Luxury Bahia Principe Ambar Don Pablo Collection -Adults Only - All Inclusive

We stayed at the Gran Bahia Principe Ambar, all adults section of this hotel. The grounds are beautiful & the beach is lovely. The Michael Jackson show was entertaining & the trams ran consistently to all parts of the resort. That being said, the rest of the resort needs some serious attention. The staff, as a whole, made us feel like we were bothering them when we asked for things. The exceptions to that were the pool bartenders & the maids. The more "prestigious" the restaurant, the snootier the staff got. The biggest disappointment was the food, especially at Don Pablo's "gourmet" restaurant. We ate here at 9:30 PM on Weds. There was an a la carte menu and a tasting menu. We were denied ordering the tasting menu unless the whole table wanted it. They also attempted to charge for the house wine at this restaurant only. We were required to get reservations for everything but the buffets. There was no ability to just walk in and wait for an open table. NONE of the restaurants were full when we ate at them. Changing our assigned reservations was difficult and we were forced to eat later than we preferred (after 8:30) every night. The replenishing of the mini bar was inconsistent at best. Sometimes we got things (beer, chips, sodas) and sometimes we didn't. The "butler" service was basically non-existent. Never did meet ours...in fact we weren't even told about the service upon checkin. Our friends who we travelled with knew about it because of reading reviews online. The miniature golf course was fun. There was definitely the "towel" game at the pool and the chairs closet to the water at the beach. The alcoholic drinks at the pool were weak and "rot gut" type liquor (Normandy brand to be exact). Really sweet and syrupy. The lobby bar had name brands but only some were included. Jack Danials, Finlandia, etc. had an extra charge. There was free wi-fi in the lobby but it was next to impossible to connect because it was so slow. Breakfast buffets were exactly the same every morning...no variety at all. The best lunch buffet was at the main pool in the Bavaro section as the hamburgers were made on the spot. Every place else the food sat in chafing dishes and got cold quickly. Women can go topless at the beach only. This was our 4th all inclusive vacation in as many years - 1 in Cancun, 1 in Playa del Carmen, 1 in La Romana, Dominican Republic, and this one in Punta Cana. It would rank last in my opinion. The Sunscape Casa Del Mar in La Romana (I think it is now a Dreams) and the Valentin Imperial Maya in Playa would be our favorites (4 1/2 stars). The other resort we've been to is the Royal Caribe in Cancun. I'd give that a 3 star. The drive to the airport is about 30 minutes. I won't return to this resort and wouldn't recommend it when there are so many others that provide better service and food (ie. Excellence, Paradisus, Majestic...just to name a few). Hope this review helps you make a choice about where to go in Punta Cana.

Went for a honeymoon trip on the adults section and wasn't too pleased when we arrived. First off they dropped us off in a neutral lobby that we didnt know about, we were lost because no one gave us any direction. After a few min passed, someone took our bags and said get on this little bus. We arrived at OUR lobby which was pretty nice. Once we made it to our room they had 2 double beds...which they then had to change rooms for us. The new rooms card reader didnt work %100 of the time so when we shut the door we had to slam it to make it latch. ALL of the restaurants required reservations...which EVERYTHING was BOOKED.. and the only 2 we were able to reserve was the BBQ and the Santa Fe. The BBQ turned out to be a crazy *darn* buffet near the beach at which TONS of little kids were swarming around and people straight off the beach were walking up...The Santa Fe was Mexican and we get our seats to find out that yet again ANOTHER buffet..So we help ourselves and sit back down and someone woman approches us and asked if we recieved Menu's. Then when we said NO she gave us this horrible look like we were idiots...So I tried to order some chicken thing from the menu and God forbid if she could understand me or speak any English, she just kept saying "No finished" and i just kept waving her to leave. When the food came out some busboy dropped it off and placed shrimp infront of me, a burito infront of my wife and some chicken covered in brown stuff inbewteen us. We also were told that the Don Pablo was the best place, so when we tried to see about reservation they told us that was the only place that requred men to wear long pants...which of course i didnt bring any because its over 100 degrees there every day. (Don Pablo is a French restaurant there not mexican like back home) The next day they had the "Flea Market" vendors arrive so we kindly asked the concierge what area it was located.. He then got on his cell phone and we waited about 10 min for him to bring up someone on a golf cart to take us personally to his "friend" vendor. Which the vendor wouldnt give us any prices until the end. We picked out a few items that were just colored rocks, cheap gifts to take home for friends and family, and he pulled us aside in one of the bus shuttle drop off areas to total the prices. Shows us a calculator and it says 220...i said whats that mean and he said $220! I told him he was out of his mind, he handed me the calculator and told me to give him a fair price....i said maybe $22 and he whipped out a lighter and started to burn the jewlery to prove that it was real...i told him i didnt care, i wasnt paying that much money for rocks! My wife an I were very uncomfortable and got up and walked away Last thing was they gave me some welcome paper to see someone in guest services the day after we arrived. I asked the front desk and they said meet him in our lobby and he can help us plan out activities. We waited for 20 min that morning and he never showed...turns out we had to meet that guy in his office in the Neutral lobby. We met with him and didnt want to use him to plan anything, and also told us to report to him 24 hours before checkout...which we missed because we were enjoying our vacation. Find out later that he HAD to call to make sure a shuttle would be there to pick us up on our day to checkout. So my advice would be NOT to go through CoCo tours for a ride. I would just skip this Gran Bahia all together unless you want to spend a great deal of money for a vacation you can take your kids on because thats all you see if you leave your small section of the adults only area. PS: bring your own shampoo and conditioner because they give you terrible watered down stuff and you have to buy conditioner in the gift shop. Oh and the room service we ordered once never showed up!

