First and foremost, every single staff member that we encountered in our 7 nights there were terrific. They all seemed happy, were friendly, looked at you and smiled when they walked by you, always made time for you, always gave you "the right of way" if you met them in a narrow hall or path, etc. I could go on about this for a long time...but if you are used to the opposites of what I mentioned above, this will be a pleasant surprise. Truly, this is 90% of the reason that I am giving this an excellent rating.
It is a beautiful location and my wife and kids (4 and 5) all loved it. Great beaches, nice variety with the two different beaches.
We stayed in a club room in the tower, which had great views of the point. Yes, it is an older hotel - nothing out of the ordinary for an older hotel. Still decent-sized rooms, TV was fine, decent bathtub, etc. No complaints, just don't expect a brand new facility.
Food was good - not excellent, just good. But, a "good" rating at an all-inclusive is probably about the best you can get, I would think... Plenty of kid-friendly meals (hot dogs, hamburgers, etc), and room service was always solid.
Kids club was amazing! We've been to other resorts where we took the kids once and only once. After all, the idea for us it so have a great time with the kids, and only take them to the kid's club if they enjoy it - not just so my wife and I can be alone. After we took them the first time, they constantly begged us to go back to the point where a couple times we didn't even let them because we missed them and wanted to play with our kids! Knowing that this was not just a last-ditch option, but something the kids would love was awesome - after a really long day where we didn't have much energy left and didn't want to control the kids at a nice dinner, they could go here for an hour or two and be much happier than having to sit at a boring grown-up dinner. Elena and Felisa were two of the superstars there - just great with our kids, truly cared, tried to make them have a good time and made us feel very safe about leaving them there. There were others, all excellent, but I didn't get their names - sorry!
One last thing I'll mention just in case. 4 out of 4 people in our family got sick during the trip. We were careful about drinking only purified water, and generally tried to be as clean as you would normally be at home - for example, washing hands, etc. I cannot say for sure that any or all of that was the hotel's fault since there didn't seem to be a common thread (food, drinks, water, going to a certain place or restaurant or whatever). I guess just a head-up - if you are the type that worries about this kind of thing, you might want to do what all the "Dateline" type shows tell you to do when you check in - get out the Clorox bleach wipes and wipe down the phone, coffee maker, TV remote, etc. Again, who knows if any of this had anything to do with the hotel room or food or drink, but being sick on vacation is obviously not fun so I wanted to bring it up.
Overall, it was a great place because of the people and the service. This isn't to say that everything else wasn't good...just that the people definitely made it a great experience instead of just a so-so experience where everything was "okay".















