My husband and I are in our 30s and stayed at the Royal from July 15 through 20th.

We arrived at Punta Cana airport without a hitch on a direct flight from Atlanta to Punta Cana (PUJ). We took pictures with the Dominican ladies upon our arrival, purchased the $10pp tourist cards, picked up our luggage, and found our transfer company in about 30 minutes. Next, we were off to Catalonia Royal!

The drive to the hotel was not nearly as bad as people had described it to be! Yes, the roads are a bit bumpy and they do not have the driving rules that we have in the US, but we felt very safe as there are not as many cars on the road.

We arrived at the Royal, checked in and were in our room in about 15 minutes. We immediately went to Thalassa restaurant for lunch.

The room was very nice. I think everyone else has given ample attention to the rooms, so I won't go into much detail. We never had a problem with our room, everything worked well, we always had hot water and air conditioning. There were about four resort wide power outages during our stay, but it was back on very quickly. Remeber, if you open the patio door, the air conditioning will automatically shut off. Keep the door closed, it's very humid in PC! :)

The beach was very nice, nicer than we expected! Everyone talks up the seaweed on the reviews, so we expected a mangled beach and thankfully, we were very pleasantly surprised. Only complaint here is that there is no butler service while on the beach or in the pool!!! You do have to get up and get your own drink from the beach or pool bar. Otherwise, it is a very relaxing, calm, quiet area to relax and enjoy nature at its best!!!

The drinks were great! I have seen other reviews stating that the drinks were watered down. One rule of thumb...a dollar or two will go a long way! I NEVER had a watered down drink!! As a matter of fact, at the pool bar, I would go back to the swim up for the next round and it was prepared and ready before I got to the bar to pick it up...allot $5-$10 per day for tipping...you will NEVER have a weak drink! Keep those strong capirhinhas coming, please! :)

I would give the food an overall rating of B-. You can ALWAYS find something that you like at this resort. If you don't, you truly need to go back home. There are four nice restaurants and a Creperie on the "regular/family" side of the resort as well as a buffet and pool bar. The Royal guests also have the option to order 24 hour room service. We took advantage of the room service four out of five nights. The sandwiches don't have a lot of meat, but if you ASK for more, you will get more meat! Again, tipping is very helpful! $1 per night for the room service delivery guy will go a long way in PC.

Overall, we had a great stay, my husband and I really enjoyed spending quality time together and reconnecting away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life with our 3 year old daughter (she was at Grandma's) and this was a great, cost conscious option! We would, absolutely, return to the Royal again!

Word to the wise: It is vacation...don't sweat the small stuff. Just enjoy some quality time with your partner and enjoy this large, all-inclusive resort with many food, activity and entertainment options! :)

This was our first visit to the DR, and also our first all-inclusive! After having been to the Royal Catalonia, we are definitely in love with the all-inclusive idea! This resort was beautiful, relaxing, and enjoyable. However, I thought that for the amount of praise it was getting, the service should have been better. Not that anyone was rude or anything, that never happened. But I would have liked to have drink/food service at the pool, and esp the beach! You just have to sit around on the beach or pool and get your own drinks, which I thought was not so lavish. And I didn't think anyone really went out of their way to be extremely nice or helpful. They were just "there." The lady that sets up the reservations for the restaurants was not very helpful, and even had a somewhat nonchalant attitude. Same with a lot of the waiters. Another thing was the mixed drinks--they were very weak and watered down. I don't think either of us ever even felt buzzed!

The resort itself is very beautiful though, and very clean and feels relaxing. Having said all this, I would not likely return, only because I want to experience better service and feel more "pampered!" We are going to another AI resort in Cancun, better luck there!

This was a great hotel for relaxing. The beach was calm and beautiful. The sand is amazing. The water is clear in the mornings but gets seaweed in the afternoons.

Royal is the perfect place to relax. Take out a kayak or catameran for an hour and enjoy the view of the beach.

The rooms are beautiful and clean. We had some AC problems, but they fixed it after a day.

Food is good. People are friendly. Staff is very service oriented. You'll love this place!

My husband and I stayed from July 5, 2008 til July 11th. We had a wonderful stay. After reading some reviews I was a little apprehensive, but your vacation is what you make it, and we made the best of everything. We enjoyed realxing at the beach, never had any trouble finding chairs or shade. We also spent time at the pool which we enjoyed especially the swim up bar.

Our room was great, always clean and the refrigerator well stocked. We did have a little problem with no hot water in the shower, but the problem was quickly fixed after I reported it, the shower hose had a problem.

Our favorite restaurant was the Japanese, we actually ate there twice. My least favorite was the Italian, I think because of my choice nothing else. We ate at the Rodeo steak house and the Mexican and enjoyed these also. We had breakfast at the Gran Caribe several times and this was great.

We did do an excursion with Bavaro Runners, Papatony was our tour guide and he made it a lot of fun. I would reccomend this trip.

It is well worth staying on the Royal side and taking advantage of the activities on the Catalonia side, that side is usually more active, but then you come back to the quiet of the Royal side. Had fun talking to Jose, Dominique and Bassilo at the lobby bar at the Royal.

Overall a very relaxing fun vacation. I would definitely reccomend this hotel and look forward to going back one day.