I stayed a the Riu Palace in Punta Cana, Dom Rep from June 20-24th, 2008. Do not be alarmed by the drive to a beautiful resort. The local scenery was very dirty and unattractive. However, the resort itself was very beautiful. My first impression of the room was clean but smelled like mildew because of the humid climate. Everything in the room was wet making a good nights rest uncomfortable. There was plenty to drink with alcohol in the rooms and a refrigerator to store additional items. The buffet was displayed very nicely but the flies sampled everything ruining the appearance. The staff was friendly at the resort until it was time to shop. They were very aggressive while tempting to sell overpriced and outdated merchandise making the shopping very uncomfortable and tiresome. Do not rely on off resort shopping. The experience was unfriendly and rude almost to the point where I felt as if they would physically harm me if I did not make a purchase. There was inconsistent pricing from guest to guest and the hospitality short-lived if you gave a sense of browsing. There were times when I was not given my change back and the taxi driver tried to charge my friend and I $20 for a ride to the next resort. With this, I would not advise leaving the resort without a male escort. There was plenty to do and much fun as you make it. I loved the pool area, the outdoor bar and the view. You may get hungry throughout the night because the 24 hour food in the Sports Bar was old and unsanitary. I would recommend the stay for the price but would probably reconsider because of some of the negative hospitality.

This will be a pretty long one (sorry)... but I utilize Trip Advisor so much and appreciate details details details... so here we go.

We stayed at the RIU Palace Macao 05/08/08 through 05/14/08. I booked a package through Spirit Airlines in January '08. In March '08 my parents decided to go with us. When I saw the package price had gone down by $300, I called Spirit Airlines. They couldn't give me a refund, but they used the $300 as a credit to secure a room upgrade and a ATV Excursion for us. (AWESOME!!). When we arrived at the RIU Macao, I did ask if our rooms could be fairly close together for convenience and they ended up upgrading my folks at no charge so we could room right next door to each other. What a wonderful start to our trip and example of their level of customer service.

Our rooms were really nice in my opinion. The "King Size Bed" was 2 fullsize pushed together with one big headboard..but so what?? It made for one giganic / enormous bed!. Yes, it was fairly hard, but I prefer a really hard matress so it worked out great. The woodwork is very pretty and there was a substantial size closet all trimmed out in the same mahogany. The stocked mini-bar and liquor dispensers were an awesome amenity. I removed the things out of the mini-fridge that we knew we wouldn't drink and just lined them up at the side of the dresser. The maids never removed them (I think it helped them remember that we didn't want them...and not think we had just drank them), but from that point forward, they only restocked the refrigerator with the what we actually did drink. It had a great balcony overlooking the pool with a couple chairs and a pull out towel rack where we hung wet swimsuits and shorts. We really enjoyed the balcony early in the morning with a cup of coffee waiting for everyone to get up and around... and then at the end of the day with a cocktail from our mini-bar, just enjoying chatting about our day.

The pool was small, but really nice. Since it is so small, I think people with children pretty much steer towards staying at the other resorts....all in all I think I saw about 6 kids total while we stayed there.

The beach was just beautiful. It truly looked like the ocean was illuminated from the bottom...it was that bright of an aqua. Even with full on surf / waves...it was still so clear that you could always see at least down to your knees or feet. In your first couple days, make sure you get up at least once early enough to run down to the beach to see the sunrise...I did not do it until our last day and really regret it...it was the most beautiful thing I had seen and I wished I could have started each day that way. Probably my favorite thing about the beach is that the RIU complex has done a wonderful job of making the beach look very "underdeveloped". With the groves and groves of palms, you can walk the beaches and never really notice the other resorts. Almost like you were on an very exclusive island. I love that... I hate walking the beach an only seeing nothing but high rise after high rise, and developement after developement.

I have to say the entire staff at the RIU Macao made the trip what it was - but a special note for:
Antonito:
A waiter at the poolside bar, was hugely entertaining. Very enthusiastic (I LOVE MY JOB!!!) and laughed and sang and danced his way through the day, making sure you were not in need of a single thing.
Leonarda:
A beautiful lady who seemed to oversee every detail. On day 1 she asked our room number so she could make note of our preferred dinner seating time. From that day forward, when I might come make a reservation or something, she would just look at me for a minute and then say: Rooms 3316 and 3317, correct? I was blown away. She was super efficient and yet, took time to visit with different tables as if we were the only ones she cared about. What a treat she was and such an asset to the RIU Macao - Bless you Leonarda!
Edwardo -
Bless our waiter, Edwardo....he was such a good sport, putting up with constant teasing from my husband and father... but he always had our table set up with our drinks almost before we even got to it.

