My week at Hard Rock Hotel Punta Cana
- nicole5208
- Aug 29
- 8 min read
What a way to kick off summer, taking my family to an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic! My husband, 2 daughters, and close friends all really had a good time on this vacation. There were 8 of us, 4 adults, 4 teenagers, and I think we selected a great resort to keep all of us happy. Us adults have enjoyed several adults-only all-inclusive resorts together (best friends since high school, we're pretty lucky) but this is the first time we've taken our kids along. I'm very happy we did, but I'm also very happy we waited until they were teenagers, at least at this resort. Let's just dive right in...
Dominican Republic - airport & transfer to resort
I'm going to be focused on the resort specifically, but I would be doing the DR a disservice if I didn't mention how impressed I was with the Punta Cana (PUJ) airport, wow! Beautiful, clean, quick, even customs and immigration were amazing! They had facial recognition stations for our passports and friendly staff waiting to help my kids. Safety & security personnel were both inside the airport and outside near shuttle pick-up zones. None of us were ever hassled by a vendor; however, there were the occasional 'helpful' staff wanting to manage our luggage for tips.
The drive to the resort, though not exactly scenic, was still nice. I have been to other tropical locations where the ride to the resort is either through the poverty side of the location, very windy and fast, or both. This ride was much more enjoyable, and I'm glad it didn't scare my kids from the start, especially because my youngest gets motion sick rather easily. So, for a first-time visit to the Dominican Republic itself, I was already happy.
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Punta Cana - overview
First off, this resort is HUGE! The Hard Rock Hotel line has several resorts, mostly in Mexico, but this is their largest and is located in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. It's also why we chose it. Of the 4 teenagers traveling with us, we had 2 girls and 2 boys, so we needed a good selection of activities. The drive to the resort was right around 30 minutes, so not right by the airport, but not too far either. Traffic was okay, and like I said earlier, the shuttle was pretty well driven. When we pulled up, the main entrance was backed up with others checking in. What was great, instead of making us wait, they took us to the "groups" entrance and checked us in there! Nice! We had a little bit more of a walk to our room, but we expected to be walking a lot more than usual in such a large resort. Some quick facts for you:
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Punta Cana
1,775 rooms
9 restaurants
23 bars
45,000 Square Feet of Gaming Space (yep, a casino)
Spa & nightclub
Hard Rock Golf Club at Cana Bay (its own neighboring golf course)
Large beach
13 pools AND a waterslide park
Our room - Rock Family Suite (One Bedroom) King Bed
We are not too shy to admit that, as a family, we like our space. So, when we are selecting our room style, we will always go for bigger rooms, rather than rooms with fancy views. The same goes when we are selecting the resort. We don't mind an older resort, more in the moderate range of amenities, if that means the room styles have more space. That's just our preference when considering our budget. Disclaimer: I'm VERY different when I'm traveling as an adult without kids and when I go to Disney. Those types of trips fall into completely different categories for me, and I have different preferences for those. So yes, I'm complicated.
Our room was set up perfectly! We had two rooms, separated by a French-style pocket door. One side was the master suite, a king bed, a bathroom with double sinks, a couch with a pull-out bed (our room accommodated up to 6), and plenty of room. The other side had a table with 6 chairs, a mini bar with sink, a sectional with another pull-out bed, and a second bathroom with a shower. Both sides had sliding glass door access to our deck as well.
The mini bar was stocked daily, without fail, and our room was always cleaned before we felt we had to request it. Amenities within the room were readily available, easy to request more, and of pretty decent quality. Room service was hit or miss on promptness, and the food quality wasn't fabulous, but it wasn't bad either. A few things about the quality of the room definitely dropped this resort from luxury to more moderate. One of the sliding glass doors would not fully shut, and therefore, our air conditioning had trouble keeping up. We requested a repair, and a nice gentleman informed us that the door would need to be replaced. Switching rooms was not presented to us as an option; however, I would have insisted on one if it had been that bad; it wasn't. Keeping the curtain pulled in front of it did the job.
The fun - beach, pools & activities at Hard Rock Punta Cana
The beach is gigantic at this resort! The sand was nice and soft, and we lucked out with great weather. There were lounger chairs readily available, and we freely moved them to different locations to grab more shade as the sun shifted around. We liked being near the food/drink truck, but we had another option of a bar right in the sand. My kids got very good at ordering their 'kids' daiquiris and Miami Vices. My only complaint about the sand is it was unfortunate how many little pieces of garbage were in it. I definitely wouldn't consider it a poorly kept beach, not at all, but I did notice this aspect. I have not noticed that at other beaches I've visited. Then, our one piece of very bad luck was the sargassum was quite bad while we were there. It was racked and cleaned into a small bank, but not removed, so for our first beach day we dug a path past it to get into the ocean water. Then later in the week, there was an especially bad day where none of us even wanted to be in the water. However, of course, on our final day there was none to be seen, and it had all been removed! lol. That's just how it goes, and we fully expected it to be a risk. We enjoyed ourselves regardless. Nature has its way of trying to butt in on vacation; I encourage everyone around me to make the best of it.
