We stayed at the Catalonia Bavaro Resort the first week in July. Check-in was a little slow with not enough people waiting on guests. However, when it was finally our turn, things proceeded more quickly. During the check-in process we needed to submit a copy of our itinerary and our Passports. Photocopies were made of all our travel documents as was credit card information. We were given a small plastic see-though bag which contained hotel information, 2 pool towel cards, two hotel room cards, and a key to our safe. All these items would need to be returned in the same bag at check out. We were then on our way to our building and were told our room was on the second floor, which in reality was on the third floor.

This was our first trip to the Dominican and we loved it. We were there from March 25th to April 1st. After reading the reviews on this web site, which by the way were a huge help in planning this trip, we went there with open minds and low expectations. It’s been said many times in these reviews that you have to realize that you are traveling to a third world country. This may be true, but while on this resort you wouldn’t know it. From the time we landed at the Punta Cana airport until we left, the service was top notch.

FOOD
The food was excellent at both the buffet restaurants. We booked the A la carte restaurants, but other than being a more quite and relaxing atmosphere, the food wasn’t any better than the buffets. Although the steak house had Budweiser on tap.

POOL
The pool was huge and the bartenders at the swim-up bar were great. Ask for an Abraham special, they’re awesome.

BEACH
Unfortunately for us the weather wasn’t the best. We arrived on March 25 and it rained the next afternoon and into the evening, flooding everything. It rained the next day also with high winds that night. This made the ocean very dirty, and full of seaweed. The staff did their best to keep it clean, but it was a never ending battle because of the weather. It stayed very wind until we left, but we still spent as much time at the beach as we cold. We would go to the beach in the morning and the pool in the afternoon. We did some snorkeling and seen lots of fish.

ROOM
Our room was very clean and the bed was comfortable. The cleaning staff did a great job. We took some make-up and gum, etc. to leave them every day. This always got us an extra towel or extra water etc. We were in building 31.

EXCURSIONS
We went to Catalina Island on the Caribbean sea. It was a full day and the bus ride was long, about 2 hrs. but we got to see how these people live and that was an eye opener. We went horse back riding and took a catamaran to Catalina Island. This place is paradise. The snorkeling there was amazing. There is no inhabitants on this island. Everyone is gone by 4pm everyday. I would highly recommend this trip if you don’t mind the bus ride.

We are a couple, aged 25-35. First visit to DR. Stayed at Catalonia Bavaro on the Royal side in April.

Read all the reviews on both Trip Advisor and DebbiesDominicanTravel for this and other resorts in Punta Cana. Enjoyed the negative reviews. Some people are never satisfied. Compared Catalonia Royal and Grand Palladium Palace Royal Suites as we wanted a quieter, adults-only section of a larger resort.

Lets put it in perspective. Per Expedia, Loews Miami Beach (4.5*), Ritz-Carlton Miami Beach (4.5*), Ritz-Carlton San Juan (4*), Grand Palladium Palace Punta Cana (3.5*), Catalonia Bavaro Punta Cana (3.5*). If you take the Royal side...lets call it 3.5 to 4 stars........and they do a great job. For all those who wrote negative reviews....remember what factors you considered when choosing your resort. Compare the rates for the above hotels.

Pool: Big enough, clean. No problem finding loungers or shade.

Beach: Sea grass in ocean mostly cleared on the Royal side up to about 50 yards out. Definitely not a problem. Some dead grass on the beach, but cleaned well. Water clear. Yes, you can see your feet. No waves. Depth 3-4 feet as far as you can walk. Make use of free kayaking, catamarans and snorkelling. Not many fish, but still fun. If you are comfortable snorkelling, go out beyond the sea grass. Beach is 350 steps from lobby. Covered walkway on the main resort side, which is two steps away. None of the rooms are much closer to the beach. Beach bar on Royal side. They will bring you drinks to your lounger if you are too lazy to walk. No problem finding a padded lounger any time of the day. Put your towel down by 8 am if you want shade all day under a palapa though. They could put up more palapas or beach umbrellas until the palms grow and give more shade.

