We just got back from Viva Palace last night. We travelled with a 5 and a 6 year old and for the most part we had a great time. We are not obnoxious, picky, spoiled travellers, but are reasonable, hardworking people (both from Ireland, living in East Hampton, New York) that do not like to waste money. This resort was not a waste of money but it could have been a lot better. And here's why:
1. The kid's camp was a joke (Club Med so much better). 2 staff members for over 20 kids. My kid's were bored, no-one spoke English, and they had a much better time with us at the beach. 2. The food was not bad; the meat was tough and the fish was hit or miss. Go to the buffet at La Yuka for the best selection. The restaurants are slow with service and the food was not as good as at the buffet. Some waitors cannot speak English. The desserts looked good but tasted so bad! We are huge dessert fans, but grew tired of the fake cream etc. All the desserts tasted the same. Not worth the calories. Simply put, the food was okay but not great.
3. The noise from the bar could be heard in our room after 11pm at night. We had one of the oceanfront rooms (6542) and with small kids it was a pain to not have peace and quiet. The music was on past 1am on New Year's Eve. At the sister resort next door "Viva Beaches", the music was on all night until 6am.
4. Beware- they will solicit you all the time to go to a sales meeting, they offer you paintings and carvings for what they call a 10 minute introduction. Do not go- We spent 1 1/2hrs there and it was simply a gloirified timeshare scam. They did not admit that it was a timeshare scam, but say it is a way to save 40% on your next trip to a Wyndham Resort. Do not go- it's a waste of time, and we did not receive the promised carvings!
5. The rooms/ and room service: The rooms are very basic, no luxury whatsoever. They do not replenish shampoos etc. at all. You must bring your own. You will be lucky to get a fresh wash cloth everyday. We paid $400/night and expected a little more! The housekeepers did a good job- especially with a tip.

Overall- we would not return to this resort. We had a great time on the beach with our kids- but had a much better time at Club Med, Punta Cana the year before. The resort was 90% French and Italian and I felt that they did not like US Citizens at all. We only saw 2 other English speaking families, and they also felt a little unliked. FYI, Iberostar Resort (appartantly 5 star) is next door to Viva Wyndham; we checked it out as well. The rooms are exactly the same, the beach is the same, and the only difference is that it is more expensive there. The main grounds are a little nicer but I'm not sure that it is worth the added cost. This is not really a familiy resort. We rarely saw a bikini top that was on. A couple of completely naked bodies took me by surprise. Not really for kids!

My husband and I spent 5 days and 5 nights at the Palace. Our only regrets were that we didn't speak THEIR language and that we didn't have more time.

We flew into Santo Domingo. I will have to admit that the 2 + hour ride to the resort was a bit frightening with the way that everyone drives there, but we made it in one piece. The check-in at the resort went very smoothly and took about 10 minutes.

The room smelt at first, but as soon as we opened the door to the balcony and turned on the air the smell went away quickly (but I think that all hotel rooms smell so it wasn't any different than usual). The room did stay damp (it wasn't soaked you could just feel the moisture on the floor and such), but it is very humid there and I mean you are on vacation in a nice warm wet climate so what else do you expect. The bed was hard, but we didn't spend enough time in our room for that to even make a difference. If you want to get a hot shower with good pressure make sure that you don't try doing it before the buffet times because that is when everyone else is doing it and there is no water pressure and no hot water. Any other time it is fine. If you like to spend time in your room there are English channels on the television. We were told that there are supposed to be room service cards in your room that you can put on your door in the mornings but we didn't have any so we didn't know until the night before we were leaving so if you like room service ask for some cards at the front desk when you check in.

You have to get reservations to the 4 restaurants one day in advance. There was a Chinese/Japanese, Mexican, Italian and Grill (don’t know what that was). We went to the Chinese/Japanese it was called the Bambu. We really enjoyed the food there. The menu was small but something for everyone. We didn’t really think that it was Chinese tasting at all but it was still quite good. We didn’t make reservations to any of the other places because after having such a small menu at the Bambu we preferred the buffet. We didn't like to get to the buffet right when they opened because it was to crowded and hard to find a table. We liked the buffet a lot and thought that the food was excellent. There was so much to choose from there. There was certainly something for everyone. They had a fruit bar, a salad bar, a bread bar, a desert bar and everything in between. We preferred the buffet at The Palace as the one at The Beach, the food was better and it was not near as crowded. We read how wonderful the pizzeria was but we went there and I had 2 bites of pizza and we had to leave, my husband and I just didn’t like it at all. It was open from 7pm – 7am though which made it nice.

