Viva Dominicus Palace by Wyndham, A Trademark All Inclusive

A lovely looking resort but looks can be deceiving, having been to dom rep on 3 previous time and wanting to be on the Caribbean sea we booked here...trip advisor made it sound quite good....upon arrival we headed to the buffet...a stifling hot room awaited us with food laid out on metal platters, ham curling up at the edges and a unappetising grey colour...luke warm hot food with limited description was the other options...we went to bed hungry..7am.breakfast was better as you watched your eggs being cooked in the stifling hot room and browsed the pastries that had been out before 5.30am as had walked about then to see if an improvement on previous nite..hardly any staff spoke english, even with the passing of dollars, when we walked around it became apparent there was not many if any other english holiday makers. Lots of Europeans and south Americans, predominantly Spanish speakers...beach was nice and pool was good...went on the hunt for better food at lunch...(unsuccessfully) .so had chips from pool snack bar and some fruit...found the pizza restaurant, which was the only consistently average food restaurant in resort....after 3 day of solitude we heard an english accent and went to find them...arranging to go out of resort for food with them as they struggled for decent food too...it is not safe outside resort after dark...we saw guns and BIG knives while waiting for our taxi back....after a few day these people left and we were the sole english again....the drinks are watered down considerably in resort and only got better after making friends with bar staff in broken english and limited Spanish...restaurants you can book were really hit and miss.from tough as old boots meat to uncooked rice we eventually gave up on them too and went back out of resort to Italian restaurants that were outside ...we went 4 times in all as I was struggling to eat anything and spent over £300 in total extra...if not I would have starved....AS IT WAS I LOST HALF A STONE IN WEIGHT....AT AN ALL INCLUSIVE RESORT...in all I would not recommend this,area at all...there are hardly any english there and not much english is spoken..it is not safe out of resort...my son had a automatic gun pointed at him from a black out suv while we were in a souvenir shop also...the food is awful..drinks watered down...Tui shall be getting a phone call and I am done with going to dominican republic ever again...punta cana is nice but sea is full of stinky seaweed as we found out last year but at least the food was good and you could talk to people in english and there are other english speakers about....dominicus is beautiful but that's it...go at your peril...

Beware of Club Viva's membership offers – it's a trap! There's a hefty 13% financing fee, and the points you earn won't even cover a week's vacation. I've spent enough to know there are better options out there. They'll try to sell you on perks like airport transportation, but don't be fooled – it's all smoke and mirrors. Consider this a cautionary tale.