worst meals we have ever had. One night the Mexican restaurant was very good and then two nights later it was terrible. We had high hopes for the steakhouse but again this disappointed. The burger place was good but you wait a long time for your food. The sandwich shop however, was very good, we were gutted we hadn’t tried this sooner! The drinks are also very poor with everything being served in the same reusable plastic cups. We are all for recycling but EVERY drink was in the same half pint cup and they were not well made. Beers were flat and cocktails were inconsistent; you never got the same drink twice.||The staff in general are very rude and it is more surprising to get a friendly/helpful staff member than a rude one. Service around the pool was not good, other than Ramon at the guitar pool, he was 5 star!||The “Inpanema” restaurant was not open during our stay, as well as the escape room. We were not made aware of this before hand and were very disappointed. ||The wide selection of pools was very nice although people were smoking inside the pools and they often felt very dirty (no ash trays provided for those who smoke). A large clump of hair was under a sunbed at the main pool on our first day which we noticed remained there until we left. The pool towels were stained and grubby, as well as a lot of the sunbeds. Just a heads up to non-Spanish speakers, we understand this is a Spanish speaking country, but if you wish to enjoy the entertainment/ be able to communicate with most of the staff you should definitely speak Spanish. We found there to be quite a language barrier. ||The entertainment was mediocre at best. The evening shows were extremely hit and miss. The Elvis tribute show was very good but the Michael Jackson tribute show did not even sing and was more of a dance show. The Adele show was not even put on despite being advertised on the entertainment programme.||The resort did nothing to make our honeymoon special despite us prompting them and us being promised a ‘cake’ and ‘fizz’ in the room which never arrived. After pushing they did arrange a ‘romantic meal’ for us but we can’t comment on this as we didn’t stay long enough to experience it.||I don’t often feel the need to leave a bad review and am devastated that I am having to do so about our honeymoon but we sincerely hope that this helps others to not have the same experience we did. I ignored the previous bad reviews written on tripadvisor and wish more than anything I had listened. We have moved to a nearby dreams resort for the rest of our stay and after a mere 5 hours have had 100x the experience we had at the Hard Rock. Please save your hard earned money and your time. There are far better resorts on...

The Good: The resort is very clean and well manicured. The beach is very well-groomed and beautiful. Some of the best beach/sand I've ever been on. Our breakfast at Isla Market was very good. Everything coffee related that I had at the resort was excellent.

The Bad: Pretty much everything else. We checked in as a part of a large group, and it took way longer than it should have- close to an hour. At the counter, we got no real run-down on the resort or how things worked. We were pointed to our building and room, and told to go "out that door and make a left". We walked and walked looking for room 1102 that was in building 1C. We noticed that this place has NO SIGNAGE. It is a HUGE resort and there are NO SIGNS. After passing a group of housekeepers 3 times I finally asked them where our room was, showing them the paper that said 1C 1102. None spoke English. They all had no idea. Back to the front we go. The lady at the counter got upset about her mistake- its 1A we needed, not 1C. She said there was a tiki hut looking thing outside that was a train stop where we could get a ride to our room. We go out and see the tiki hut looking thing- no sign on it that says "tram stop". No signs talking about routes or paths. No information. Eventually a tram showed up to take us to our building.

Attempted a mental reset for day 2. We had a nice breakfast, although many of the staff at the restaurant give you the feeling you are inconveniencing them. We made our way to the beautiful beach only to find that if you wanted chairs or an umbrella you are out of luck. Those are for members only. The thousands of dollars we spent on our stay were not enough to get us into a beach lounger. An option to rent chairs or an umbrella? We THINK there may have been that option at the other end of the resort, but who knows? No signs, no information anywhere, and no employee nice enough to point that out to us as they were kicking us out of the exclusive members-only chairs.

Day 3, we tried the mental reset again, but to no avail. We spent the day at the water park- grossly understaffed. Lifeguards working the slides seemed annoyed to be there and only took a vague interest in directing kids down the huge slides in an orderly or safe manner.

The most frustrating part of our stay came after leaving the water park. My son, who has a skin condition that causes him to develop blisters on his feet very easily in hot/humid conditions, needed a ride from the water park back to our room. No problem with the trams, right? We left the park at around 5:30, and barely made it back to our room before 7. We waited and watched tram after tram roll by us. Some stopped to tell us they were full. Some stopped to tell us they were not the right tram. And some didn't stop at all. All the while, some were stopping in the middle of the route/sidewalk to pick up Spanish-speaking guests, taking them wherever they asked. Finally, an empty tram, acting like he was doing us a huge favor, agreed to take us to our room. It was during this time that another couple said the tram situation used to not be this bad, but apparently the resort is pushing the golf cart rentals, so likely intentionally deprecating tram service.

