Our family of 10 vacationed here for Christmas wee...

Our family of 10 vacationed here for Christmas week. I upgraded 3 of our 4 rooms to preferred status after the resort offered a suite as one of the rooms ($1155 for the 3 upgrades). The suite is large. Ours (3105) was on the first floor facing the adult pool. Its a great spot - very quiet compared to a lot of the other rooms. Being on the first floor we could just walk out to the pool or the bar and lounge. Two bathrooms, one with a shower and jacuzzi, were both large. Water pressure was on the low side and the shower temperature varied with other peoples usage, but was warm to hot. Biggest criticism of our room was that it is very dark. Some of the renovated rooms are much brighter. Housekeeping is excellent including turn-down service at night.

The food was good, but not great. We really enjoyed the buffet, especially for breakfast and for dinner on Dominican night. (Dominican food is very good.) Fresh omelets, crepes, smoothies are highlights for breakfast. Lunch has good burgers and the pizza is surprisingly good with many choices. Dinner was slightly different every night. We had breakfast a couple of mornings at the preferred club's restaurant on the beach. The chicken crepe was good, but overall we liked the buffet better for breakfast.

We tried 3 of the restaurants for dinner. The Hibachi show at the asian restaurant was the best I've seen. They are usually all the same, but our chef was a little different and did a great job. The food was very good and plentiful. Another night we ate on the non-hibachi side (see photo) and were very disappointed. I would skip it. The Mexican restaurant was very good. We should have gone back there instead of the Asian restaurant. The dinner at the Italian restaurant was so-so. The food is one of the things dragging my rating down to a 4.

The burger bar at the beach was excellent. There are bars for drinks everywhere and the drinks are well made by friendly waiters. They don't have truly high end alcohol. No bourbon - Jack Daniels is available. Tanquaray is the best gin.

We were there for Christmas and Santa came on a motorcycle with his "gang". One complaint was that the resort tries hard to get you to go to Christmas dinner at a specialty restaurant with a reservation - and then they tell you that you MUST buy $15 worth of bottled wine for each person in the reservation. Turned out that the included dinner in the buffet was probably better than their special meals. The buffet had everything including some very good sashimi.

The beach is great. Not much seaweed and they rake it away all day long. Amazingly, the sand never was too hot. Lots of chairs at both the pools and the beach our week. We loved both the beach and the pools. The adult pool is great for swimming short laps.

My only real complaint was the 9:30 pm shows which is on the late side if you eat an early dinner. I couldn't stay for either of shows I tried to attend as they were way to LOUD. My apple watch said they were 90-100 decibels - a level that is painful and can damage your hearing. We told a couple of employees who said no one had ever complained before. I wasn't the only one who left the shows early.