Paulette Wallen-Jones
Google
June 7th, 2025 My group of 6 traveled from the USA - Baltimore & Arizona landed in Punta Cana & transported via Gringo Transportation excellent driving over 4+hrs to get here to Wyndham Alltra Samana for 4 days stay. I honestly wanted to give this place a 4-star, but it would be a blatant lie & not fair to others. The truth is for the 14+hrs total travel time & 4 long days here out of season & based on the food & available activities "its not worth it". We were told November thru March is whale watching & High season, so that's when this resort & Samana comes alive. I'm hoping to return in February / March 2026 for whale watching, so I hope that's true. We are here in June, so this is my review for this time: beautiful lobby, nice rooms with comfy beds & great air conditioner & hot showers, beautiful pools, and well manicured landscape. The overall flow & accessiblity to enjoy the resorts get 3-star, Beach 4-star, great swimming & minimal sea grass, gorgeous & lots of beach chairs but no umbrellas so direct sun can be tuff. The beach is government owned, so lots of locals showed up in boats on the weekend live music & laugher, if i knew Spanish I would go with them as they brought the fun & life of the party. The staff 3-star due to language barriers as they speak Spanish & we English it was challenging to communicate but they were friendly & kind. The BUFFET FOOD & all food here - 1-STAR HORRIBLE. That was the biggest disappointment. EXCEPT the fried chicken on 1st night that was good. IF you are vegetarian, there's lots of tomatoes, spinach, iceberg lettuce & pasta with ONLY balsamic & ketchup as dressing. No french, italian, ceaser, Thousand Island, ect.. I'm still stuck on ketchup 😒 being a dressing. Smh. The cake options were terrible, the chocolate cake was bitter from being burnt, others tasted like sugar-free or cardboard, not good. Overall the buffet was truly miserable, it should not be called a buffet bearly any food available, breads, miger selection food options, and was open only 1st night but closed other nights or open for salads & soups only & option to order entree from menu. I don't care how gorgeous an All-Inclusive beachfront resort is; if the food sucks & liquor weak please remove the word "All-Inclusive" and just say HOTEL with complimentary selected meals. My group was so hungry we were ready to check out 2 days early but after group meeting with the assist general manager and guest service manager, they impressed us by preparing a family style meal for our group with food items we requested; fish, fried chicken, red peas & rice, ect - it was good & we ate well finally. We saw 2 other groups get similar style serving & wondered if they had complaints too. Hmm??. I will say they are trying & so deserve another chance & since this was their slow season, I will return to give them a 2nd chance. Honestly, if you only want peace, relaxation & great beach, this is a really lovely choice be sure to land in Santo Domingo airport so only 3hrs drive time. Hope this helps.