I just returned from the Sunscape Casa Del Mar a few weeks ago. My friends and I (four girls in their 20's) went for our spring break from April 20-April 24. We are all teachers and were looking for a nice beach vacation in paradise. We did get a nice beach, but a lot of problems as well.

The transportation:
We booked through Cheap Caribbean.com and arranged the round trip transportation from the airport to the resort through them. First thing- If anyone books with them, beware- we encountered some discombobulated people before we got on the correct van. We were looking for someone with a sign that said , "Cheap Caribbean" or even "Turinter Tours," the name of the company listed on our documents, but there was no one. Instead, a guy came up to us and somehow was the right person by some miracle. After about 20-30 minutes standing around on the curb while a woman walked up and down grabbing different people's paperwork, we were on the way.
The first thing that stressed me out was how long the drive was to the La Romana area- almost two hours. Although I should have known this before going, it was alarming at how long it took to get there. The drive was quite harrowing and the scenery pretty upsetting- we saw a lot of poverty stricken areas along the way. I will NEVER go back to La Romana because of the length of that drive from the airport.

The scenery:
Once at Sunscape Casa Del Mar, we were thrilled to see the beautifully manicured grounds and the very nice looking pool and beach areas. It really is an oasis compared to all the poverty stricken areas we saw on the way, but it made me feel guilty about being there while all these people are out there struggling to survive.
Anyway, the pools were large and pretty and the beach itself is very nice. The water was great and the weather was fantastic. It wasn't so hard to wrangle up some beach lounge chairs (even with four of us, we didn't have too hard of a time) and we had very enjoyable days lounging between the infinity pool and the beach.

The hotel room:
The room itself reminded me a lot of a room in a hotel for spring breakers or college or high school students. It was adequate, but when you look at the quality of everything, you realize that everything is pretty mediocre or kind of tired looking. There were some stains on the floor and the curtains, and the bath towels are really thin and old looking. There were no real amenities about this place at all- nothing but the bare minimum in the bathroom. On the first day, we realized we didn’t have hand towels or tissues in the bathroom. We called the front desk, and got transferred twice. When I finally spoke to someone, they didn’t understand the word, “tissues,” in English, and although I asked for hand towels, they never came. Every day, we would get different things in our bathroom- sometimes bath towels, one time a washcloth, one time ONE hand towel. It was like the housekeeping staff just did whatever they felt like.
The worst part of the bathroom and the room was the COCKROACHES. Every time we went to our bathroom, there would be at least two new little cockroaches in the bath tub. We would kill them and try to ignore them, but it put a damper on everything. We didn’t complain just yet because we didn’t have faith that anything would be done about it, especially after our towel requests went unanswered. Then on the last day, my friend left out her food. NOT a good move. We came back that night to find many, many little tiny baby cockroaches all over the night table. We spent the rest of the night awake trying to kill them all. It was really disgusting.
In addition to the cockroaches, we discovered a very big leak that resulted from turning on the air conditioning. We actually hadn’t put the air conditioning on because it was too cold with it on, but every time we came in after the housekeeping staff had been there, there was always a large puddle in the hallway. We finally discovered it was because of the air conditioning being turned on.

The food:
It’s funny because before we left, I read the review down below about how you will not like the food if you are from the United States, but I didn’t believe it because there were some other favorable reviews. Man, I was an idiot. The food was just plain HORRIBLE. They had a great selection, but everything was just lousy. I mean really, really poor quality. I tried a hot dog and it was just really not good quality meat, and I couldn’t even eat it, and I LOVE hot dogs. The theme of the trip was if we could find something edible, we would say it was, “not bad.” The only thing I felt was adequate was the omelettes being made in the morning and a hamburger. But I think because the water is not good there, the buns and the bread is just not the same. It has a really weird consistency. A lot of people from Europe were there and they were just piling and piling on the food at the World Café Buffet, so I figured it must be great, but it was quite horrible. We saw a cockroach by the fruit, so that was the end of us filling up on the good looking watermelon and pineapple. The food at the other restaurants is pretty bad as well. Just don’t expect the quality that you are used to. If you like planning your trips around good food and good meals, don’t go to this place. I basically started dreading meal times because I was so sick of the food here. Oh yea, and then I came home and got sick for about five days with what my doctor thought was E. Coli. Don’t drink the water!
Speaking of drinks, the drinks were also pretty inconsistent. Basically, they have about ten different drinks that all taste the same. They pour rum into everything, which makes the drinks too strong and not very well blended. I found that the virgin pina coladas tasted better than the ones with alcohol.