A seemingly controversial topic: Yes, we tipped. We gladly tipped. The extra $15 a day is (in reality) a fairly minor expense during a vacation, but means alot to the staff financially. Note: If you take an excursion like the Bavaro Runners or ATV where you might see local children, it is so worth it to pack small snack ziplocks with candy to pass out (treats are obviously few and far between in their culture where money is spent on necessities and essentials of life). They were so appreciative and once you gave one out, they would hollar and I have never seen kids run so fast in my life. What a humbling reward to see such grateful enthusiasm in this world where most of our kids just act "entitled".

Some misc. details:
Per some of the suggestions on the forum, we took insulated mugs: 52 oz Bubba Kegs, and everywhere we went, someone wanted to buy them off of us. The bartenders were happy to fill them up for us instead of the small cups they usually make drinks in. One bartender said "more fun for you...less work for me!". You can get insulated mugs anywhere.. but the Bubba Kegs were just a hoot and conversation starter. We got ours at Sports Authority, but I have also seen them at Dicks, Gander Mtn, WalMart and Garts Sports. Walmart had the ones with a beer bottle opener built right into the handle. My husband enjoyed his 52 oz beer and I usually filled mine with ice out of the icemachine at the hotel and water. They worked great..even after all day on the beach, I still had plenty of ice water at night. To note a personal preference; If you drink cocktails with Rum - you might ask the bartender to use the White Rum (Blanco). The dark "house" rum tended to make several people in our party kinda naseaus by the end of the day...when we switched up to requesting only white rum...the problems disappeared. I think it is just more pure.

Dress Code:
Men were definitely required to wear long pants at dinner(we bought my husband linen slacks - lightweight and very "resort'ish"..he loves them) I did see them turn a ton of guys away over the course of the week because they tried to wear shorts to dinner.. My husband took casual loafers to wear. For the most part I can't say I noticed what people wore on their feet...We didn't take any chances on the sandals... but I don't know if they turned anyone away over shoes... and it was only Dinner, you can get away with pretty much anything for Breakfast and Lunch

Food:
The buffet was phenomenal... Next time we won't even mess with the ala cartes. They had about 12 buffet tables in the main room: each one dedicated to a specific "item": desserts (my moms favorite), icecream, salads, cold cuts, breads (which was awesome!), cheeses (my second favorite!!), a carving station, pasta station, seafood station, additional hot meat and vegetable dishes etc.....As for the Ala Cartes: The steakhouse.. well, we are from Kansas and are used to 1"+ thick steaks...we could have stacked all 4 steak on top of each other and still wouldn't have hit 1" . We didn't try the Japanese place, but several people we knew that did said it was awful.. one even got food poisoning. I didn't try the Caribbean Grill because I don't like seafood..but if you like calamari and such, others thought it was pretty good... but the buffet was awesome. For a more casual lunch - the buffet right off of the pool opens at 11:30 (I think) and it was a nice change of pace with pizza, salads, hamburgers and desserts. They had awesome (AWESOME!!)Bruschetta (toasted bread with marinated tomatos). We did that 3 different days

Souvenirs:
Caribbean Street is close for shopping...but very $$$$$ and the shops at the RIU Palace is neat but very $$$$. About a mile up the beach (to the right if you are facing the ocean) are tons of local shops - Bargain bargain bargain...you should get them down to about half what the original cost is. If you buy a bottle of Mamajuana... (you will hear all about Mamajauna from your reps...or ask the bartenders.. it is the Dominican Viagra ;-)) .. make sure you order a round from Anonito!! .. you can get a bottle in an engraved leather case that makes a pretty cool, authentic looking souvenir..BUT DO NOT FILL IT!. The local store owner told me I wouldn't get it through customs without filling it with the rum/wine/honey mixture.... well that makes a "open container" so I decided to risk it and didn't do it. Worth a note is at the PC airport... they didn't search the bag I had the bottle in (since it didn't contain liquid, I put it in my carryon bag so if someone tried to take it - I could argue with them about why). When I went through customs in the US, he stopped me and then let me go on "because it didn't have liquor in it"... I told him what the local sales guy said and he just shook his head. Note: there were several people getting their souvenirs confiscated at the Punta Cana Airport: Anything woven with "fresh" banana leaves (hats, purses etc)... because they contain mites (my dad bought one and they took it from him...and we laughed that they were just going to sell it again). Any open liquor bottles....etc.

