Barefoot Bride Meghan’s Honest Review of Dreams Royal Beach
Hey there! Meghan and Miguel here to write a review about our wedding site visit at Dreams Royal Beach. We stayed here from Tuesday June 2, 2024, to Thursday June 4, 2024.
The goal of this visit was to determine if this resort was where we wanted our guests to stay for when we get married in Punta Cana. Notably, this resort allows children. As you’ll see later on, we also met with the wedding team to learn about the wedding packages they offer. We did A LOT of research beforehand to narrow down our choices as Punta Cana has SO many resorts that offer all-inclusive packages. The research entailed joining the Dreams Royal Beach Facebook group (you can join here) to see reviews and posts about the resort, some of which occur in real time by guests who are currently staying there. However, my advice is to take the reviews with a grain of salt, as you cannot and should not believe everything that people say. We also watched a lot of Youtube videos! We also suggest you download the Hyatt Inclusive Collection app; it was very handy during our stay, as it provided information regarding restaurant menus, locations of all amenities, nightly shows, and the ability to order room service!
The Property
The property in and of itself is on the smaller side in comparison to other resorts, but nonetheless a beautiful resort. You can walk from the lobby to the beach, which are on opposite ends of each other, in under 10 minutes.
You may also hear guests refer to the “old” section and the “new” section. These characterizations mean what they say, the old section was built first and houses all the main aspects of the amenities. The new section was built later, contains a few amenities and is less crowded since preferred status (an upgrade you have to pay extra for) guests are only allowed to use the pool on that side. These two sections are connected through a beautiful bridge that only takes about five to ten minutes to walk. We highly suggest you walk the bridge at least once during the day and once at night! During the day, you will see a beautiful body of water with a variety of water and land animals. At night, the bridge is lit up and it is very romantic. If you do not want to walk, there is a motorized cart that runs every few minutes that can transport you back and forth from the new section to the old section.
Accommodations
We stayed in the resort’s Deluxe Tropical View Room which is the most basic room they have to offer. We did not have preferred status. The room was very spacious and clean. There is a refrigerator that comes fully stocked with soda, water, juice and Presidente beer. We left a note in the fridge asking the staff to leave extra water, and they did. The bathroom comes with everything you can think of and more. There was shampoo, body wash, conditioner, a comb (came in handy for Miguel), a hairdryer and many other items! The shower was different because there is a glass partition that stops about half way to the wall. No, there is no shower door; and no, water does not get on the floor. Although it is odd, it works and does not change our opinion of this resort in any negative way.
Food and Drinks
The first place that caught our attention was Coco Café, which is a 24-hour coffee and pastry shop by the hotel lobby. Specifically, we drank lattes and ate banana bread and cheesecake bites, all of which was satisfying!
For breakfast, we only ate at the buffet and there were plenty of options, such as a hot food section, omelet station, cold food station and deserts! Some of the items we enjoyed were the salami, fried cheese, scrambled eggs, cheese platters, hash browns and sausage.
Dinner for our first night was at Fusion, which offers Asian cuisine. This restaurant also offers teppanyaki, which is known as hibachi, but it is by reservation only, which you need to make with the concierge desk. We ordered the spring rolls, miso soup, spicy tuna roll, Dominican roll, salmon nigiri, fried ice cream and orange cheesecake. Depending on where you are from, the sushi rolls may not be what you expect. For us, the spicy tuna roll was tuna chunks with spicy mayo, wherein, in New York, where we are from, the tuna is finely chopped. Nonetheless, the food and service here was amazing!
For our second night, we ate dinner at Portofino, which is the Italian restaurant. Their bread is amazing!! It was soft and came with a side of pesto sauce. After you order your food, there is a buffet that you can go get food while you wait for your meal. It was very hard not to get carried away! For our main dishes, we ordered the chicken parmigiana and penne with chicken in alfredo sauce. FYI, their chicken parmigiana is VERY light on the tomato sauce and is moreso in a creamy sauce. We loved our meals here.