The service:
Most of the waiters were extremely friendly and kind to us. It probably helped that we were four young girls. But overall, the wait staff was very nice and accommodating. The front desk was not very friendly at all.
Lastly, the day of our departure, we decided we would complain about the cockroaches and the leak in our room. We told the front desk staff and they just said, “ohhh.” They did not apologize or anything and asked us to fill out a comment book. We asked to speak to a manager. They referred us around the corner to the desk titled, “Guest Services.” I am not sure if this woman was a concierge or manager, but we told her our complaints. She tried to catch us in a lie and accused us of not complaining earlier. She then told us that we should expect bugs in a tropical climate, to which we replied that we did not expect them in our hotel room shower. She ABSOLUTELY DID NOT APOLOGIZE and barely acknowledged our complaint. In my opinion, this was the worst outrage of the entire trip, because this was a total lack of customer service. At this point, I couldn’t wait to get the heck out of this place and head home to write this review.

They really do; I was trying to come up with some clever way to introduce that the only things we enjoyed about our stay at this "all-inclusive" resort were things we paid to do on our own, but the bare fact seemed best.

Booked this trip through CheapCaribbean.com. I have noticed that many reviewers who booked with them report similar bad experiences. Not sure if that reflects on CheapCaribbean or on how this establishment treats guests who book through them, to be fair.

First of all, please note that the resort is not in La Romana, as advertised, but actually in Bayahibe. Not a bad place, but if you were planning to go to La Romana (and you'll probably want to, keep reading) it's like a $60 cab ride round-trip.

Arrived admittedly late, thanks to a delay on American Airlines. My wife and I were given a room with two double beds, instead of the king size bed that had been booked. The room was ill-lit, missing towels, had no clock, and the air conditioner was stuck on about 60 degrees. Concerned that we would miss the end of dinner, we ate before returning to the front desk. The gentleman working check-ins was polite but extremely unhelpful, telling us that there was nothing he could do about the room as they were allegedly at "100% capacity." He suggested that we return the next morning between eleven and noon, as checkout was at noon and rooms might become available. We resigned ourself to at least one night in the "wrong" room.

In addition to being too small, the double beds were old and their mattresses lumpy. The linens were very coarse and low-quality, far from ideal for sunburn sufferers. Not enough blankets were provided for the arctic chill the air conditioner was kicking out.

We returned the next morning, and a different gentleman was working check-ins. He could not understand why we had been told the previous night to try in the morning, as no rooms were becoming available whatsoever. He did helpfully suggest, however, that we come back at 3:00 and check. We presume that his shift ended at around 2:00, as the modus operandi for the people at the desk was to try to bounce your question about 8 hours into the future.

After we got the same runaround attempting to procure a key for the room safe ("We don't have any, come back at maybe 3:00"), we began demanding to see a manager. Despite the fact that the manager, Rene, was clearly seen behind the desk, the staff continued to stall and insist that he was busy. It was only after we had taken to answering their every reply with "I understand. When may we speak to a manager?" that he deigned to acknowledge us. He was even more abusive and less helpful than the staff. Finally, a staff member named Marian stepped in and got us our safe key, towels ordered up for the room, and our missing clock. Her intercession likely saved our stay there. Not even she, however, could get us the room we had actually booked, or summon up a working remote for the ancient television.

It was difficult to get our room cleaned regularly. Indeed, one day it was entirely skipped, despite the "Please Make Up Room" sign prominently displayed on the doorway from 10am until after dinner. In the end we had to deal with the unhelpful staff at the front desk on a daily basis to ensure that the room was made up.

