They really do; I was trying to come up with some clever way to introduce that the only things we enjoyed about our stay at this "all-inclusive" resort were things we paid to do on our own, but the bare fact seemed best.

Booked this trip through CheapCaribbean.com. I have noticed that many reviewers who booked with them report similar bad experiences. Not sure if that reflects on CheapCaribbean or on how this establishment treats guests who book through them, to be fair.

First of all, please note that the resort is not in La Romana, as advertised, but actually in Bayahibe. Not a bad place, but if you were planning to go to La Romana (and you'll probably want to, keep reading) it's like a $60 cab ride round-trip.

Arrived admittedly late, thanks to a delay on American Airlines. My wife and I were given a room with two double beds, instead of the king size bed that had been booked. The room was ill-lit, missing towels, had no clock, and the air conditioner was stuck on about 60 degrees. Concerned that we would miss the end of dinner, we ate before returning to the front desk. The gentleman working check-ins was polite but extremely unhelpful, telling us that there was nothing he could do about the room as they were allegedly at "100% capacity." He suggested that we return the next morning between eleven and noon, as checkout was at noon and rooms might become available. We resigned ourself to at least one night in the "wrong" room.

In addition to being too small, the double beds were old and their mattresses lumpy. The linens were very coarse and low-quality, far from ideal for sunburn sufferers. Not enough blankets were provided for the arctic chill the air conditioner was kicking out.

We returned the next morning, and a different gentleman was working check-ins. He could not understand why we had been told the previous night to try in the morning, as no rooms were becoming available whatsoever. He did helpfully suggest, however, that we come back at 3:00 and check. We presume that his shift ended at around 2:00, as the modus operandi for the people at the desk was to try to bounce your question about 8 hours into the future.

After we got the same runaround attempting to procure a key for the room safe ("We don't have any, come back at maybe 3:00"), we began demanding to see a manager. Despite the fact that the manager, Rene, was clearly seen behind the desk, the staff continued to stall and insist that he was busy. It was only after we had taken to answering their every reply with "I understand. When may we speak to a manager?" that he deigned to acknowledge us. He was even more abusive and less helpful than the staff. Finally, a staff member named Marian stepped in and got us our safe key, towels ordered up for the room, and our missing clock. Her intercession likely saved our stay there. Not even she, however, could get us the room we had actually booked, or summon up a working remote for the ancient television.

It was difficult to get our room cleaned regularly. Indeed, one day it was entirely skipped, despite the "Please Make Up Room" sign prominently displayed on the doorway from 10am until after dinner. In the end we had to deal with the unhelpful staff at the front desk on a daily basis to ensure that the room was made up.

I will say this for the resort: its beach is quite pleasant, if somewhat overcrowded and relatively noisy. We enjoyed swimming, as long as we dodged the large number of other guests; and laying on the beach was nice, if we pretended not to be able to hear the loud music blaring constantly from the vicinity of the volleyball court. The free drinks were nice, but mostly far too sweet, and the beer was a little bit watery, if tasty.

The drinks, however, were much better than the food, which was simply awful. We ate at the buffet; we ate at the Italian restaurant; we ate at the beachfront restaurant; we ate at the poolside restaurant. The food was uniform and uniformly bland. Meats were served extremely overdone; even in the restaurants entrees appeared to have had extensive adventures under a heat lamp; and in all cases the only flavor to be detected was the faint taste of overcooked tomatoes and bell peppers. The food was so dull and lifeless that we actually took a taxi trip to La Romana in the hope of finding some decent food. The cab driver deposited us at Marinelly Seafood Restaurant, where the smell of cooking garlic reminded us that we hadn't scented it since arriving at Casa del Mar. Paying for a cab ride is a rather exorbitant way to get decent food, but this was excellent stuff and we were pretty desperate. Dealing with the resort food afterwards was a parade of disappointments, even on the Dominican specialty night in the overcrowded, noisy World Cafe.

We can also recommend the snorkeling trips to Catalina offered by the Gri Gri dive company, but with the caveat that it will set you back $100 for two people, despite Casa del Mar's claim to have snorkeling as part of their all-inclusive plan. The snorkeling was nice and the crew reassuring, although the boat did have an equipment problem on the way back to the resort.

