Royal Hideaway Playacar - Adults-Only All-Inclusive

Very good service, beaches and pools good, beaches had daily seaweed removal, pools clean, service impeccable, restaurants all good, a bit slow takes time to eat,,, hibachi, not so much got some raw chicken after chef messing up order,, spa was good a bit overpriced, very secure feeling,, will be going back

The resort was fun and the views were amazing but the resort is starting to look aged and it is grossly understaffed. Also, to get a pool chair guests were getting up at 5am or could not get a chair. Not good!!!! The service at the restaurants was very good, as was the food. The pricing of the resort was very reasonable.

This is my 3rd visit to RH. I’ve also stayed at Iberostar Grande 4 times. RH has beautiful grounds and beautiful rooms. The staff is incredibly friendly. Food is delicious but on this particular visit, I found the resort to be woefully understaffed. Basic breakfasts were taking nearly 2 hours to arrive. No coffee refills ever. Lunch took up to 2 hours too. Room service also took over an hour. Our good natured group of 13 ate individually or in small groups and all experienced significant wait times and as expected, it was very frustrating. Additionally, I left my jacket in the restaurant one night. Four days in a row, someone new would tell me it was on its way, but I had to ask day after day until i finally got it. And finally, I was trying to book one group dinner. I sent 4 emails prior to arrival, starting 5 weeks in advance. I received no email responses and so I called. I got no help until a few days before the trip. Then, when we arrived to dinner, the head server said he didn’t have our reservation. I wish I could say I was surprised, but alas, RH Just has very poor communications. That said, we had a good time. Room was great. Beach was beautiful. Food was yummy, but next time, I might try Inerostar again.

This is our 2nd time back to Royal hideaway. It had been 14 years since we were last here and it was just as beautiful as we remembered it. However this is the first time booking thru Cheap Caribbean. The process was seamless and we waited a very short time before boarding our shuttle. David did a great job of helping us with booking and my many emails thereafter with questions. You do however at some point need to meet the rep from Amstar in the lobby to get your return voucher and he/she will want you to look into an excursion but we in no way felt pressured. The employees here are all are extremely friendly and want to accommodate you. Although tipping is not required, it goes against my grain to not tip when someone is bringing you drinks while you’re in the pool or sitting on the beach (even serving food). Honestly, we tipped everyone who provided any type of service to us and housekeeping and the turn down service were very good. I’ve noticed some people complained in their reviews about the seaweed or kelp. This is part of nature and there is only so much that can be done. The employees do their best to keep the beach area clean and it didn’t stop me from taking daily walks. The beach was breathtaking and plenty of patrons were splashing around and riding the waves. One feature that royal hideaway has on the beach that differed from other resorts we walked past was the cabanas that you could pull over your beach chairs while laying on the beach. I loved this because my husband can’t sit in the sun for long periods and this was perfect. The restaurants, lobby areas and any main areas are kept up impeccably and the resort is absolutely gorgeous. Our room was comfortable and very clean but there were a few things that should be repaired/updated to match the quality of the common areas. I would assume that’s the case throughput the villas. The reason I gave the beaches/pool a 4 star is because people are waking up at 5 am to reserve the special casita type cabanas as well as lounge chairs by the pool. There should be a better system in place. We weren’t as concerned because we honestly enjoyed the beach and the one day we did sit by the pool it was later in the day so we found two chairs together. There are people who leave their belongings on the chairs from sunrise to sunset. Perhaps they could have the concierge arrange for at least one day during your stay where a lounge chair could be reserved for you or force patrons to only have the chairs for a certain time frame. Lastly, I gave the lowest rating on dining. The resort doesn’t allow prior reservations for dinner so this must be arranged with the concierge in your villa as soon as you arrive. We had dinner at 9:00 pm the first two nites which isn’t the end of the world because food is available to you 24/7. There’s even a wonderful afternoon tea with bite size snacks from 4-6 pm and room service is wonderful. The real issue is that once you get to dinner it takes quite a while to get the server to take your order and the service can be very slow with the restaurant at barely 50% capacity. The dinner at Club Royale was very weak. I would not go back to that next time unless I eat beforehand. As far as Las Ventanas, we had reservations at 9:00 pm and we were starving. The presentation of the food was phenomenal, but the portions were ridiculously small. We didn’t want to wait a long period of time and order additional items so we ended up ordering room service late that night. It felt like the chef was trying too hard to be trendy and eclectic and forgot that patrons may be hungry. The Palazzo was fair (perhaps I’m being picky because I’m 100% Italian and cook everything from scratch including homemade gnocchi. The best restaurants for dinner in our opinion was Azia and The Grill. We didn’t go to Spices for dinner but both lunch and breakfast were very good there. I thought the breakfast buffet was very good and had a lot of options. Last but not least, the mixed drinks were excellent. The best one was the watermelon martini at Palazzo. We noticed the servers would forget to tell us about the dinner specials so make sure to ask. Overall this is a top notch resort and anything I did mention that needs improvement, would not keep me from returning.