All in all we had an awesome trip - was the most beautiful place I have ever been. Thank you RIU Macao and staff... you made our stay unforgetable!

My wife and I returned on June 16, from eight nights at the Riu Macao, with no good memories. We encountered a few problems from the very start. The first room they gave us was really messed up-with various broken things throughout the room. We were able to change our room within the hour, but the second one had problems also. Through the entire stay we were never able to get the A/C to work properly. There were other problems with the room, but we decided to stay after a long,long trip just to arrive at the Macao. To make this review short, let's just say that the hotel was at best a 2-3 star at best. Even though we were allowed to use three other Riu properties, it just seemed like there was nothing to do. We have been to the Dominican Republic two other times before and this always seems to be the case. We booked though U.S. Airways Vacations and did not have any problems with our flights. Our problems started and ended at the airport. The transfer people we had to use were terrible! The Turinter people were slow, lost, and unreliable. If you can, do not use these people. It took them almost two hours to get us to the hotel, even though there was only two other couples with us. On the return, they were early as usual, even though our flight did not leave until 4:30 PM. All the so-called representative did, was lie to us and try to sell any kind of excursion. Also the airport was a zoo, because no one behind the counter knew wht they were doing. So in conclusion, the hotel was okay and after speaking to the Assistant General Manager-who was a wonderful woman named Magnolia-a lot of problems with our room were fixed. We have not givin up on Riu properties, but we are looking for another island to go to next year. One inportant thing: men have to wear long pants any evening at the buffet, not the a lacarte restaurants, where we have stayed before.

My boyfirend and I styed at the Riu Macao from June 13th to June 19th. The overall stay is a 31/2 out of 5. We stayed at 2 other Riu hotels and we are fans but after our stay at this resort we ready for a change.

Hotel /Room Decor: OK, Style needs a little update. We had the best suite they offered- the 2 floors jacuzzi suite. One problem that we did have and was not warned about is the outlets. IF you are for the US, please be advised to bring outlets that can work with your appliances, especially if you plan on carrying radios, phone/caerma chargers, curling iron and blow dryer, if you do not something that can work with US appliances, you're out of luck. Lucky for us, after several attempts and complaints about this problem, a staff member went out of his way to get us a US outlet converter. Room was very well air conditioned.


Restaruants:
Riu Macao only have 4 specialty restaurants, which were all good, but don't expect too much variety. Like most all inclusive resorts, you have to make reservations early in the morning at a specific location of over the phone. But to our surprise you don't have to stress waking up 7'o clock to make a reservation, because not much people go, you can probably make a reservation 10am which is good for late sleepers. Buffet was ok, they have 2 sitting 7pm and 9pm, your choice, Men must make sure to pack long pants or ealse you will not be allowed in the buffet area. Also bring an umbrella, the 2nd day we were there it rained the entire day and there for no way to get the the other restaurants, so we had to rely on room service, which was also good ( 24hrs, we ordered cheese cake and cappacino every night) . Drinks are also excellent. All Day Miami Vice, Pina Colada , Carribbean Orange, all Martinis are good and don't forget to taste the island;s specialty drink, Mamajurana (see you in the morning...)

Entertainment: Shows for good. Piano performance almost every evening

Shops and Activities: There are a few shops on the hotel premise, on Carribbean Street, make sure to buy your souvenirs at the resort and don't wait to get to the airport because they have Nothing! There are alot of activites on the resort- parasailing, kayaking, boat pedaling, etc..

Staff/ Communication: Staff was very cooperative, and nice. Make sure you know beginners spanish if you are from the US, because most of the other tourists speak fluent Spanish and all the staff communicate a lot better in the native language.

Don't forget to Carry: Umbrella, converter for electrical outletand men- don't forget the long pants for dinner. Enjoy--- PS if you're considering staying at the RIU Palace next door go, although Macao is nice and probably better over that the Palace.