Tropical Deluxe Princess - All Inclusive.

“Great resort for families!”

We just returned from Tropical Deluxe 2 days ago so I wanted to write a review while my experience is still fresh in my mind. My partner and I visited for a week (Tues-Tues) with our 4 year old son and 9 month old daughter. Prior to traveling, I had requested a ground floor room in C building wit… more

We just returned from Tropical Deluxe 2 days ago so I wanted to write a review while my experience is still fresh in my mind. My partner and I visited for a week (Tues-Tues) with our 4 year old son and 9 month old daughter. Prior to traveling, I had requested a ground floor room in C building with a crib (it's a mini crib size) which we were given at check in and the location was absolutely perfect for us. We did not pay extra for platinum. The grounds of the resort are absolutely gorgeous. My son loved walking through the mangrove area and seeing the peacocks, turtles and all the iguanas in the mornings. Everything was maintained really well and the common areas were always clean. We were always able to get a shuttle when we needed one which was handy when it was nearing bedtime. Food was hit or miss, especially the a la cartes. I can be a bit of a picky eater at times and my 4 year old is a typical 4 year old but we were always able to find something to eat. The food market buffet has lots of options and some things aren't the tastiest but if you go in knowing it might not be the best meal you've ever had, you might end up being pleasantly surprised. We never ended up having lunch at the main buffet but had breakfast every morning and 2 dinners. I have no complaints about the breakfast options. We had lunch at the beach house buffet each day during our visit. The fried chicken and baked potatoes were our favourites. The food was pretty good there but it was the same options every day (other than the addition of a small meat grill on one day) which got a little tiring. We tried Fogo, Nopal, El Pilon and Tao for our a la carte options. We weren't able to get into La Tagliata for Italian since it was often booked up or the only available times were too late for us with the little ones. Fogo was decent other than the chicken which was incredibly dry and we weren't able to eat more than a couple bites of it. Nopal was ok. We both liked our appetizers but I had the beef tacos which basically tasted like the ones I could get from the buffet and my partner had the burger which he didn't like at all. El Pilon was also ok. Again, the appetizers were both good and my partner had the goat stew for his main which he loved. I ordered the dominican flag and again, the chicken was so dry, I couldn't eat it. My son ordered a pizza and it was much tastier than my meal. At Tao we did the teppenyaki which was really good. My only issue with it was that it said on the menu we get salmon as one of the grilled meats but the cook never made it. We ended up spending most days at the pool next to the water park. There were always chairs available and it was the perfect pool for our family to enjoy and had shady options to keep the baby out of the sun. My son was afraid to try the water slides but we hung out in the kids pool with him a few times and it was great for the little ones. The bar next to the pool was great as well. We never ended up trying out the two big pools in the middle so I can't speak to those. My only complaint was that the only place to get towels was at the far pool on the other side. It would have been nice to have one more central. We spent 2 days at the beach. We were going to spend our first day there but by the time we got there after breakfast all of the chairs were reserved or occupied. Frustrating that people get down there early to reserve spots but it is what it is. On the 2 days we ended up at the beach my partner went down quickly before breakfast to get us spots and then we went over after we ate to enjoy the day. It would be nice if they'd add another row or two of chairs so people didn't have to do that to enjoy it. The sand is absolutely beautiful but the water can be a bit wavy. There was a volleyball court down there and I saw a few times they were doing dancing lessons or games. The staff were absolutely amazing with my kids and everywhere was stroller friendly. My kids loved the kid show at 8pm with dancing and music each night (we never made it to the later adult show). We didn't actually go to the kids club until our last full day but my son had a lot of fun there and I wish we had gone in sooner. The mini putt was also fun. Everywhere we went the servers were giving my daughter attention (almost to the point where she'd start yelling in her chair if people weren't oogling over her). That being said, I tried wiping down the high chairs every time they brought one over before she started putting her mouth on it (the age + teething) but there were a few times I didn't because things were chaotic. Also the staff were very friendly and would hold her hand and I wouldn't wipe them off immediately. She had spots, which I initially thought were bug bites, that appeared on her on the day we left to come home which has progressed to hand, foot and mouth disease since being home so please, please be mindful to disinfect if you're traveling with young kids. I wish I had done a better job of it. As I mentioned before, everything was always very clean but these things can happen. I don't blame the resort at all for this...they can only do so much. As others have mentioned the locals come visit on the weekends. We noticed things starting to get busier on Friday afternoon until late Sunday morning. The buffet at breakfast on Saturday and Sunday was packed and a little frustrating to get around to the different stations. It was a little busier than it had been at the beach and pool on those days but it wasn't a major difference. After reading reviews prior to our visit, I was expecting to be dealing with time share sales people constantly coming over to us and sellers from the market always harassing us but it wasn't like that at all. There were timeshare sales people around but they never approached us and there was only one market vendor (Wednesdays) who was a little pushy but I just gave a simple "no thank you" and kept walking. We stayed in a family room which was great for us. I am so glad we had 2 full bathrooms and we ended up bringing a kettle from home for the baby's formula since we didn't know what to expect. They were a bit odd about re-stocking the room each day but there was only one day where they didn't re-stock us with as much bottled water as we would have liked but we just took our water bottles to the bar to get more water when we needed extra. They re-stocked our Coke and Sprite but never the beers that were there at check in. They were also a little weird about re-stocking towels. Some days they would give us all new ones, other days they wouldn't or would only do one bathroom and not the other. Bring your own face cloths if you use them because we were never given any. The AC worked great. The fridge wasn't super cold so you wouldn't want to keep anything that requires a specific temperature in there. Definitely use bug spray in the evenings as there are tiny little flies that bite. I ended up forgetting to use ours until it was too late almost every night and my feet and ankles were eaten alive. Overall we had a really great family vacation and I'd definitely recommend this resort to people wanting to visit Punta Cana!

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