The vendors that the resort permits to set up shop in the area around the pools are quite aggressive, which I found irritating, and persistent, which I found obnoxious. If you decide to deal with them (because you enjoy the bargaining game or something) please be aware of the value of the goods you are negotiating for. One gentleman tried very hard to sell us for $100 and then for $20 a bottle rum that we found at the duty-free in Santo Domingo for $6 a bottle. Personally I don't find being continually accosted by vendors relaxing and wish the resort didn't admit them.

Internet access was extremely limited, available either on a handful of computers in the "TV Lounge" or in a very small radius served by an access point named "wifimasa_lobby." I'm not even sure that the proprietors intended to offer this access, because several more widely broadcast networks were inoperable or inaccessible. I would consider decent internet access to guests a minimum requirement for a resort.

The shops in the resort itself were very pricy and sold us an overpriced bottle of suntan lotion of highly questionable legitimacy, resulting in painful sunburns.

Checking out included a ludicrous episode where the desk clerk feigned astonishment at our decision to depart. I nearly lost the tip of my tongue biting it so hard, simply wanting to finish the checkout and be on our way without further event. The very quintessence of our stay.

We will definitely not be returning. This was the least inclusive all-inclusive I've ever been to, and the hardest I've ever had to work to enjoy a relaxing week of vacation.

Liked: the beach, out-of-pocket day trips, leaving
Disliked: the staff, the room, the other guests, the food

Recommended for: people who like disrespectful staff; people who don't know good drinks when they taste them; people who hate food; people who didn't really mean it when they booked a king-sized bed

We purchased a package through Cheap Caribbean, and were thoroughly satisfied with our vacation. The hotel is an average hotel, with some rooms recently renovated and others underway. I would not give it as high a rating as Cheap Caribbean does; however, there was not much disappointment to be found.

Pros:
1. beach - gorgeous, long, plentiful lounge chairs, no need to reserve them in the early a.m., and you can put your towel and belongings there and it will remain there all day
2. towel service for beach/pool
3. all inclusive truly means that - you can opt to have the lobster or buy the better bottle of wine, but there is no pressure to do so; open bars can be found from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m.
4. noise level - not a problem, but i would not be so sure for spring break
5. optional snorkeling available at hotel is as good as the ones you can arrange from a tour company, but half the cost
6. other guests - good mix of couples and families from all over the world

Cons:
1. room - ours was not one of the renovated ones - basically your average 2 star hotel room
2. retaurants - not all of them are open every night and the service in the non-buffet restaurants can be pretty poor; the buffet is actually pretty nice (and i hate buffets) - there are several made-to-order stations within the buffet
3. airport transfer service - ours was Turinter - not as convenient as you might expect, but i'm not sure what the other options are - probably a necessary evil. and make sure to use the bathroom before you leave the airport/hotel because it can take up to 3 hrs to/from santo domingo depending on the local traffic (avg is 1.5 hrs)
4. night life - one club and it has various themes depending on the night, all of which seemed kind of lame - no latin dancing to be found except for the organized lessons by the poor or beach; the nightly shows are also not terribly entertaining

Overall, the trip was great. We spent very little extra money once we got to the resort. We would definitely return except for wanting to visit other islands. Would definitely recommend this to the budget-minded traveler.

We stayed at CDM on April 30th-May 7th.
I always do a ton of research on Tripadvisoe before I book any resort.
I did find out that this resort was the same owners and Dreams and Secrets...and it was being renovated to a Dreams from a Sunscape. I immediately found out which buildings were rennovated and sent an email to the concierge to upgrade us to building number 3. She was very accomodating...My boyfriend emailed her telling her that we will be getting engaged on this trip as wa another couple coming with us and she was able to put us in a nice room in Building 3. But again it was explained to us that it was only done because it was such a special occasion.

Here is a bit of a detailed review about the trip:

Beach: The beach is GORGEOUS! The water was absolutely amazing! Green and crystal blue! We rented snorkeling equipment from the water activities hut and went snorkeling right in front of our hotel! We saw puffer fish! Beautiful bright fish and caught a starfish! But of coarse we threw it back into the sea.
We were thinking of taking the trip to Catalina island, but with a reef this beautiful on our hotel grounds...who needs that?!
The sand was white and soft. There were always plenty of chairs and palm trees in case you wanted shade. There are a lot of Europeans in the hotel, so women tan topless...For me this was fine, since I was one of the topless tanners.