Well our experience was not that great!!! We called about a week before saying it was our honeymoon and nothing special was done for us. They put us in a room with two double beds when asked for a King honeymoon room when we called ahead. They finally moved us into a king but had to wait a night til that happened. Once we were into the king suite the A/C did not work at all. I called numerous times down to the front desk and all times said they would send maintenance. It took almost ten hours for a guy to come look and when he did come he thought we meant the television didnt work. It was absurd, and nothing still was done about it until about 11 pm at night when they finally switched us to yet our third room. So not sure what you have to do to get special honeymoon treatment or at least something special but we got nothing!!! Not recommended to others for honeymoon at least!!!!

Food was not good.cheap staff.liquiors cheap brands.. Only one kind of beer,tast horrible . Food not a lot variety.. U need to book resturants in advance,when we tried to do that in the first day we came..the reception told us that we don't have options because they all occupied Beach and pool are good. Rooms are old and all employees are waiting for gratuity to do anything .

I don't know if my expectations for a 4 star resort is high or this place just really is average. I don't if I am the correct demo but I just felt that this was an average hotel nothing special. I typically stay in Westin's or W. I didn't feel that the staff was too helpful to make us happy. We checked in and after 24 complained that we didn't like our room as it was completely dark since it faced the jungle and got no day light. It was hard to get any type of restaurants and when we did get a reservation the place was half empty. We didnt even know till our 4th day in that there is butler service to make sure you are happy. Butler service we still never saw it. The food was not good, once again I dont know if my standard is high and this just didn't meet it but I felt that it as poor quality maybe because the resort if 5 in one and there are so many people that is just poor. I would almost preferred to eat 100% dominican because then it would have been amazing! But every thing was just a weird take on something. We did love Muphi at the lobby bar he was definitely dedicated to making quality drinks and making us laugh!

Overall the hotel was very nice and clean, except for the bugs and ants in our room and many other rooms that people told us about that we spoke with. The rooms seem to be showing there use, with very little maintenance being done, our glass shower door almost was falling off and the sliding door handle did fall off when we open it the first time, things the housekeepers had to see and either didn't report them or if they did, the problems were ignored. The pool was very nice, but could use some cleaning on the walls at water level, bad signs of dirt and whatever else that showed they hadn't clean it in a while. Also there were problems with getting reservations at the resturants, and if you did when you got there, the resturant was less than off or even less than that full. It looked like they were short on help. Everyone we talked to agreed. The buffet was very good for all meals. The Villa buildings were very noisey and housekeepers and other employees were so loud from 7:30 AM, on. Lastly, after spending 11 days there, when we checked out not a sole asked how our stay was or if we enjoyed our vacation or even have a safe trip home, it was like all well, we got your money, now get going.

My wife and I decided to visit Punta Cana because we had heard that it was so great. We arrived in Punta Cana and had no problem locating our tranporatation to the resort. We knew that our resort was one of three resorts and but we didn't know that the other two were right there with the Adult Only resort. The other two were family resorts and that is where we were dropped off. When my wife tried to explain that we were at the wrong resort they didn't understand what we were talking about and we had to good to the check in counter and speak with the staff there. They looked up our reservations and then we were taken around to the correct resort. We arrived at the adult only resort around 2:00 p.m but our room was not ready until about 3:30 p.m. The accommodations were great, the service staff nice but loud. Very early, conversation were carried on in spanish without regarda to those of use who were asleep. Gentleman beware, you have to wear long pants in all resturants for dinner. They relax that rule some during breakfast and lunch, but will turn you away at the door for dinner. The food was good and plentiful so no worrys there. The beach was beautiful, but because the adult area was so close to the family area, the children were everywhere. I have nothing against children, but if I want to vacation with them, I would not go to an ADULT ONLY resort. When had to go the very far end of the resort property to get some peace. My one piece of advice is, brush up on your Spanish, hardly none of the staff spoke english and didn't have patience to deal with those of us who didn't speak their language. Almost everything done in Spanish and we had a hard time understanding. Now for the transportation back to the airport, we spent half of the 1st day looking for the representative for Coco Tours and make arrangement for our return trip. We asked about five people before we finally found out where we were suppose to go and then the rep was late. When we finally got with him, he just took our name and told us to come back the day before we were to leave to get a time for pickup. On that day, he had a family with a complaint and we waited for over an hour to get the time for pickup. We have traveled to different countries and stayed at a lot of different All-Inclusive (Adult Only) resorts. We personally will not return to this resort. But please, find out for yourself.

A lot of Europeans this time of year which had I know there wasn't going to be much English being spoken we would've gone after the holidays. The drinks were watered down and the food was just ok. We were not impressed with the dinners at the so called fine dining restaurants. We loved teh beach though. The pool was nice too. The beach doesn't get any better than where we were!

beautiful beach, but muust get towel on chase by 6 am or not enough seating, no beach waitors to bring drinks very nice room, housekeeping was excellent, grounds were very well kept.buffet was ok but fine dining was terrible (compared to couples and sandals resorts)staff friendly but did not speak much english, there were a lot of rude Europeons and Canadians

Great pool & great rooms but while they list the property as all-inclusive it's definitely not. If you want something added to your minibar they charge extra. If you want wine or champagne or beer delivered to your room it's extra. Also it's impossible to get reservations at the restaurants that you want to go to and they give you reservations of their choice before you arrive. Trying to change them to restaurants of my choice landed me w/ reservations past 9pm which we were too tired to use. Ended up eating at the buffet every night which was good but not great for being considered a high-end resort. I've stayed at the Excellence and while it's slightly more expensive everything's included and the dinners were fabulous there. Beaches & pool are very nice but liquor they use is cheap and everything is a premium which isn't my idea of a 4 or 5-star all-inclusive resort.