Well, long story, I booked 2 weeks at the Bahia for me and my boyfriend. Situations changed, and I took one of my (girl) friends instead. We went from 4 Oct for 2 weeks. Booked with First Choice. Flight there we were sitting behind eachother directly next to toilets, not happy as i booked it a year in advance! Advice you to pay an extra £10 to sit togther, my friend is petrified of flying, made it worse!
The hotel was wonderful, elegant, gave drinks on arrival, and a welcome dance (all very staged, but thoughtful all the same) amazing reception, you and luggage carted off to your accomodation. We were round the corner, block 12, next to first pool and garden grill restaurant. Take a spanish phrase book, as this will help, luckily I speak Spanish so we were fine. The weather was glorious, apart from 2 days and 2 evenings of torential thunderstorms, the works. ever night there are amazing lightening forks in the sky in October, even when it's pleasant.
Buffet was great, went there most times for breakfast, lunch, dinner, as so much to choose from. Booked up at Garden Grill, this was ok, not good for my veggie friend though. We loved Japanese, they cook it in front of you. Did'nt think much of the Italian either, we just loved the buffets! There a few around, the one on the beach/far pool is good for a snack in afternoon, paella there was yum. Beautiful beach, 10 minute brisk walk from our room, but regular trams to take you there. Yeah there's seaweed...but it's the sea funny enough, just float and don't tread in it, they did make an effort to clear it every morning. The shipwreck is a good photo opportunity! Pools were great, most days found loungers with brollies for shade. You need atleast factor 30 cream for the first week, even our eyelids and scalps burnt.
We went on the Sanoa Island trip (amazing) the beach is gorgeous, like a postcard, so clear, our coach broke down in Higuey, a really poor part which was quite funny, got another one within 25 minutes. Horseriding at el pat ranch was the best, galloping along the beach, cannot beat it. Outback safari is a must to see how people live. If you take some packs of pens pencils, sweets, wait until you get higher into the mountains to reach the real poor children, or give them to the tour guide who will give them.
The one night we were sick, was because we drank 7 tequila sunrises each one night and 6 mama juana (local drink) So it was totally self inflicted. tried to drink 2 litres of water a day.
The rooms were spotless, had one teeny cockroach the last night, we did not tip the maid until the day we left, when we left her a nice little package, and the fridge was always stocked. The air con was freezing, we hardly ever had it on! coming from England, we like to feel the warm!
Advise you take US dollars, Dominican pesos are so confusing, i still have no idea! Everything is priced in dollare anyway. the entertainment was bad apart from the Michael jackson tribute night, which was really good, and wait until the end for "heal the world" and it is hysterical.
This is a very relaxing hotel, geared towards couples for sure. there's a wedding chapel, and we saw many weddings take place. We got hassled every where we went being two blonde 22 year old girls, the men do go on and on, which my friend did'nt like, but I have been to egypt/Turkey, and it's much worse there. Don't come here if you want wild nights out, there's a disco, open midnight til 2 (hardly worth it) It's a place to be lazy, with a few action packed trips to stimulate you really. People want to do whatever they can to make you happy, which is the same in all of the all inclusive resorts I have visited around the world. I don't have a bad thing to say about the place. the only bad thing was the rep did'nt have a clue most of the time, and messed up a few of our trips.
If you want to be pampered, relax, then I definately reccommend this resort, it is pretty big though, so if you don't like excercise don't go! Enjoy!
Any questions, feel free to email me:
amyleighfoster@hotmail.com

We returned from a 7 day stay at Bahia Principe on Oct 28. Many of the comments from previous guest are very accurate.

I'll start with the positives.
The resort is beautiful and huge (the tram makes it easy to get around). The beach is gorgeous with wonderful fluffy sand and warm clear water. The grounds are kept clean. The pools are a great change from the salt water and there are many of them to choose from. There are plenty of palapas at the beach and the pools. The drinks are good and plenty of them. The Coco Loco and Banana Mamma were our favorites from the Lobby Bar. We were in Diamond club so we went to the Italian Rest. for lunch daily. The Japanese restaraunt and the steak grill were really good for the a la carte dinners.

Negatives:

Our room stunk like must and humidity. It really smelled terrible. The cleaners moped with bleach one day but it still stank and we werent able to change rooms. I have washed all my laundry 2x and the smell is still in all my clothing.

The food was typical buffet/all inclusive fare, fairly greasy, not always the temp. it should be. The individual restaraunts were better. However, this is pretty typical of the previous 3 all inclusives we have stayed at in the past.

Some thing that I ate made me very ill for 2 days. I had a fever and felt naseaus and was unable to go too far from the washroom. From talking to other guests many others fell ill the same days that I did. I assume it was something I ate.

The worst part of our stay was having belongings stolen the day before we were to leave. We had tipped the maid daily and were fairly pleased with our room cleanliness. The items taken were an MP3 player and headphones, a new bottle of Lacoste cologne, digital sport watch and a $10 bill from my backpack. I highly reccomend you use the safe for EVERYTHING you can fit in there. These items were not excessively expensive but they are a hassle to replace and they add up. We reported it to the resort and they were only able to offer us spa services and 1 hour prior to our departure we werent interested. In my opinion they could have done more to compensate us or to resolve the problem. Apparently this is relatively common as well.

The shows were terrible but that also is pretty common with all inclusives. I agree with the previous post about the thongs.

Our neighbors had a problem with bugs and mosquitos in there room, try not to have a room near the pond.