With respect to drinks, we both brought our own 40-ounce tumbler because we heard alcoholic drinks can be served in them. The rumors are true! We mostly drank pina coladas, and the bar staff filled up the tumbler with no issues.
Amenities
There is a gym on the property, that may be considered small to some people. There is one room with about 10 machines and a second room with no machines but had yoga mats and free weights. This gym was good for our exercise needs because we only utilized the free weights, and the room was hardly ever crowded.
There are a few pools. We only utilized two of them. The first was the main pool, which at times, was crowded depending on the time of day, and could be loud due to the number of children that were around. Notably, there is a swim up bar. We have no negative reviews of our time spent at this pool. The second pool we used was connected to the water slides. We loved hanging out on this side of the resort because it was not crowded and the slides are REALLY fun!
On our second day, we visited the beach, and it was lovely. The water was colder than we expected because there was rain during the week, but it was still very tolerable. We also liked that every lounge chair was under an umbrella. We have no complaints about the beach!
One of the perks of staying at this resort, is that you have access to a sports bar and night club, which is shared with Secrets Royal Beach, the adult only sister resort. The sports bar has two pool tables, a pinball machine and an arcade game. No food is served here. They also have karaoke Monday through Friday from 9:30pm to 11pm. We were able to attend one of the karaoke nights and had a great time! This is a great place to chill if you want to have a drink and relax in an air-conditioned space. We checked out the night club to see what the vibe was, and it is on a rooftop. Although we enjoyed our time here, and danced the night away, the only critique we had, was the type of music the DJ played. The DJ has a song request list, and there were a variety of genres played back to back, without any well-known songs played in between. Large groups of friends/family can quickly take over the request list by simply having each member go and request the songs they’re all interested in. Therefore, a lot of the guests lost momentum in dancing, including us, and some even left early.
Lastly, every night the resort has a show at the plaza at 9pm with a different theme. During our stay, we saw the Dominican show and although we (but really only Meghan because Miguel is Dominican) were not familiar with the music, it was still a great show. The singers and dancers really know how to put on a show! They are all also very talented.
Wedding Visit
As an initial matter, setting up the site visit was a relatively easily process. Our amazing travel agent, Sharon, reached out to the wedding team at this resort and the visit was confirmed about a month before we were set to travel here. We met with Francina, who is a wedding manager at Dreams/Secrets. She is so sweet and friendly! We started off with a tour of the venues the resort offers for the ceremony and reception. Our favorite was the gazebo in the “new” section of the resort because the waterfront background was so pretty! When we got back to the wedding office, we spoke with a representative of the on-site photography company that the resort uses, WBA Studio. We were very pleased with the package they offered and the quality of their photos. Thereafter, we were offered a food tasting of the Gold menu, which is considered one level higher than the basic food package they offer. We ate salmon, flank steak, rice, potatoes, vegetables and chicken cordon bleu, all of which was delicious. Afterwards, we tasted two of the cake flavors, vanilla cake with strawberry filling and chocolate cake with dulce de leche filling. The vanilla was our favorite. Francina did not make us feel like we were just another couple looking to have a wedding, but instead made us feel special and really got to know us. We are highly considering this resort for our wedding.
The Service and the People
This is the part that I (Miguel) most value. Being Dominican, I always describe my kinfolk as warm, happy, friendly and full of life. The performers were very kind and stayed around to let guests take photos with them after the show. Bar and restaurant staff were always happy to engage in conversation. Francina took great interest in knowing what our vision for our wedding is; more importantly, our conversation felt human and friendly. We left that meeting with a lot of information for our wedding, but also feeling like we made a long-term connection. The staff member from WBA Studio was helpful and we really felt that she wanted to work with us. She offered advice on picking options that would best suit our needs (like combining packages) instead of immediately just upselling us the next-tier package. Shortly put, the Dreams/Secrets staff are the kind of people I’d consider myself lucky to have assisting with our wedding and tending to our guests.
Wrapping up
Overall, we were very happy with our experience here and would recommend this to our friends and family. The resort was clean, the staff was friendly and we felt like the resort ran in a very organized manner. We understand that no place is perfect, and for us, the pros completely outweigh the cons!