Food: Breakfast at Thalassa. Why go anywhere else. Lunch buffet at beach restaurant, on main resort side, two steps from Royal beach. The main buffet, Grand Caribe, away from pool and beach, much quieter for lunch. Dinner try out the ala carte restaurants. Service is very good, food interesting. Just dont expect it to be like at your favorite restaurants back home. With the choice at the buffets, no reason you should ever go hungry. Reading the reviews for food at other resorts, it probably doesnt get much better. Drinks: ask for double shots or just drink it straight up if you want to get drunk. They will mix you whatever you want. Try the bar by the french restaurant in the evening, quiet, great service. Maybe some live music by the Royal lobby/bar/ Thalassa in the evenings could liven things up a little, without making it noisy.

Rooms: Cleaned well, although later in the day. Hang sign on door for it to be cleaned. No complaints except A/C coldest is preset. No problems with hot water or water pressure.

Resort Property: Clean, well maintained. Nice, clean spa area with exercise equipment and saunas if you need to burn some calories. The lobby, bars and main buffet on the Catalonia side are close, maybe a 2 minute slow walk.

Other: Service is very good, especially at the Thalassa and other ala carte restaurants. No complaints. Ate everything including salads and fruit. Ice in drinks. Brushed with tap water. No stomach ailments. No bugs or mosquitoes. The evening entertainment is fun while having a drink at the bar. Dont take it too seriously. It is just meant to liven things up a little.

General: Resorts in Punta Cana are large. Nothing to see or do outside of resorts. More waves the further north up the coast you go. Some people seem to complain about both extremes. Decide before you go. The mid section of the coast probably has the best beaches, which is why they have the older resorts.

For those of you booking yourself, check out the hotels website for the lowest rates. Upgrade to Royal is $10/person/night. http://www.hoteles-catalonia.com/hc/inicio.do

Yes the hotel could be next to the beach, the sea could be sans sea grass further up the coast, but at what cost?

We just returned from a week at the Catalonia Royal in Punta Cana, Dominican Rep., through Sunwing from Ottawa. We're in our early 30's and it was a belated honeymoon for us and we were looking for peace and quiet and decent food. We were pleased with the service and quality and cleanliness of the resort. Little or no complaints from us, and the things we heard others complaining about were pretty silly to us.

The 'Royal' Treatment: We stayed on the "Royal" side. Well worth it. I doubt we would have been nearly as happy on the big Catalonia Beach and Golf Resort side. The Royal section only has about 144 rooms and there is a nice pool, restaurant and private stretch of beach for these guests. In my opinion its the only way to go. You get all of the ammenities of the larger, Catalonia Beach and Golf Resort 2 minutes away but you can stroll back to the nice quiet Royal section any time you get tired of the action. The rooms are bigger, the service is better, the food is better, the drinks are better, you get preferred reservations at the a la cartes and a free golf and 30 minute massage each.

Food:
This was our biggest concern and where I'll focus most of the review on, since food is such an issue when travelling to Dominican and we heard plenty of horror stories from people who stayed at other resorts on the way back. We were pleasantly suprised by the food. I wouldn't call the food 'spectacular' by Canadian standards, yet it was pretty good most of the time. We were full and satisfied and we never got sick. From what we heard from people at other resorts, even 'average' food is ahead of some other places in Dominican.

Overall it was like eating at someone else's house where they prepare things differently. Sometimes things came out a little different than what we expected but it was usually ok. We don't eat processed, fast food or chain restaurant food or buffet style at home, so we were pleasantly suprised that most of the things, even in the buffet, looked and tasted homemade. An exception to that would be any time they interpreted 'American' food - think squeeze cheese and processed meat. If you have special diet restrictions, you should know ahead of time that the food is very rich. They don't seem to do or get low fat, low sodium or vegetarian. What you will find is wonderful slow cooked, fall off the bone chicken and lamb, tasty beans and rice, nice coconutty desserts and surprisingly good pastry - the seafood is hit and miss. Keep an open mind. The times we asked servers what looked good that day was when we got the best food. We used common sense when we were at buffets, like staying away from cold salads and things that had been sitting out or looked picked over. We looked at and smelled our food before we ate it. We had a few tummyaches from overdoing it with the rich food, but we didn't get sick, and we basically tried a bit of everything at least once.