The pools were good. Nothing fabulous, plenty to choose from, pretty decent service to our chairs and in the pool, all different sizes, and each themed with different music. They were clean, the right temperature, and well maintained. My group of 8 are creatures of habit and we found ourselves liking one or two particular pools and gravitating to them more frequently. But we did have 11 to choose from! Well, technically only 8, as 2 were exclusive to guests booked in the VIP rooms, and one was an adults-only pool. But seriously, 8, we had NO complaints! Then I will add that there was a kid's pool, lazy river, and a water park. The kid's pool looked pretty good, though our kids were way too old for it, so I checked it out from afar. The lazy river, ahh, well, I don't like to complain, but ick. It was more of a donut of water circling a restaurant. My daughter and I were less than impressed, so none of us spent any time there. And the water park, Rockaway Bay, was only okay as well. Nothing special. A few waterslides that were kind of cool once or twice, so a nice half day adventure.
More fun...WELL...Surf-rider surfing simulator, laser tag, escape rooms, shopping, gambling (adults only), mini-bowling, and mini-golf. Geez, I had kind of forgotten all we got to do in that week! Phew. There is a nightclub at this resort too, but we didn't check it out. Take note, all of those activities were an additional cost. This is always the trick to all-inclusive resorts, pay attention to when they indicate activities are not included in the price.
Restaurants and Staff/Service at Hard Rock Punta Cana
The food was pretty good! The best way I explain our experience with the food is, well, a wide range?! I'm not a picky eater and easy to please when it comes to food (just as long as I get what I ordered), but I will say after eating with all 8 of us, the food was only good. Not grand, not terrible, just average. A few of us had one absolute terrible meal; a few of us had one amazing meal we ended up ordering twice; and then a few of us were just 'meh' on everything we ate. I would love to enjoy this resort again, but it won't be for the food quality; however, the variety was amazing! From Italian to Mexican to Brazilian to steakhouse to sushi to an absolutely amazing buffet (YES, the buffet was great!) we did NOT get bored. As a matter of fact, my kids still talk about how great the buffet was at this resort! And if you are not an all-inclusive frequent flyer, you should know typically the buffets are the restaurants to avoid. Nope, not at Hard Rock Punta Cana! So, as you can tell, we really had a wide variety of opinions when it came to food at this resort.
I would say the service we received was also within a wide range of poor to wonderful. I will start by saying both this resort and this island thrive on tipping. Offering up a tip to almost anyone got us a smile and better service. I touched on our service within our room already, but I didn't add that we always left a tip for both housekeeping and the mini-bar attendant each day. Personally, I do think that helped our experience. Now, when it came to the restaurants, bars, poolside, snacks, etc., it just really varied. The coffee shop had a barista or two who simply didn't know how to smile. One or two of the restaurants were really slow. The bars had relatively quick service during the day, but nighttime...well, that wasn't great at all. We were there for 7 full days, and if I had to throw an average on it, our service was good to excellent for at least 5 of those days. Considering the price that we paid, I settled on being okay with that.
All-inclusive resorts can really play a toll on a human who works at one. This is where I'm going to get into why I was happy I waited until my kids were older to visit this particular resort. The rudeness factor of the fellow guests/crowd was top-notch while we were there. It made me very sad to observe such high expectations put upon the staff by other guests. The resort was packed during our stay (Memorial Day weekend, high school grad parties; you get the idea), and like everything else around us, they were understaffed at times. Patience is necessary at all-inclusive resorts, too, and kindness went a long way for our group of 8. Considering some of the things I observed, I didn't have a complaint if a server was a bit short with me. Humanity baffles me sometimes, and my daughters learned a lot. I simply refuse to say the service was not good at this resort; it was just fine!
Overall - yes, I recommend Hard Rock Punta Cana!
We had a great time! Lots of fun, good food, cool drinks, soft sand & plentiful sunshine. We came home good and relaxed. I plan to recommend this to all families with pre-teen kids or older. And I also plan to recommend that adult-only trips shy away from this resort. I have tons more insider tips on room location requests, golf cart rentals (for transportation around the resort), restaurant reservations, and activities reservations. You don't want to read about everything here, so get a hold of me! Trust me, you'll like having a travel advisor help you with this resort.
Email me - nicole@partofthatworld.com
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