Overall our stay in Puerta Plata was enjoyable. It wasn't until we got home and discovered that our every single one of our credit cards had been copied, and that the thieves had run up over $800 in charges that we really began to reflect back on everything. Knowing that we were in another country we were VERY careful to make sure that our doors were ALWAYS locked when we left our room and that our information was hidden away inside of our suitcases (these cards were never used throughout our vacation and did not leave the room at all). This is why It didn't take us long to figure out that this was an inside operation. Someone had to have had access to our room, and know that we were going to be gone long enough to dig through our stuff and find each of the cards. When we contacted the resort they played the we don't speak english game, hung up on us multiple times and claimed that we were the only people who would have had a key. We knew this to be a complete lie as we had called maintenance one night regarding an issue in our room only to have them show up a few hours later (at about 11 pm) while we were sleeping and walk right into our locked room looking surprised to see us. What really got us is that these people really had quite the operation going on. They never actually took any of our cards. They simply rummaged through our belongings, found every card we had, made a copy with what we found out is a machine that will scan your card. Then they went on to duplicate it to make a physical copy that would scan leaving us completely unaware that anything had been touched. It wasn't until we got home and were slapped in the face with our bank statements that we realized how much damage they had done. What a DISASTER! - we had to cancel EVERYTHING, dispute all of the charges, and pretty much start from scratch. It was a terrible ending to what we though was an enjoyable vacation. Puerto Plata itself was great, but Puerto Plata village is a place that I'd recommend you stay away from.

We went to Puerto Plata Village for our anniversary with our children, 30 years anniversary. The place was nice but the rooms at the entrance, we were told not to go walk there, because they were all Dominicans in that section and don't like tourist on their section. Then later in the week, one evening we were watching the show, which was poor, they used their kids to make the show, and the Dominicans were loud applouding their kids. But the gate entrance lets anybody in without charging them they get same as you, they do not check them at the gate for knives or anything else they might carry or hide in the vehicles, so that evening four young donimicans came in, and you could see they were looking for trouble after a few drinks. We went to disco on property which buy the way sucks only Dominicans were there and and don't care about tourists. They have their fun. My son went at the back of property for some pizza and came back running, the four young men were after him beacuse he was with a Dominican girl that was on vacations there with her mom. He came in disco to tell us, my husband went out to see with my other son and they jumped them. They only defended themselves, one guy could of broken one my sons back he came from behing with a piece of wood but a couple we met saw that and the man bodycheck him. Thank the Lord. But they ended up spending the night in prison there not in cell because, tourist that end up in cell get beaten up by them. They finally came back the next day after me trying to get help from Signature travel. My son now has a big bump of forehead on account of that and they were traumatized badly. Signature could not get us out of Dominican unless we paid more money and would of had to wait . So we finish our stay, my daughter got her wallet stollen in the room, the manager lend us his car and there was a gun under front seat. He said for protection he needed it when he went to check on his house. So I am telling people to be aware of the dangers over there, beside malaria.
If you are blond and blue eyed watch the men over there they hide and watch you all the time. Always ready to rape is they get the chance. The age , the younger the better I was told buy a European mother I meet there, I even saw one hidding behind a pillar watching her 13 year old daughter. There are safer places in the world to visit.

i just returned today. april 15th after a 1 week stay at the puerta plata village beach resort upon arrival at 11 am i waited until my room was ready. this took some 45 mins or so the rooms were typical dominican musty smelling but clean. i never realized the beach was not on hotel property until i arrived. the complex is large and consists of three bars hotel lobby swim up and another located where the nightly entertainment takes place. i agree with others dario is awesome extremely polite and is always doing his best to entertain the vacationers. the food although choices were various was average at best!! it is the furthest of all hotels from the main plaza, so taking a horse carriage or using the bicycles is adviseable. i never really got the atmosphere feeling at this hotel and mainly because we had 135 french tourists and they are in my opinion very dry and not very out going. the grounds were clean front desk lacked enthusiam. all in all the weather was fantastic and that is something we all want on vacation. would not recommend this as my one of my top choices, and this was my fourth visit in 2 years to puerta plata

We have stayed at this hotel twice now and have not been disappointed.

The staff are friendly, helpful and multilingual. On our second stay, our room was automatically upgraded. The entertainment staff are also friendly, if slightly amateurish - but that just adds to the charm. A local dive school has a sales desk by the pool and also handles the beach towels (they lend you a clean towel per person every day and even accepted to swap our wet towels for dry ones when we got caught in a downpour). We went diving with them and found them very professional. We also went on the catamaran day cruise to Sosua to snorkel and had a great time.

The food was varied and good. There is a buffet restaurant, open for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a range of dishes served in self-service dishes and a grill bar where the staff prepare one or two dishes per meal on demand. The beach bar and restaurant is open for lunch and drinks until 6 and has a reduced version of the buffet menu on offer. Pizzas and hotdogs are served at 4 and 10pm if you are still hungry (which we never were). They also have three à la carte restaurants (chinese, mexican and italian), and as part of the all-inclusive formula you can eat in each one once. We enjoyed the mexican restaurant but the chinese restaurant is not worth a visit. The italian restaurant was closed during our stay.

The hotel's private beach area is clean and pleasant. We walked along the beach pas other hotels and thought that our hotel had the best beach. The only disadvantage is that you have to take a 5 minute golf-caddy ride (or a 10 minute walk) to get there.

The hotel is on a complex with several other hotels, a casino and a shopping centre. They will lend you bokes to use on the complex and you can get the local "bus" from just outside the main gates. Make sure that you confirm the price with one of the hotel staff before you leave as when you get on the bus, people will try to tell you that it is more expensive. When we were there, a trip to Puerto Plata was 20 dominican dollars. One driver tried to charge us much more but we stood our ground and he gave up (the fact that we both speak Spanish probably helped).

The Dominican Republic is not a destination that I would choose for a cultural visit but if you are looking to chill out and drink (free) cocktails, you can do a lot worse than the Puerto Plata Village.