The Royal side has a private restaurant called the Thalassa. Its nice, air conditioned, with indoor and outdoor seating. They serve breakfast lunch and dinner. There's a good breakfast buffet and grill every morning and they rotate the lunch menu daily but there is always the choice of a hot dog, hamburger or spaghetti for the picky eaters.

Our second choice was the beach buffet. It was not air-conditioned, kind of crowded and busy but it's right on the beach and there was really good chicken and rice, pizza and a pasta bar. Our least favorite was the big buffet, the 'Grand Caribe'. Although it was huge with lots of selection, and even the pickiest eater could find something there, its feeding hundreds of people at the same time and the food quality and atmosphere are indicative of that.

We tried all 4 a' la carte restaurants. We booked them all on our first day without any problems (only took 20 minutes) and we had early reservations (6 or 7pm), so we were usually the first seating of the night. There is a Mexican, French, Steakhouse and Japanese (more 'Asian"). They were ok, what you would expect from an interpretation of a different culture's food. We would have liked a 'Dominican' restaurant where we could have tried some local stuff. The Japanese and the Thalassa were our favorites, the French was the worst for us - way too rich. Every a la carte is nice atmosphere, and at least a 3 course meal, so just the experience of sitting down to a relaxed meal with a glass of wine or beer after a "hard day at the beach" is nice. Men need to wear long pants and closed toe shoes at all of the restaurants, my husband wore a golf shirt, khakis and dark sneakers and never had a problem but we saw people turned away because the man had on shorts and sandals. Women were generally dressed in simple summer dresses or outfits.

Pool and Beach:
We heard from others who have been to Dominican before that there are much nicer beaches, but it was fine for us, we were willing to sacrifice that for the quiet and private setting. It was shallow, clean, lots of palapas and padded lounge chairs to go around. Its surrounded by palm groves. The beach is about a 4 minute walk from the "Royal" rooms, on a nice stone path lined with hydrangea bushes. The adult beach is very quiet, very relaxed and you dont' have to put up with any screechy kids or partying morons. No vendors bugging you. In fact, no one bugging you ever, even the other clients kept to themselves. We brought insulated mugs and they were happy to fill them up for us at both the pool and beach. The Royal pool wasn't huge but it was nice, with more palapas all around it, in-pool sun loungers, a bubble section and a swim up bar with premium liquors. Although by the end of some days the pool looked a little rough from 50 sunscreened people bobbing around and drinking in it all day, it was cleaned every morning and every night.

Sunwing vacations:
We were happy Sunwing. The in flight service was great, the flight staff were great in a way you don't see on the major airlines. There was a Sunwing rep at the hotel (Juan Carlos - JC) who was really helpful. We had one glitch on the way back, our flight was delayed by 4 hours due to a medical emergency on a flight earlier in the day that screwed up the entire schedule for the day, but that was really the only major logistical issue. The hotel allowed us a late check out (5pm) and let everyone hang out in the lobby drinking and lounging around on big couches until we were picked up. Everything else went smoothly.