The bars were fine. They have Presidente beer. They pour very light on the liquor (which is fine with me that way you can lay at the beach and drink and not have more than you thought you had). The bar at The Palace had hamburgers, hotdogs and fruit (but be careful because the hamburgers are almost still mooing). The Beach bar had pizza (different than that from the pizzeria), but we didn’t have any nor did we ever get drinks from the Beach bar.

We found a spot on the beach near the pool at The Palace that had a great view of the beach and the different activities that they had for the guests. We actually liked the spot so much that we sat there every day that we were there. The pool was nice, but it was much to cold for us. The hot tub was just a very cold bubble tub. They had a lot of different activities for the guests to do on the beach/pool area throughout the day, and they really try to get the guest into all of the activities. It was 85 or so, sunny and beautiful every day. It rained off and on for about 5 or 10 minutes at a time but not enough to ruin anything. The ocean is gorgeous. The water is crystal clear, there are quite a few rocks throughout the water so you have to be careful where you are walking in the water but it is so clear that you can see them as you are going through the water. The water temperature was a bit brisk at first but you get use to it pretty quickly. The sunsets are incredible and so the days were just so relaxing.

We only went on one excursion through the resort and that was the horseback riding. You have to walk a short distance (don’t worry you aren’t in any danger walking to this place) to the ranch. There were 3 different tours you could choose from with the horse back riding. We choose the National Park (it was just a small beach). As soon as I saw the horses I was appalled because they were so skinny and their stalls were so full of manure. The ride was about 3 ½ hours and the guide didn’t tell us anything about the scenery, different plants, where we were or anything. It was the most un-enjoyable part of the entire trip. I would never recommend this unless you just love to ride and don’t care to know what you are seeing or that the horses look so sickly.

There is a street right outside of the resort that has a lot of shops that sell stuff. Mostly they all sell paintings and other touristy stuff (nothing that was interesting at all to us). The people that are outside of the shops are quite pushy and annoying, but no different than the different port stops when you take a cruise. There was only one person that was intimidating but still in my opinion there is nothing there to fear. We found a person in one of the shops that got us a taxi ride into La Romana for $40.00 US instead of the normal $50.00 US. We were told that taking the bus ride would take about 2 hours to get into town but it was only about 30 minutes away so we decided to take the taxi. We went to a store that was called Jumbo (it was like Super Wal-Mart). The prices were the same there as they were in the US. We also went to some small local stores with more paintings and other stuff. All in all to us there wasn’t anything to buy.

The staff didn’t speak much English (just enough to understand what you want). Even with the language barrier most of the staff was quite nice. We didn’t go there to make best friends with anyone. We went to another country to relax. They speak another language there so if you are going to have a problem with that then you might want to lean some basic Spanish or pick somewhere that caters to Americans. We went with an open mind and had a great time.

Helpful tips ~
~ If you don’t like to be hounded stay away from the tourist shops on the street outside of the resort.
~ If at all possible fly into the La Romana airport it will save you a lot of VERY stressful drive time from the airport.
~ Use the bottled water on your toothbrush (we used the soda water they had in the room since we don’t like that at all).
~ Hide the unused bottles of water and soda in your luggage if you will drink them later during your stay or you won’t get any from the maid the next day. Because you can get a cup of soda or water somewhere but you can’t get bottled soda or water anywhere except in your room from the maid.
~ If washcloths are a big deal take your own because they don’t provide them.
~ Take shampoo, conditioner, lotion, toothpaste as none of these things are provided in the rooms.
~ I don’t think that the staff is trying to be rude to Americans, but when you can’t understand one another it makes things difficult so don’t take it personal.
~ I know that it is “all inclusive” but if you are getting waited on a lot then I think that you really should tip. You really should remember that the price that you pay the resort does not go to the people that are waiting on you and they appreciate it A LOT!
~ Relax, have fun, and don’t go if the language barrier is going to be a problem.

As for us, I am enrolling in an adult education Spanish class in February and we are going back with our kids in April. We really did have a great time.

We flew into Santo Domingo and after a very scary taxi ride to the motel we arived at the Palace, check in was very quick, we heard stories from other that it took 2 hours but we had no problems in this area.
The room was average a little damp smelling but it is a beach resort and we realized that nothing dries there even when you hang it out side just because of the mosture in the air I guess. We all liked the food not all was great but being a huge buffet there's something there for every taste unless you are extremely picky, we found the palace to be better for breakfeast and the Beach to be better for supper, We tried the Chinese resteraunt The Bambu and though it was a little different than we expected very small menu, it did taste good (kind of chinese with a mexican twist, but good).
We did have a very hard time finding any of the staff that spoke any english, they seemed to speak everything but, so for the first couple of days we were a little lost as to activities, were shows were held ect... but soon caught on.

we stayed 2 weeks and caught maybe 8 shows, we thought they did a really good job with the shows and enjoyed them all. The Beach and water were absolutely beautiful and there is lots of beautiful fish right off the beach, just grad a roll of bread from lunch and the fish will be all around you, also bring your own snorkling gear this is the first beach resort we have been to that doesn't provide snorkling gear to use, and it is very hard to find to purchase because every one is trying to find it, also bring your own underwater cameras because they charge 4 times what you pay for it in the states, same with snorkling gear.

room service was OK we found by leaving a dollar or two per day you get better service and nicer touches like making swans with the towels and little things like that but nice.