Food: The food overall was great! I was very happy with the fresh fish and vegetable selections daily. The pizza there was amazing! So fresh! Their caesar salad was one of my faves! The A La Carte restaurants were good. We had a bad experience with Hamatsu, the Asian restaurant. We waited for 2 hours to get served, and it took 3 hours for our first course to come out.
My fiancee and I had the romantic dinner on the pier (extra cost) and it was phenominal! In fact that was where we got engaged! The 5 course meal was absolutely incredible! And the service was perfect as well.
I think that even the pickiest eatier could find plenty to eat at the buffet. I am a VERY picky eater and I never went hungry!

Rooms: We were upgraded to building number 3 which was already rennovated. We did not have any problems, with the exception of a leaky ceiling. But it did not really bother us all that much...I did hear that the some of the other rooms in the other buildings were very inadequate. However, I did hear that if you are very inconvenienced you will be moved to another room.

Staff: The staff was very accomodating...no one in our group except myself spoke Spanish, but either way they tried to understand you to the best of their ability. I was never spoken to rudely or had any unpleasentries with the staff.

Bayhabie and the Locals: We walked over to the local city which was about a 10 minute walk down the beach. Many people tried telling us that it was dangerous and the locals were not ones to be friends with. I could not disagree more! We walked over there about 3 times! We purchased several paintings and sun block when we ran out. We chatted with the locals and one of them even showed us his favorite restaurant on the beach. We had dinner there, for 2 people it $51. This included 2 huge lobsters, platain chips, beers, a fresh huge grouper fillet for me and rice. We could not have been happier with the company and the freshness of the food. We went into the city with a positive attitude, were respectful to the locales, joked with them and had a wonderful time all in all! Don't be scared off by all the horror stories. Just be smart and have a wonderful time!

It was an amazing trip and everything about this vacation was terrific!

Feel free to email me with any questions you may have!
milachkaa@gmail.com

We went to the resort with a wedding party of 30 people. We have to young children and were a bit aprehensive about going on this type of holiday with two kids so young (aged 2 & 4).
After a long flight and chaos at the airport I was looking forward to arriving at the resort and enjoying the luxury of a bath in the 4+*resort.
I could of cried when we got to our room!! Be warned block 5 is not nice. The room was old shabby and in serious need of a makeover. There was a faint musty odourthat was quite off putting and there was paint peeling of the walls. I could have lived with that, but the bathroom was disgusting (see photo's). My daughter refused to get in the bath (I can't blame her) she said to me "mummy why has someone done a poo in the bath?" she was referring to the rust. The patio doors, first wouldn't open and when we did finally get them open we couldn't get it to shut and lock, this was worrying as the resort had security posts all around.
We do not like to complain but we felt we could not spend two weeks in this room. We spoke to reception and they offered us another room in the same block. We looked at this room but it was no better. We was informed we could upgrade at a cost of $40 a night. This was not acceptable considering how much we had been spent on the holiday already and in our opinion the room was well below 4+ standard. Giving it a rating of 3* would be a generous grading!!
Following a call to Thompson in the UK early the next morning who were very helpful and a day of going back and forth to the reception we was moved to Block 1 at no extra charge.
This room was clean and bright and of a good stardard, it was nothing extrodinary just what anyone would expect in a 4+* hotel. Once we moved we felt that we could start to enjoy our holiday and from then on we did.
We cannot grumble about much else within the resort the food was good and plentiful and being all inclusive really worked well with the kids, the resort was clean and well maintained. The staff on the whole were very friendly and helpful. If you like lazing around the pool and beach then this is the place. For me I would have liked to have gone somewhere with more to do and see outside the resort.
Make sure you go well prepared as there is not much to buy in the resort. If you forget to take something with you, or run out of anything you may come unstuck. The first week we ran out of sun cream and we couldn't buy any in the resort (A shop opened just prior to us leaving.) We ventured into Bayhibe to buy some which was very daunting and not much fun. The locals swarmed round trying to sell stuff. There was not much to see in the town and the beaches were littered with rubbish as soon as you left the resort.
We did a couple of trips out which were good, they were well organised and good value for money. They were booked by a guy selling them in the resort and much cheaper than through Thompson.
The Casino is well worth a trip, we had a great night, it was nice to get out of the resort.
My only other slight grumble is that in some of the bars if you don't give a tip as soon as you go to the bar you will receive your drinks in plastic not glass and have to wait a long time to be served. I'm not opposed to tipping and we did give lots of tips, but I feel that tips should be given because you have been given good service. Not that you should have to give a tip to get good service.
Would I return to the Dominican Republic? NO
Would I recomend this hotel? Only if you were in the upgraded accomodation.