I will say this for the resort: its beach is quite pleasant, if somewhat overcrowded and relatively noisy. We enjoyed swimming, as long as we dodged the large number of other guests; and laying on the beach was nice, if we pretended not to be able to hear the loud music blaring constantly from the vicinity of the volleyball court. The free drinks were nice, but mostly far too sweet, and the beer was a little bit watery, if tasty.

The drinks, however, were much better than the food, which was simply awful. We ate at the buffet; we ate at the Italian restaurant; we ate at the beachfront restaurant; we ate at the poolside restaurant. The food was uniform and uniformly bland. Meats were served extremely overdone; even in the restaurants entrees appeared to have had extensive adventures under a heat lamp; and in all cases the only flavor to be detected was the faint taste of overcooked tomatoes and bell peppers. The food was so dull and lifeless that we actually took a taxi trip to La Romana in the hope of finding some decent food. The cab driver deposited us at Marinelly Seafood Restaurant, where the smell of cooking garlic reminded us that we hadn't scented it since arriving at Casa del Mar. Paying for a cab ride is a rather exorbitant way to get decent food, but this was excellent stuff and we were pretty desperate. Dealing with the resort food afterwards was a parade of disappointments, even on the Dominican specialty night in the overcrowded, noisy World Cafe.

We can also recommend the snorkeling trips to Catalina offered by the Gri Gri dive company, but with the caveat that it will set you back $100 for two people, despite Casa del Mar's claim to have snorkeling as part of their all-inclusive plan. The snorkeling was nice and the crew reassuring, although the boat did have an equipment problem on the way back to the resort.

The vendors that the resort permits to set up shop in the area around the pools are quite aggressive, which I found irritating, and persistent, which I found obnoxious. If you decide to deal with them (because you enjoy the bargaining game or something) please be aware of the value of the goods you are negotiating for. One gentleman tried very hard to sell us for $100 and then for $20 a bottle rum that we found at the duty-free in Santo Domingo for $6 a bottle. Personally I don't find being continually accosted by vendors relaxing and wish the resort didn't admit them.

Internet access was extremely limited, available either on a handful of computers in the "TV Lounge" or in a very small radius served by an access point named "wifimasa_lobby." I'm not even sure that the proprietors intended to offer this access, because several more widely broadcast networks were inoperable or inaccessible. I would consider decent internet access to guests a minimum requirement for a resort.

The shops in the resort itself were very pricy and sold us an overpriced bottle of suntan lotion of highly questionable legitimacy, resulting in painful sunburns.

Checking out included a ludicrous episode where the desk clerk feigned astonishment at our decision to depart. I nearly lost the tip of my tongue biting it so hard, simply wanting to finish the checkout and be on our way without further event. The very quintessence of our stay.

We will definitely not be returning. This was the least inclusive all-inclusive I've ever been to, and the hardest I've ever had to work to enjoy a relaxing week of vacation.

Liked: the beach, out-of-pocket day trips, leaving
Disliked: the staff, the room, the other guests, the food

Recommended for: people who like disrespectful staff; people who don't know good drinks when they taste them; people who hate food; people who didn't really mean it when they booked a king-sized bed

We purchased a package through Cheap Caribbean, and were thoroughly satisfied with our vacation. The hotel is an average hotel, with some rooms recently renovated and others underway. I would not give it as high a rating as Cheap Caribbean does; however, there was not much disappointment to be found.

