La Romana Beach Resort

We were here for both a wedding and birthday. We stay d in the preferred and Edward (butler) was excellent. He went above and beyond to make our birthday experience special. He also assisted us with booking a Bali bed on the beach and we had a great experience with that as well. Carlos concierge on the beach was great too! Tony in security was very nice.

Great Hotel & Animation Team! Lovely Location! Employees are very charming, helpful and entertaining. Food & Beverages are unfortunately “typical” All-Inclusive-Quality… Sea is beautiful. Great Beach. Room is clean and big, with a nice little terrace. They live the dominican lifestyle and do it always “manana

Honest review from a Midwestern family of 5. We returned from our trip yesterday and I wanted to post on here about our experience. We did A LOT of homework, read reviews on here and TripAdvisor before we came. I understand that everyone will have different experiences and expectations, but this is ours. It’s a long post, but hopefully will have information that will be useful to you and your family! We are a family of 5 with 3 boys (17, 14, 11) from southern Illinois. We travel yearly to somewhere new. We decided several years ago to travel instead of buying a bunch of junk at Christmas. We have cruised a few times, this is our 2ndall-inclusive and 1st time in the DR. We stayed in the “family” building (building 49) in a 2 BR family suite. The room was spacious, clean and well appointed. We had a “tropical” view but we would have considered it a oceanfront or partial oceanfront because we could see the ocean from the balcony. I am told that this is the newest building on the resort. It is “across the street” but that to me is misleading. The building is separate from the rest of the resort, but it is a 2 min walk to the rest of the resort, through a little tunnel. The building itself has its own buffet for breakfast and lunch, brick oven pizza, pool and bar. It was NEVER crowded. There is a golf cart available to take you anywhere on the resort if you do not want to walk. Bear in mind though, that a Dominican minute and a US minute are 2 different things lol. I found that 1 Dominican minute = 5 (or more) US minutes, so if you adjust your expectations accordingly, you will not be disappointed. The staff is very friendly and willing to please, but “island time” takes a little longer. The housekeeping staff was amazing! We found that if you left them a note with what you wanted and a couple bucks they would take great care of you! I love Dominican rum and they would leave me bottles (actual bottles not airplane) of rum every day. Lisette at the Marlin bar makes the best mojitos on the resort! She loves her job and loves to talk to the guests. Yes, there is a language barrier. I speak a little Spanish and did just fine. The staff are more than willing to talk to you, so if you have a little patience, understanding, and google translate, you will do great! We love to talk to the staff, and learn about their lives and culture. The Main Resort. The rest of the resort is beautiful. The architecture is amazing and you feel like you are in a little village. The resort itself is VERY clean and the staff is amazing! The shows were good. We only saw 2, the 3rdone that we wanted to see got rained out. The entertainment staff works very hard and it shows in the performances. Food. This is the big one that I see people complain about. The food was good. If you are expecting 5 star exceptional fine dining, then you will be disappointed and this is not the resort for you. The hibachi was good, the Italian restaurant was the best a la carte meal we had. The preferred beach restaurant was also very good and the brick oven pizza on the family side was amazing. The buffets were ok, but not great. Room service was good, but adjust your expectations based on the “Dominican” minute. Overall if you have some patience, understand that the quality of ingredients is different that here you will not go hungry. Beach. The beach was great! There were some waves, but not terrible. On the preferred side, there are a couple big rocks not too far from shore and once you figure out where they are you wont have any issues. The water is the most amazing color of blue. I see a lot of people complain about “saving” chairs with towels. Yes, most of the chairs will have towels on them. Very few have personal belongings on them. We found that if there is a towel and no other belongings, you will have no issue using the chair for a few hours. That being said, the overall feel of the resort is much safer than Mexico, and I would have had no issue leaving our belongings unsupervised for a bit. (obviously not anything important like passports etc) but there are security guys everywhere and they do a good job of keeping things squared away. Excursions and extras. I took my older 2 on a dune buggy excursion in Bavaro. It cost a little bit more for transportation because it is on the other side of the island, but it is worth every penny! The operator is a German ex-pat that has been in the DR for 15 years. This is NOT a “touristy” experience. The groups are small. We had 4 buggies in our group total. They are nice dune buggy frames with Volkswagen motors. We travelled through the jungle, on the highways, saw a Dominican homestead for coffee, an abandoned limestone quarry, a small village and store and Macao beach. In total we travelled around 70km in about 4-5 hours. It was amazing. If you are interested it was xtreme-buggy.com. They were awesome to work with! They even offer 3day and 6 days trips that my wife and I are seriously considering going back for. We also had family pictures taken while we were there. Luis was AMAZING. There was no cost or obligation to have them taken, and you were able to pick what you wanted! We were given full digital access and copyright release to our photos to print as we please. Luis is very passionate about what he does and it shows in his work and with speaking to him. I can’t recommend him or the dune buggy enough! Preferred. We were preferred as part of our room package from our travel agent. To us, it was worth it. Our butler Edward was amazing. Though we only met him a few times, he was VERY responsive on WhatsApp anytime we needed him. He arranged breakfast for us the day of our excursions because we were leaving the resort before anything opened. He made sure we had anything we needed in the room or on the resort. Having access to the family building, the Flying Fish buffet and the Preferred beach restaurant was a big plus for us. Along with the golf cart. I would definitely recommend it to families. Overall our experience at the Resort was AMAZING. We had very few complaints and in the big scheme of things they were trivial. We would absolutely return again. Some things to keep in mind: SUNSCREEN, the sun is pretty intense. If you bring plenty of sunscreen and apply it several times a day you will be fine. Things on the resort are a little high, but still much better than Mexico. Slow down, be patient and enjoy the experience. The Dominican people are warm, friendly and eager to please, it just sometimes takes a little longer than we are used to. Again, these were our experiences and everyone will experience it differently based on their expectations, background etc. There is a lot of negative things that get said about these resorts and I wanted to share what a typical midwestern, middle class family experienced. Good luck and Happy Travelling! Special shout outs for great service and excellence awards go to: Edward (butler), ALL HOUSEKEEPING, Lisette (Marlin bartender), Yordani De Bares (bartender), Junior (our golf cart driver), Mayelin (bartender), Fenna (Manatee bar please excuse spelling), Luis (photographer), and William (golf cart)

An amazing vacation, the best beds I’ve slept in a resort, the food, general services, animations team and an excellent service from Carlos in the reception and alexandrina in the room’s services and Noelin and Mary in coco cafe definitely we’ll come back in the next vacation!

If you get a good deal - for 1-2 weeks it is grand! Perfect size! Just perfect: coco-cafe (GREAT coffee and sweets 24/7) at 6:30am - take it to go plus a cookie and sit on the peer to watch the sun rise. Thumbs up for: beach, pool, buffet, bars, super nice and helpful staff all over Meh: gym is a bit small, but as modern as it is plus the views-its only a slight minus. A la carte dining wasnt quite the expected experience - still good though. Thumbs down: preferred is a joke! There are no wristbands, they never check and the perks are tiny! Lunch at the beach was good - but thats it!