The Excellence Resort in Punta Cana should be renamed the mediocre - a travel horror story
Nothing gives me greater pleasure than going out into the world and sharing my experiences with you. While the positive stories are great and hopefully inspire you to take on some of your own adventures, this one is a bit of a cautionary tale.
My husband and I had never been to the Dominican Republic, but we constantly hear people, ranging from mine own mother to countless black folk on the innanets, raving about Punta Cana and the all-inclusive resorts.
For the avid reader of this blog, Bae and I have already experienced the good the bad and the ugly of resort-style vacationing, but figured that if we did something all inclusive, we would have a better time. And to be fair, the reviews online lavish most resorts with gratuitous praise. So we worked with Delta vacations for the first (and likely last) time to book a week-long vacation for the two of us.
Although I still had to work, I figured that as long as I had a good drink and internet access, I would be ok.
I have never been more wrong in my life.
The trip started with a decent business class flight to Punta Cana where we were met by a Delta vacations representative who brought us to the “excellence resort” at the very edge of Punta Cana. My first warning should have been the cheesy-ass name, but I figured between the 4.7 out of 5 average star rating and the seal of approval from Delta, any hotel bold enough to name itself “excellence” was worthy of the name.
To be fair, in the middle of hurricane season, it was completely sold out. Per my standard practice, I tried to upgrade the room but couldn’t because there wasn’t an empty room in the whole hotel.
When we arrived at around 3pm, we were greeted with a glass of (burned) champagne and were asked to wait about 15 minutes to check in. At check in, we were asked to grab some food while the room was receiving its final touches.
This was exciting - free food and booze awaited us in a room reminiscent of an upscale Golden Corral. My husband was not amused by the aesthetic but I remained hopeful as I told him I’d make a plate reflecting the variety of options in this buffet which included an unattended sushi station where the sushi had very obviously been sitting outside a few minutes too long, ditto for the pizza and the hot dogs and the burgers and the attempt at Asian fusion cuisine. I had made my way around this place and had found nothing edible except the fresh fruit plates and the desserts. One of the waitresses, who was one of the only people who was actually nice to us, asked us for our drink orders. To my dismay, the resort didn’t offer Bahamas Mamas (should’ve known then) - so we ordered strawberry daiquiris that tasted like bottom shelf booze with way too much sugar and a splash of what tasted like watered-down Hawaiian punch. They could’ve at least given us red cool-aid …
Whatever - it’s just day one - it’s just the first hour - we were tired and cranky and needed to take showers. So we left the inedible buffet station to retrieve our luggage and our room keys. The room, to our dismay, was a 10 minute power walk from the front desk to the very last building in the resort. We walked inside and we were greeted with the faintest smell of mildew that we later realized emanated from the bathtub situated in the middle of the room. Closer inspection of the tub revealed green stains encircling nearly all of the water jets along with leftover hair from the last person who used it.
Now, this would be disgusting in any situation, right? But what made it infinitely worse was that the bathtub sat mere feet away from the bed - always within our line of sight. We couldn’t ignore it even if we wanted to. So we immediately called the front desk to ask for someone to clean it. They said sure, but no one came.
A few friends who live in Santa Domingo joined us for the weekend. What made me sad but also gave me a tiny bit of solace was that they were having a very similar experience at the resort. One friend had lizards and cockroaches in her room. She’s a better person than me because I would’ve burned the whole place down had I seen a cockroach. Hell nah!
And the food only got worse as time went by. For dinner, we all went to the beachside restaurant. There are no reservations, but we had to fight to get the free table with the view because the waiter was saving it just in case someone was there on their honeymoon. To be clear, the restaurant was first come, first served, but they were holding a table on the off chance that someone would be there on a honeymoon? Needless to say, we got the table with the view which is the only positive thing about this restaurant. The service, at this restaurant and throughout the resort, was, in the King’s English, shitty. And we tipped! The food came out and hardly anybody ate what was on their plates because it was inedible and the drinks got worse with every order.
We all decided that the first day was a bust, but we would spend some time at the beach and at the pool, and things would be better.
Baby when I tell you that the best day at the “excellence resort” was the first. We got up, and couldn’t find anywhere else to eat at this all-inclusive resort other than the beach side restaurant from the night before. It didn’t disappoint in how disgusting the food was - so at this point, I’m fucking h(a)ngry- all I want is something edible to eat and a cocktail. I’m so mad and things are going so badly that after breakfast, we decided to cut our vacation short, leave the resort and go on vacation another time. Because if I stayed another day, I was gonna die of hunger.
To Delta’s undying credit, they got us a flight out on day 3 of the would-be 7-day vacation for about 100 dollars. The catch is that I would have to talk to the Delta representative at the hotel to arrange the ground transportation back to the airport. I kept asking why they couldn’t do this for me over the phone since they are the travel agency. Turns out, this was another ploy to ply more money out of our pockets. The Delta rep at the hotel made a group of us sit through an hour-long sales pitch for various excursions that nobody bought because we were all there to set up our departure times. So - yeah - delta vacations, it’s curtains for you too!
Having secured our imminent departure, I went to the bar and ordered the simplest drink - a gin and tonic. If you’re being lazy, it’s literally two ingredients: gin and tonic. Do you know I got this long drink and had to spit it out. They used some unknown rail gin and flat tonic so what I consumed tasted more like amoxicillin.
Now that day 2 was the penultimate vacation day, we tried to make the most of it by heading out to another beach bar to enjoy the time with our friends. Lunch time was approaching and this little boite de nuit offered a smal buffet featuring chicken tenders, French fries and pizza. Only the best for the weary travelers at the excellence resort.
I wasn’t mad at the food. It prevented me from going hungry even if it wasn’t tasty. However, I was inconsolable when the people serving us all crowded around this guy and his pet monkey. The guy offered everyone the chance to pet the monkey - our servers all rushed over to pet the monkey with their bear hands before coming back over to us and asking us if we wanted anything more to drink. Not one of them washed their hands. Not. One.
Dinner was okay, but it made me and one of my friends sick hours before I needed to get on a plane which is the worst feeling ever. So I went back to the room and awaited our imminent release from this living hell.
Perhaps the only interesting thing about this resort was the free porn in the rooms. This seems gratuitous given the availability of porn on the internet, but maybe this is one of the perks of the excellence resort? Free porn, bad liquor, even worse customer service, inedible food and nasty rooms.
But that’s not the end of the story. We had tipped literally everyone, but someone stole money from my wallet in the hotel room. I should have put it in the safe, but still, I believe this is the first time someone stole something from me. I reported all of this to the hotel manager who was shocked that we were leaving, but could not come up with any way to compensate us for the miserable trip.
We made our way to New York and then got on our connecting flight to DC where our horror story continued. We sat in first class next to a white man who had taken off his shoes, and had put his feet up on the chair in front of him. He was very obviously extremely drunk as he noticeably slipped in and out of consciousness. This passenger, who was sitting in front of not one but two delta pilots, then began to spit unnatural amounts of mucus onto the bulkhead. My husband, who was sitting closest to him, signaled the flight attendant to do something about the situation. She said that security was on the way. In the meantime, this man had gathered all of the mucus in his body and spit it out clear across the aisle onto the mercifully empty seat next to him. At this point, I’m now calling this out and demanding he be removed from the plane. Security comes five minutes later and escorts him off, but because of this fiasco, we all had to wait another hour to take off.
We arrived home battered and bruised, vowing not only to never return to the excellence resort, but to never return to Punta Cana. Because if that mediocre-ass resort got 4.7 stars AND was on the more expensive side of the spectrum, can you even imagine what the others are like?
Always keeping it real,
The trendy one
