Ah yes back to the drudgery of real life, much better to be at Punta Cana…
Over all a wonderful 2 weeks in PC this year although we did have 1 whole day of rain from dawn till almost dusk but the Netherlands-Uruguay match was on in the theater so it wasn’t a total loss. We also had one day over overcast and several days of REALLY HOT but after the rain all was back to normal beautiful blue sky and cool breeze. So where to start:
Room - excellent Ovando Club family Sea view (an upgrade via the Great Members card more later)
Room was a bit larger than we have had in the past it had 2 full size bed rooms and a sitting room with one couch, 2 tvs bathroom with shower and separate tub, and a balcony with a straight on view over the Kids club bldg to the sea. A+++
Wifi – is now available in the rooms…well sorta. They have installed an antenna pointing at each bldg (in our case it was on the kid’s club bldg) and while I could see the signal with my laptop and could connect (it showed 4 out of 5 bars in windows) once you tired to type in the access code it would never connect. So I moved to the deck and bingo connection and very good link quality (skype worked fine). Out of the 7-8 times we tried to use it we could only connect about 5 times (getting various sever not responding errors from the clubmed server to log on). Walking up to reception allowed a great connection with no problems but I only did that one time to check on flights. I’ll go with A for effort on this one I’m sure they will find they have a domain controller issue on the network at some point. FYI wi fi is around 6 usd a hour. One other note on this if your browser locks up (mine did once and all you can do is kill the task you will lose all the wifi you have paid for and there is no way to reset the session and log out , so best to buy in 1 hr blocks just in case this happens.
Food – Hispanola was OPEN and nicely done the seating area is mostly the same (the stairs of death are gone/ the slippery ones as you came down on the far side of the food area replaced with nice wood ones that are not slippery at all). The food service area was very nice and NO NO birds in that area at all that we saw, They still roam the seating area but somewhat abated by some strings over all the openings except the doors. Food was again very good (kudos to the Asian specialties chef some great Thai and Japanese food this time (lived 3 years in Thailand so we really miss the Thai food here in the states) . A bit on service in the Hispanola, They removed the Ice cream machine and now have hand dipped ice cream and it was very good however the poor gentleman that had that job also had to cut all the fruit to order (no longer pre cut before meals) needless to say he was working hard but at main times lines were 10-12 deep for both he just needs some help. Glasses they could not keep up at all morning or at lunch, the village was full (900 guests) so that may have worsened the issue but seem to need some more glasses coffee cups etc to maintain service. Also Hispaniola had issues with keeping tables ready during the second week but prob due to the crowds. But overall still a A in our book.
Village – VERY clean NO towel cards just ask and receive also bins on the beach area to leave dirty ones as you left for the day. KUDOS to the grounds crews during the rain day/storm a tree behind Ovando and Colon came down within 2 hours it was dug up cut up hauled away and re-sodded, my wife couldn’t hardly see where it had been all with no power tools machetes ruled the day. Power outages only 2 one about 20 mins I guess and the other a couple hours I think it was. Pool area had some new umbrellas installed and now has permanent beach boys to bring drinks (yea yea lazy I know) but a nice touch. Also roaming fruit patrol 2-3 times a day around the pool and the beach Nice touch Eyal!
So as usual a A + for the beach, pool, village (side note towel police now clean up towels left on chairs to reserve them if they are left for more than a hour it seemed) this may upset some but it does keep some chairs empty most of the time for everyone else a ++ in my book.
Great Members program – ok so we are Gold members now and upon arrival we taken straight to a private minivan for transfer without waiting. We also had the room upgrade mentioned above, room had a bottle of wine waiting and 2 small gifts for us. We attempted to use the 15% discount at the store for a couple of new 45 shirts with no luck (10 bucks wasn’t worth it to question). A reception with premium drinks and some champagne was held for the Great Members at the beach bar that was nice. For departure we had to request the private van and the delayed room stay but the new Guest relations area took care of it in 5 mins. When we went to pay out the charges (side note no white cards its now a orange room key that is used for charging to the room) reception wanted to charge us for both transfers but after reminding them and checking with the office they corrected the charges. The gist of the story is the GM gold works but sometimes you have to remind them as it doesn’t always show up in the databases.
So overall a definite A+ this trip probably our best one to PC yet (this was #5 to CM #6 to PC)
Oh the storm did also rip down some of the shades in the Kids pool area so those may be out a while.