We are a couple in our mid 30's and traveled with another couple our age to the Catalonia Bavaro resort from March 28-April 4th, 2007 from Wasaga Beach Ontario. We flew with Air Transat from Toronto, nice smooth flight. This was our 3rd time in a row visiting Punta Cana and probably will be our last. We arrived on the Wed. and it was raining but it was still sunny at the same time. We've stayed at 4.5 resorts everytime we've been to PC and this resort is rated as a 4.5 but we would rate it as a 3.5 star. TOO MUCH walking, we prefer the smaller resorts by far, not having to walk for most of our vacation, not that we're lazy or anything but it's not time well spent when you're strickly there to relax. Anyhow, where to start, we arrived at the resort at 10:30am, our rooms were not ready as expected since check out time is at 2:00pm, so we sat around and waited for the buffet to open up so we could have some lunch as the plane food wasen't the greatest. We gave the front reservation clerk $10.00 US to get us a room as close to the beach as possible and also asked that we be close to our friends, hopefully in the same building. Well, what a mistake that was, we basically were the last people to get rooms, AND finally at 2:30pm we got a room which was no where near the beach but at least in the same building as our friends, we were in building 22, which was kind of closer to the pool. Needless to say we didn't complain, we unpacked and put our swimsuits on and headed off to the pool.

The Pool:
The pool was beautiful, big, gorgeous fountain in the middle and a nice secluded jacuzzi in the middle. Only problem was the pool was filty, filty filty. There was some stuff floating in some corners, you weren't sure if it was vomit, spilt drinks, or something else I'd rather not mention. We saw the pool bartender having fun with some guys that were partying it up, he was throwing drinks out at them so perhaps that's what was floating in the pool, but soon after we figured out that it had to be something else, everyday there was something floating in the pool, we even saw cigarette butts floating in the pool at one point. Too bad, cause the resort people worked every morning and night cleaning the pool, so for it to get that dirty that fast is just unbelievable to us, we travel every year and never saw a dirty pool like that. A good thing we prefer to be on the beach than the pool or else we would have been really upset. Who wants to sit in the hot sun and not be able to cool off and have a nice swim?!! We did stay at the pool the one day because it was too windy at the beach and we put up with the nasty odour we kept smelling every now and then but we managed. The only good thing we really enjoyed at the pool was the ice cream machine, yum yum, vanilla-chocolate twist cones, at least 2 or 3 a day, that's how good they were.

The Beach:
The beach was big, lots of palapas to go around, we took a walk down to our resort from last year and really did prefer the beach at the Catalonia vs the other ones we saw. The first day there was a lot of seaweed on the beach and in the water but they managed to clean it up pretty good considering the rest of the week we saw next to no seaweed at all on the beach, it probably helped that it was windy everyday. The only problem with the wind was the fact that they had the red flag up on the beach, which meant no water sports. I woke up every morning at about 6:00am to reserve a palapa, although I'm sure I didn't have to since there is a lot of them to go around. I am a morning person and don't like to sleep in when I'm in paradise so I didn't mind.

The Rooms:
The rooms where really nothing to write home about, one of the smallest rooms I had ever been in, the bed was awefull, hard and lopsided, pillows were hard as rocks too which is probably another reason I never slept in. The hammocks on the balcony however were great, it was nice to come to our room late afternoon before getting ready for dinner and have a cat nap on the hammock. The water pressure in the shower was ok, and we always had hot water. We lost power the one afternoon, I called front desk to tell them about it and no one ever showed up, so my boyfriend and our friend figured it out, it was the breaker that had blown. We were on the third floor in building number 22, and I much prefer to have a top floor room so no bugs get in. The maids have a weird schedule for cleaning rooms, we would get back to our rooms at about 5:00pm from the beach ready to shower, but the maid never had towels for us at that time if you can believe that, so we were not impressed with that either. To me that does not rate itself as a 4.5 star resort.

The Food:
The food at this resort was the highlight of the trip, it was fantastic, best food I had ever had in Punta Cana so far. Our favourite restaurant was the Japanese, by far excellent food, we wished we could have gone to eat there twice or three times instead of only once. The Mexican restaurant was not the greatest, they got our orders wrong to begin with, we had ordered fajitas and they brought us fish, how can they make a mistake like that??? Anyhow, we were able to finally get our fajitas and they were just ok. The Corona made up for the food at the Mexican. The steak house was good, we had heard people complaining the night before that the steaks were really greasy but we didn't think so at all. The steaks were good and the Budweiser too. We never made it to the French restaurant because one of our friends didn't like the menu so we just ate at the buffet for the rest of our trip. The food there was good, the breakfasts were and always are the best. Good crispy bacon when you ask for it! And so much fresh fruit. We went to the Creperie twice and enjoyed a banana split and some crepes which were out of this world. They had a beach party night which was fun but it was so windy you were eating sand sandwiches, it was dark too so you couldn't really tell how well cooked your meat was, but thankfully none of us got sick or anything and that's what matters.

