Sunscape Dominicus La Romana

Our family frequents all-inclusives at least 2-3 times a year and this was one of the best. The grounds are beautiful and the night time restaurants were good, especially the habachi restaurant. The pool was beautiful and we loved the pirate ship kids area with the slides. Clean rooms and there is so much to do. Entertainment staff was top notch with many activities during the day and night. We loved that there are excursions available right on the beach. We will be back with our extended family next time!

My wife and I just returned from a week at Sunscape and all in all we had a great vacation. I was extremely nervous having booked the trip last fall yet reading terrible reviews from the last couple of months. I can understand some of the frustrations that others commented on but it was nowhere as bad as what I was anticipating. Here’s our experience. Check in was easy, though we arrived around 1pm and our room wasn’t quite ready so the guy showed us to the buffet for lunch. The food is very bland and there’s a lot of things that probably most Americans might not enjoy. Remember, this place is catering to guests from all around the world so they probably try to put out a little something for everyone. I will agree that the food isn’t probably as hot as it should be but we never got sick. We ate lunch at the buffet daily and always found something to eat that was pretty good. After lunch our room was ready. The bellhop showed us to our room which had 2 beds. We had reserved a king room but we didn’t really care. The deal breaker was the bathroom. It was tiny with the toilet behind the door and a glass half wall separating it from the walk in shower. The shower head was the big rain style and it was about 5 foot high! I’m 6’2”! I had to duck under it to wash my head! Plus no privacy if someone wants to use the toilet while the shower is being used. We ended up moving to a king room the next day that was much larger, with a separate room for the toilet and a separate walk in shower with a huge glass door on both. The water would sometimes go from hot to cold, but I’ve found this is common in some places in foreign countries. I’m not a plumber so I don’t really know what causes that. Anyway, we were very happy with our second room. The phone had no dial tone, which we didn’t care. The power went out on our 5th night in the middle of the night. I went to the front desk at 7am to inform them and they had a guy fixing it before I could even get back to the room. Must have popped a breaker or something. Power was back up and running in minutes. The restaurants are nice because you don’t have to make reservations! I find this very inconvenient at most other all-inclusive resorts. Just show up and we were seated very quickly. If you have to wait, grab a drink and sit outside and enjoy your vacation. You’re on island time. We usually ate between 8 and 9pm as we like to stay at the pool or beach until the bars there close at 6pm. Get a refill (bring a travel mug with lid like a Yeti or whatever) and watch the sunset. Food at the restaurants was pretty good. Hibachi was great, we had that twice. Table service at Chopsticks is more Chinese and it was good too. Tip your first server $5 the first time they come to your table and you will get great service. I read so many reviews about bad service but we tip everyone and it goes a long way. Italian was okay but the lasagna came out very lukewarm. Hot it would have been better. Ossobuco wasn’t very tender but it tasted okay. We didn’t try the Amazonian restaurant. Mexican was decent, we ate there twice. It’s not like the Mexican you get at your local cookie cutter Tex-mex place but it was decent. Not very spicy. I wish I would have brought a bottle of sirracha or chalula with me for every restaurant haha. Other than Chopsticks most food was on the bland side, which I understand when you are trying to please so many people of different cultures. There were not many Americans at the resort. A few Canadians and the rest were from who knows where. I met people from England, Spain, Bulgaria, Columbia. The pool/swim up bar was pretty good. Alejandro was the man. I tipped him $1 every time I went up and got great service. I saw almost no one else tipping. Tipping goes a long way in helping get better service. Money talks! I can honestly say that every employee I came into contact with was friendly and helpful as possible. We didn’t upgrade to Sun Club and we are glad that we didn’t. The SC rooms are on the eastern edge of the property and they’re building a new resort right next door. Construction from dawn til dusk! Everyone that we ran into that upgraded was very frustrated by that. I’m not talking hammering, this is tractors and bulldozers! We only went to a couple shows. We watched the cirque show and the rock show. Both were entertaining. All-in-all, we had a great trip. Shout out to Perla at the lobby bar who always saw me had my drink ready. For the price we paid I’m very happy. It wasn’t perfect but they’re also still working out the kinks. If you want to eat food that tastes like the food you eat in America I’d say stick to a cruise ship. You have to remember that you are on a Caribbean island. It’s like Travolta says in Pulp Fiction, they got the same sh*t there that we got here, it’s just there it’s a little different! Haha! I’d go back in a heartbeat.

It was a great hotel staff were amazing front desk animation team were great too.always smiling pool was large .water slides were fun .the beach was beautiful if I asked fir something they'd cone right away. Felt very safe there security guard at building every night .