It is true most of the staff dont speak english. However you are in a Spanish speaking country. If you ask respectfully if they can speak English most of them can a bit. When we were there most of the guests were also Spanish speaking.

Overall we had a fair time at the Bahia, however I highly doubt we will return there nor will we reccomend it to others.

My wife and I have stayed at this fantastic hotel 1 week, and we didn't go out of the hotel on single day. The hotel has greats swimming pools, excellent restaurants (make reservations at the first day), the room is very good, but with no luxury and as a little of bad smell of mildew of the humidity.
The restaurant, the bars and the extra activity don't look like to be an all inclusive hotel.
Watch out your call, they bill US$ 2 / minute and with no report.

Well, I thought I would add our experience as there is a bit of a mixed bag from people that were there at the same time as us. We were at the Gran Bahia from October 9 - 23. Just a bit about us first, I was 20 weeks pregnant, and travelled with my husband and 2 1/2 year old son.

Lots of people have talked about the features of the resort so I won't really go into those, other than to say we really loved it. We booked Club Golden and had a great room down in villa 23, right by the mexican restaurant and near the beach and pool and if we strained really hard when looking out balcony we could see the sea! I'll cover things that I've seen people complain about and add our experience...

Firstly Club Golden, did we think it was worth it. I'd say yes. The room was great, clean and well stocked. We were very close to the pool which meant It meant that when the rain came (which it did a fair bit in the second week), we could quickly get back to our room. It was nice having the additional nights in the ala carte restaurants as we were staying for 14 nights the variety was welcome. We did also use the internet access a few times and when we had a leak in our room, after the heaviest rain I have ever experienced so I don't blame them, we were able to call the Golden Express line and they sent someone immediately to sort it out for us.

The staff - the staff were all fantastic, we didn't have one nasty or negative thing to say about them. I really believe it is a case of you get what you give with people and if you treat people well, then they will do the same for you. People we spoke to that did have problems more often did seem to occassionally bring it on themselves. We did also regularly tip both the maid and in the restaurants. We also left messages for the maid for the drinks we wanted the minibar stocked with (pretty much beer and diet coke most days), with a couple of dollars and without fail it was well stocked.

The restaurants - we did find most of the restaurants quite good. I must admit I relied a lot of pizza, salad, ham & cheese toasties and pasta in the buffets, but being pregnant I wasn't feeling particularly adventurous. The food wasn't always very hot, but this is quite often the case with buffets. We ate in every restaurant on the complex and our favourites were the Grill and the Mexican. The French was good and it was nice to have a formal dining experience, the Italian was ok, but we found one day was significantly better than another so seemed dependent on the chef, the sushi was lovely in the japanese but not so good for our 2 1/2 year old and it would have been nice if they could have offered a child friendly option. Also, if anyone can't find anything on the menu in the mexican, grill and seafood restaurant you can just get the buffets in there and they were GREAT, lovely salads and different enough from the main buffet to be interesting.

The pools - We tried both pools and they did have quite different atmospheres. The middle pool had music playing and was a bit more 'fun'. It was dirtier though than the main pool near the beach. But was nice as it was all in one with the swim up bar, toddler pool and jacuzzi. All the pools had fantastic toddler pools and large shallow areas next to them for younger children. Our son spent about 5 hours a day pottering around and had the time of his life. He also really enjoyed the bubbles - the cold water jacuzzis. For that reason alone this resort got a thumbs up from me. The main pool was actually split into two pools, one with the swim up bar and the other with the kids pool and also where water polo was played every afternoon. As far as activities were concerned I did water aerobics a few times but you didn't really know where they were as the activity board did not appear to state which pool the activities were being held at.

I know everyone says this, but the resort was kept amazingly clean. I've never seen anything like it, the floors were buffed, the brass cleaned, the walls wiped down every day. Amazing.

Language - For those that complain about the lack of english spoken, I say get a grip you are in a foreign country, I'm afraid I have little time for this complaint. If you do run into problems you will find that the staff on the front desk speak english well and are more than likely very happy to help. Also take an english / spanish dictionary as that will help.

Rain - Hmmm, it did rain quite a bit, but the sun shone quite a bit as well. It was also warm enough that if you wanted to swim in the rain you could and it would usually pass quite quickly. There was one thunderstorm though that was AMAZING and the loudest thunder I've ever heard in my life, but by 7 o'clock it had passed and we had a clear night. (BTW, all the rooms have umbrellas for guest to use when they are outside - very handy)

Finally sickness - we did unfortunately meet quite a few people that had been very ill while on holiday and two of them had to go to hospital due to severe dehydration, one poor little boy had a very high fever and severe diarrhea. I'm mentioning this because ultimately the hotel does have a duty of care in food hygiene and unfortunately I think this hotel has a problem in this area. We gave ourselves a pat on the back on our last day for having escaped without any major problems other than slight on and off diarrhea (which I would expect in a place like the Dominican Republic anyway). But on our return to the UK I got quite a severe case of it and had some tests run and it was discovered that I had Salmonella. I was lucky in that it wasn't a severe case (particularly being pregnant), but given the number of people that fell ill during our stay I suspect there was a contaminated area that was reinfecting the food and therefore people.

All in all I think the Gran Bahia is a great resort and we would go back again as I think the sickness problem is something that can be addressed and I'm sure will be, but if anyone is going to be travelling there in the immediate future I would recommend taking some care.