The Shows and Disco:
We were the most dissapointed with the shows, we come to Punta Cana for 2 things, the beach and the shows, and at this resort the shows were the worst I had ever seen, we were pretty upset about that. We watched 2 shows the first 2 nights we were there and that was it, it was always the same staff people dancing in the shows and it really was very amateurish for my taste. We've seen way better than that even in Cuba. Having to listen to the kids show every night singing the same songs over and over in the same order gets very annoying. Same with the band, they had a band playing before the shows and they would sing the same songs every night in the same order. Like switch it up people!! They did have Kareoke 1 or 2 nights which would have been better and more entertaining to watch than the band and the show. The disco was good, we danced quite a bit, the music was better in there than in the lobby where the band played. They should really start the shows earlier than 10:00 and get rid of the kids show or have that around 7:00pm instead of 9:00pm when people are ready to dance and not sit there and watch a kid show again. This way the Disco would open up earlier too.

One night while walking back from the show, my boyfriend and I were coming over the little wodden bridge where the 2 guard swans live, and I saw something I swear I will never forget, it really traumatized me and ruined the rest of my stay there, I'm only hoping this man was not Canadian as I will be ashamed to say that I AM CANADIAN from now on, he was kicking with his foot one of the swans in the head, all while his wife stood by and watched and said or did nothing to stop him. I immediately started to yell at him asking him what the hell he thought he was doing? I was sooooo upset, he kind of came at me and said "these swans attack me everytime I walk by, and I'm going to show them who's the boss around here", well, I was in shock, I told him that we had walked by many times and never were attacked by the swans, like hello?? We're talking swans here, not lions!! I gave him a piece of my mind, you could tell he had been drinking, I guess he was making himself feel like a man, if that's what he calls himself! Anyhow, I was trying to see what room he was going to so I could report him but he ran away the coward, I hope he reads this and sees that I did not forget what I saw with my own 2 eyes that night and hope that one day he will get what is coming to him.

We did not do any excursions as we had done most of them before, but we did managed to get a green flag day the last day we were there and we were able to enjoy a catamaran ride and went kayacking. We had nice weather all week except for one morning where it rained for about 1 hour but it cleared up in no time and the sun came out again. We had heard from other guests that the week before we were there they had gotten 4 straight days of pooring rain to the point where all of the walkways were flooded so we were happy we missed that. The staff was sort of friendly, as friendly as they get in the Dominican I guess, most of them don't speak english which can be frustrating at times, but I can get by with a bit of spanish thankfully. All in all it was an ok vacation, I was glad to be there and not here where we still have snow and more snow. I wish I was still there but I would choose another resort for sure. It's ok if it's your first time down south but if you've been to a 4.5 or higher resort than you will probably not enjoy this one as much. We plan on going back to Mexico next year or maybe even Cuba again, if we did go back to Punta Cana it would have to be at a RIU or the Bahiya.

About us
We are a happily child free couple of ages 37 and 44. This is our 4th trip to an all inclusive resort (been to Cuba twice and the Mayan Riviera once).

Arrival
We arrived at around 10pm and were given our bracelets and sent to the buffet (it closes at 10:30). We were told to leave our luggage at the lobby. After eating, we returned and got our room keys etc and a ride to the room.

Upgrade to Royal Side
While there was nothing wrong with our room or the Catalonia side of the resort, we knew that for $25US each per night we could upgrade to the Adults Only Royal side of the resort. It was the best $300 US we ever spent. (If booked the upgrade from home, it would