The landscape was great the ground maintance crew worked very hard keeping it nice. If you are able to choose were your room is try avoiding area to left of pool I think that must be were the septic is because when we walk out of our room boy did it stink (did not smell in the room).

The activities team worked very hard trying to get people involved problem was the language barrier, we didn't know what they were saying most of the time, I know we are in there country, but most resorts like this occomodate all languages, I wouldn't expect a local off the street to speak my language but the funny thing is the locals we encountered on excursions, spoke it better than most of the staff.

We also had a huge problem cashing Travlers Checks, it states in the info packet I have there is an exchange bank on property, that bank is now closed and they will not take these check at reception desk unless you are paying for something and the shop would not take them unless you were spending a sustantial amount of money in there store example trying to cash $50.00 chk had to spend at least $25.00 because they didn't want to give change back. We weren't the only Americans having this problem, we bump into the very few Americans that were there and they all said the same thing. The resort told us to go to the bank down the road which is off the resort but the second you walk outside the resort gate there is a swamp of venders on you, very uncomfortable feeling, now you get to the bank and they would not cash it either, we didn't have a passport just a tourist card. We also had walk off the resort to do the horse back riding excursion that we set up with the resort, I just thought this was a little rood of the resort to put there customers in this kind of situation and posible danger the venders get very upset if you buy from one and not the other, if you are not used to this type of situation you probabley will feel a little intimidated.

Well here a simple list:

Positives:

Clean grounds
Beautiful ocean and beach
Good food and ok drinks there a little wild with the rum though.
Great shows
10 year old Son enjoyed the Eguanas (sp) ducks, Flamingos, and fish
Great snorling,
did 3 excursions they were OK (same problem with language)

Negatives

No snorkling gear to use (1st all-inclusive beach resort ever been to that doesn't provide this)
Language Problem (if they speak spanish, french, italian, they should have a few English speaking staff, just my opion)
problem with travlers checks (also 1st resort I have been to that I have had this problem with)

Not a bad resort but just keep the above in mind all in all nice vacation, I have been to D.R. before and may go back someday but I don't think to this resort.

We've spent 9 days in this resort. I'll start with conclusion: if it is your first/second trip to all-inclusive or you are 16-35 without kids,- then go for it, you'll enjoy it! The rest of us better check prices at Sunscape...The explanation follows:
Room: about 5, if average all-inclusive gets 6-7. Not enough furniture, the beds are uncomfortable, the linen are old and not changed very often.
Food: 3. No one of us belongs to "starving children of Africa" and idea of all-inclusive in my eyes is to provide at least average quality of food, not just "something to eat". This resort one of the worst in food quality and selection. If you like shrimps,-forget about. If you like good deserts- no chance. Of course no one is starving, but selection is very poor.
Service:5. I, actually, liked bar service- the barmens were very fast and proficient, not necessary nice. (Maybe they just hate Americans...). One of the fastest services in specialty restaurants. In other areas, the serivce uneven: some were really nice and some just looked thru you, as if they are federal/state employees (think DMV).
Beach: 9. No questions, one of the best,- plenty of shade, no need to reserve beach chair. While we were there jelly fish probably did not like the resort either and it was 7 cases of stinging.
Entertainment:5. Forget English, you won't hear it a lot. Nothing starts at specified time. The show with audience participation are better than at other resorts, but also it is more of them then usual and they really voulgar. The regular shows are average.
The annimation team seems to be concern how entertain themselves more then an audience. They also have some idiotic rithual at the end of the show... Most of them are not nice and behave as a real idiots...
In short, resort is in serious need of real management.
However, after the show there are dances on the street and sometimes another show on the beach. BTW, the food and atmosphere are much lovely at the beach part of the resort. The food selection is also better there. Basically, I don't know why Palace is more expensive, because definetly nothing set it apart to the better from the beach.
We are definetly not coming back. This is one of the resorts that I felt really un-welcomed. 75% are Italian, which actually were fine, 15% French, that also were ok.
So, if you like party environment, don't mind bad food and unadequate rooms, this is for you. If you coming to this experiense first time, please go, because whenever you go after it, the change will be for the better.