My fiance and I just recently returned from a PHENOMENAL stay at the Paradisus Palma Real for my 30th Birthday and my suprise ENGAGEMENT!!! Two milestones in one!
I can honestly say that this is the most relaxing, romantic, beautiful and breathtaking vacation I've been to. We landed In Punta Cana and took a taxi to the resort. We haggled for $30 for one way taxi to the resort...others charged $35. It was about a 15 minute ride to the resort. Once your arrived, the view when you step in is breathtaking. Everything is open, looking from the fountain to the pool and straight to the beach.

Checkin in was fairly quick. We were offered the Royal Service which was quite pricey (3 different packages ranging from an additional $60 pp a night to $200!!!). We walked through the beautiful gardens, passed some flamingos as well to our garden view suite. Very cozy, very clean. The staff takes very good care of the property.

Now for the pool/beach review! HUGE pool. It never gets packed. The pool is 5 ft deep all around with fountains and a swim up bar. The swim up bar sometimes got crowded but you were still able to get your drink pretty fast. Oh, the beds around the pool do get reserved pretty fast as people will leave a book or their towels on the beds either the night before or early morning, so it was difficult getting a bed, however there were enough lounge chairs to soak in the sun as well as lounge chairs built within the pool. As for the beach..yes there IS a quite a bit of seaweed, but nothing to fuss over. There were many beds and lounge chairs on the beach and the beach never got crowded.

As for the food....The buffet was always good..different array of cuisines at lunch and dinner. My fiance and i had dinner at Bana and Passion. If you want a romantic dinner. Passion is definitely the place. Emmanuel at Passion took very good care of us and we made sure to tip him at the end of our dinner. They had spectacular food. Bana was okay, we had sushi and it was fairly good.

The resort gives you free activities that included catamaran, windsurfing, kayaking, free snorking gear, and waterbiking. We found that the watersports that you had to pay for were cheaper through the people that were selling it right outside the fence area from the sports hut. They gave us $80 for parasailing for two people, while the resort charged $100 for ten minutes. They gave us speedboat and snorkeling excursion for 2 hours for $80 while the resort was $150. So see Victor for the prices just outside the fence. he'll take care of you.

And for those mall fanatics, there is a mall right at the entrance of the resort. There is rides from the resort to the mall at various times so make sure you go visit. A bit pricey, but good things there.

Drinks of choice - Pinca colada (of course!), Banana Mudslide (YUMMY!) and Banana Mama. All made with top shelf liquor. If you are a mojito fan like my fiance and i, then order Caiparinha as they do not have mint to make the mojito but they do make something similar and it tastes just as good.

All in all, a wonderful vacation that we would definitely be back for!. Maybe for my WEDDING!!! =)

Hope this review helps!

The resort is beautiful. The beach and pool are magnificent except for tons of seaweed at the beach. There are plenty of shaded lounge chairs at both the pool and beach. The hotel has plenty of towels and towel service is on the honor system-no checking towels in and out...definitely a plus. We did not use royal service and found that we were treated as 2nd class citizens. It was difficult to make a dinner reservation between 6PM and 9:15PM because this large time block was reserved for the royal service guests. The assigned concierge's main job is not to assist you but rather to harass you to attend the Sol Melia Vacation Club presentation. We eventually went and it was the biggest waste of time. The salesman never got to the point and could not answer basic questions about the product. After a half hour if listening to this garbage, we decided that we were not interested and wanted to leave and we were denied our promised $50 spa credit because we didn't stay for the full 90 minutes.
The restaurants were very average, nothing spectacular, either in food or service. The best restaurant was Passion, but since the tasting menu did not change, we only ate there twice. The Market Grille was the next best pick, serving surf and turf. The other restaurants were really substandard. Despite drinking only the bottled water, our entire party came down with both abdominal issues and severe skin rashes, diagnosed as hot tub dermatitus. We have been back for a week and these issues are still with us.

My husband and I stayed at this all inclusive hotel. We had a great vacation. The room was beautifully decorated with sitting area and balcony, the grounds well kept with all kinds of flowers and tropical plants, extra large pools with many Jacuzzis, the staff was friendly and very helpful and the food was excellent. We recommend this hotel.

Me and my girlfriend have spent one week in this hotel. Our first impression was that if only we had not moved here from Excellence punta cana. The hotel location is OK, but the recepcionist was very rude, and we hardly got our room, because we had to listen to the concierge guy speech which was really bored us. The room was good one of the few things we liked (although the door couldn't be locked from inside anytime some cleaning staff could come in!!!).The food was great and you have lot of choice of many different type of seafood etc. The beach looks marvellous from a certain distance but if you get closer you can see the plenty of weeds or some flowers swimming on surface it really disturbes us. I can say that for this amount there are more better hotels in Punta cana (Excellence Punta Cana, we moved from there). Very poor sport activities!!!