Pros:
1. beach - gorgeous, long, plentiful lounge chairs, no need to reserve them in the early a.m., and you can put your towel and belongings there and it will remain there all day
2. towel service for beach/pool
3. all inclusive truly means that - you can opt to have the lobster or buy the better bottle of wine, but there is no pressure to do so; open bars can be found from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m.
4. noise level - not a problem, but i would not be so sure for spring break
5. optional snorkeling available at hotel is as good as the ones you can arrange from a tour company, but half the cost
6. other guests - good mix of couples and families from all over the world

Cons:
1. room - ours was not one of the renovated ones - basically your average 2 star hotel room
2. retaurants - not all of them are open every night and the service in the non-buffet restaurants can be pretty poor; the buffet is actually pretty nice (and i hate buffets) - there are several made-to-order stations within the buffet
3. airport transfer service - ours was Turinter - not as convenient as you might expect, but i'm not sure what the other options are - probably a necessary evil. and make sure to use the bathroom before you leave the airport/hotel because it can take up to 3 hrs to/from santo domingo depending on the local traffic (avg is 1.5 hrs)
4. night life - one club and it has various themes depending on the night, all of which seemed kind of lame - no latin dancing to be found except for the organized lessons by the poor or beach; the nightly shows are also not terribly entertaining

Overall, the trip was great. We spent very little extra money once we got to the resort. We would definitely return except for wanting to visit other islands. Would definitely recommend this to the budget-minded traveler.

We stayed at CDM on April 30th-May 7th.
I always do a ton of research on Tripadvisoe before I book any resort.
I did find out that this resort was the same owners and Dreams and Secrets...and it was being renovated to a Dreams from a Sunscape. I immediately found out which buildings were rennovated and sent an email to the concierge to upgrade us to building number 3. She was very accomodating...My boyfriend emailed her telling her that we will be getting engaged on this trip as wa another couple coming with us and she was able to put us in a nice room in Building 3. But again it was explained to us that it was only done because it was such a special occasion.

Here is a bit of a detailed review about the trip:

Beach: The beach is GORGEOUS! The water was absolutely amazing! Green and crystal blue! We rented snorkeling equipment from the water activities hut and went snorkeling right in front of our hotel! We saw puffer fish! Beautiful bright fish and caught a starfish! But of coarse we threw it back into the sea.
We were thinking of taking the trip to Catalina island, but with a reef this beautiful on our hotel grounds...who needs that?!
The sand was white and soft. There were always plenty of chairs and palm trees in case you wanted shade. There are a lot of Europeans in the hotel, so women tan topless...For me this was fine, since I was one of the topless tanners.

Food: The food overall was great! I was very happy with the fresh fish and vegetable selections daily. The pizza there was amazing! So fresh! Their caesar salad was one of my faves! The A La Carte restaurants were good. We had a bad experience with Hamatsu, the Asian restaurant. We waited for 2 hours to get served, and it took 3 hours for our first course to come out.
My fiancee and I had the romantic dinner on the pier (extra cost) and it was phenominal! In fact that was where we got engaged! The 5 course meal was absolutely incredible! And the service was perfect as well.
I think that even the pickiest eatier could find plenty to eat at the buffet. I am a VERY picky eater and I never went hungry!

Rooms: We were upgraded to building number 3 which was already rennovated. We did not have any problems, with the exception of a leaky ceiling. But it did not really bother us all that much...I did hear that the some of the other rooms in the other buildings were very inadequate. However, I did hear that if you are very inconvenienced you will be moved to another room.

Staff: The staff was very accomodating...no one in our group except myself spoke Spanish, but either way they tried to understand you to the best of their ability. I was never spoken to rudely or had any unpleasentries with the staff.

Bayhabie and the Locals: We walked over to the local city which was about a 10 minute walk down the beach. Many people tried telling us that it was dangerous and the locals were not ones to be friends with. I could not disagree more! We walked over there about 3 times! We purchased several paintings and sun block when we ran out. We chatted with the locals and one of them even showed us his favorite restaurant on the beach. We had dinner there, for 2 people it $51. This included 2 huge lobsters, platain chips, beers, a fresh huge grouper fillet for me and rice. We could not have been happier with the company and the freshness of the food. We went into the city with a positive attitude, were respectful to the locales, joked with them and had a wonderful time all in all! Don't be scared off by all the horror stories. Just be smart and have a wonderful time!

It was an amazing trip and everything about this vacation was terrific!

Feel free to email me with any questions you may have!
milachkaa@gmail.com