I'm currently writing this review while I'm currently on site and trying to enjoy my vacation here at the Sunscape. This hotel has so much potential to be a good to great resort, but based on my curent experience, I'd have to strongly recommend anyone reading this review to filter through the reviews and make sure the resort has made the necessary updates and changes needed to close the gaps on the maintenance, communication of management, and housekeeping and overall quality of the resort. Otherwise, I'd say consider staying elsewhere for a little more money. Upon my second day at the resort, we noticed a very decent size drip of water coming from our bathroom ceiling. I called housekeeping, maintenance, the front desk in order to get this resolved to no avail. After leaving my room for a couple hours, I came back to Niagara Falls coming from the ceiling in our bathroom area (see attached photos). Got a new and the new room air conditioner doesn't work, and there was a half drunk beer left in the wet bar fridge. Housekeeping is in major need of better training in my opinion. The attitude and demeanor of the staff is like whatever, not my problem. I literally had a maintenance guy come and look at issue before it got significantly worse and you would think they would isolate and shut off the water valve or something, but no..... Let er rip until the ceiling is completely waterlogged and destroyed 🤷🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️. The beach here is great, the food is OK to decent, and the property has nice areas, but building 15 which we are staying in was sloppily "renovated" and again, proof in the photos attached. Look at the grout job. A toddler could do better work! Let me confirm what others have said in their negative reviews to be honest and straight forward based on my experience and observation.

Firstly, I was sold on this vacation destination for being so much more than Cuba, therefore I had some expectations. Yes, the food was generally better, but barely and not all the time. Overall, my experience of this destination was average to disappointing, and I definitely won't be coming back to this resort and probably never to the Dominican Republic. Generally speaking, the people we encountered in the country were polite but somewhat distant. At the resort, the staff was professional and a couple of them started to smile and warm up to friendliness after a couple of days of us spreading tips around. But some others were clearly unhappy to work their job. Hustling is big, and you get solicited left and right with no respite. The resort itself had a very sanitized feel to it. The buildings didn't feel homely. Our specific block had an eerie mental hospital and uncanny atmosphere. No plants or decorations whatsoever in the rooms or long sterile looking hallways. We were upgraded to a premium room upon arrival which I thought was nice but not to premium service which basically meant that we were further away from all the standard amenities, without access to the premium area (which was right outside our building), which basically meant a lot more of walking around (like 5-10 minutes walking) if you wanted anything like a coffee in the morning. On the second night of our stay, we got woken up in the middle of the night several times by a loud alarm. We understood later that it was the fire alarm going off in different blocks. The alarms continued on periodically throughout our stay, at least 3-4 times every day except the last day. The rooms were supposed to be renovated, but the renovations were obviously rushed. The walk-in shower was poorly constructed and water would immediately leak under the wall and pool into the toilet area. We took it upon ourselves to sponge up the mess after each shower (otherwise stepping in the puddle every time you want to go to the bathroom). We left the wet towels in the bath for the maid to change, but on the third day she stopped replacing them and only gave us face cloths instead. I guess they estimated we were using too many towels. The same day, they didn't refill our water either, so we went to the front desk to request more. They never came to deliver the bottles, so we ended up getting some at different bars ourselves. Otherwise, the whirlpool in the room was quite nice, but the couch was scratchy and uncomfortable. Bedding was fine. The resort swimming pool looked lovely, but the music playing all day was very loud. I guess this is fine if you're in a party mood, but we came on a vacation to relax, so we stayed mostly clear from the pool. The beach area was pretty small for the size of the resort, with very little shaded area. Apart from those places to sit and hang out, there was no other resting area except for a few plastic tables around the bar next to the lobby, again with no shade whatsoever. No lounge area, no couches. On the fourth day, both my husband and I got a mild sunstroke, despite restlessly chasing for shade and wearing hats and sunscreen. We finally decided to communicate our discontentment to the staff, and they offered to upgrade us to the premium area and service for the remainder of our stay. We were glad to access a quieter area, closer to our quarters, with more accessible amenities. Our joy was short-lived. On our fifth day, we realized that there is heavy construction ongoing on that side of the complex. So we spent our fifth day on a nice VIP shaded strip of beach… with loud construction noise beeping all day, and the ground literally shaking under us. I'm glad I brought my noise-canceling headphones, otherwise I would have been unhappier. There were renovations going on pretty much everywhere on site, so there was just no escaping loud noises anywhere. On the first day here, we had some excellent food and service at the Tiki Taco restaurant, therefore we wanted to repeat the experience on our fifth night. Unfortunately, the food was nothing like a few days before. I don't know if it's because there was a slight surge in clientele at the resort, but the nachos entree was cut in half and the chips tasted stale. The waiter was a stone-faced figure that barely talked to us, didn't ask questions, and completely messed up our order. We didn't argue, I didn't have the energy or will to return the food, so we just ate what was served to us. I found multiple pieces of grit in my tacos, and I suffered from heart burns thereafter and well until the next morning. On the last day, there were no towels available for the VIP clients until 9 in the morning. People were just sitting around on the edge of their wet chairs for a while. Otherwise, the weather was nice, the water was blue, and I got to spend a week away from home with my favourite person for a price that was fairly reasonable. I'm thinking maybe next time I'll just rent a nice little cabin closer to home.