Activities are also frustrating. We supposedly got a room credit for the spa. I had to ask about it, as the check-in clerk didn't mention it. She confirmed the credit, although you still have to pay 35% no matter what your credit is. I wanted to book something for the spa... but how?? The tablets in our room didn't allow us to book anything. I never found where the spa actually was. One activity we did do was mini golf. According to our in-room tablet, we had to pay at the desk up front. So we make our way to the front to pay, then over to the course. Again, could barely find the course due to no signage. Turns out we could have just paid at the course. We got on the course and it was completely flooded from the rain. The guy at the counter could have let us know that, but no. We almost laughed at how, even on the mini golf course, there...

Hard Rock Punta Cana

Just don’t… or prepare to wait and tip baby tip!!!

SPA: Of all the cons, the biggest one is a health hazard in the SPA. After we were done with our spa treatment, I put my hand in the robe pocket to remember which locker I was in and to my surprise I found 2 tickets with my locker number on it. I look closely and see one with my name and the other ticket with another guest name. I panic for a second and think of all the scenarios where I can calm myself down knowing that this robe was worn by a previous guest and wasn’t washed. Absolutely disgusting, I rush back to room and take the longest shower in the history of mankind. Talk to the spa after and they deflect all responsibility and say they don’t know how that got there. One lady was embarrassed but manager was silent and just kept saying what does that have to do with your service. WOW. At that point, I have heard enough and stoped wasting my time with them. I attached pictures showing that our appointments were on the same day and only 2 hours apart. Obviously, the ticket wasn’t washed as you can see from the pictures so no chance that my robe made it the laundry area.

Water Park: Water park… oh boy where do I start. They had 2 slides closed on June 12-15. And no not because of poop but because a generator was offline. Offline for 3 days? Really? No backup generator? The biggest issue was the food truck at the water park would run out of food whenever they didn’t want to work. The manager literally walked in there tore a bag of French fries open, dumped it in the fryer and apologized to me. 5 minutes later, kids food is ready. After, I saw him pull the employee to the side and talk to her. My kids went later to get nachos and the same employee told them they don’t have nacho cheese. I talked to manager again and when he went to talk to them, they said the cheese was just warming up and it will be ready in 2 minutes. WOW. He went in there again and got my food. I forgot his name but he is from Eastern Europe and obviously knows what hospitality is all about.

Lazy river: River? Not a river at all just a “pond” around a restaurant with 50% of floats deflated. Joke.

MARKET Restaurant: Market restaurant service was horrible, see photo of watermelon they were serving. We went one day for lunch and lady said that the al pastor tacos will take 25 minutes to be ready. Here is the kicker, I talked to chef and he goes behind counter, cuts some meat from the spit, throws it on the flat top and my tacos are ready in 2 minutes. Food quality and appearance is lower than High School cafeteria in USA.

CIAO Restaurant: Excellent service by Juana and Carlos. Best food in entire resort: chocolate cake, lamb shank, veal, bruschetta, veal tuna, beef tartare and blue cheese salad. Tip to get seated quickly. $10 will get you seated in 15 minutes, otherwise 1+ hour wait.

IPANEMA Restaurant: You got to tip ($20) to get seated quickly and tip again to get meat to your table. Decent food.

TORO Restaurant: Similar meat quality to a Sizzler in USA. I would be embarrassed to call this a steakhouse. Definitely nothing premium about the meat. $20 tip to cut wait time from 2 hours to instantly seated. At this point, tipping feels more like hostage situation, no tip no service.

ZEN Restaurant: Decent food and service. No reservations, no problem as the 1 hour wait became “stand here and we will seat you right away” after $5 tip. LOL.

Kids Club: Most of the time it was over capacity which meant you have to wait for other’s kids to leave. Imagine you just finished dinner and kids want to go to kids club so you can go to Casino but no it’s overcapacity. Whole night ruined. Why??? It happens nightly, did they not plan or know how many kids are coming to resort. The resort could accommodate 5000+ guests, did they not know that when they build the kids club?

Pool service: No umbrellas, no problem. $5 tip and magically umbrellas are dragged from across the resort. Felt bad for worker so...