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About
4.0
#8 of 17 all-inclusives in Puerto Plata
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Value
The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort Stretching along 1.5 miles of golden sands at Cofresi Beach, the jewel of the Amber Coast, lays The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort, the essence of a true tropical beachfront resort experience. The buildings are 3-Story Mediterranean style, amid the Caribbean influenced roofs and cobblestone walkways. All inclusive food and drinks.
Star ratings are intended to indicate the general level of features, amenities, and services to expect. This property is classified according to Giata.
The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
6,138 reviews
Getting there
Somewhat walkable
Places to stay are graded on a 0-100 scale. The higher the grade, the easier it is for travellers to find restaurants and things to do within walking distance.
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The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort offers a picturesque location close to the beach, complemented by scenic views and a vibrant atmosphere with tailored music and spacious outdoor settings. While some guests commend the tidy beaches and the selection of restaurants, others express dissatisfaction with the aggressive sales pitches and the run-down condition of certain facilities.
Reviews of the service and cleanliness are mixed, highlighting exceptional staff encounters alongside complaints about slow service and maintenance issues in rooms and pools. Additionally, concerns over aggressive timeshare sales, unexpected costs, and underwhelming amenities have led some travelers to question the resort's overall value.
Location
Beachfront
Atmosphere
Lively
Rooms
Uncomfortable
Value
Expensive
Cleanliness
Mixed
Service
Inconsistent
Amenities
Underwhelming
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What others have mentioned is very true: We all receive a VIP bracelet, but the color makes a big difference on what areas and restaurants you have access. The Lifestyle marque has several properties: Tropical, Cofresi, Presidential and Royal Suites as well as villas. You will have access depending on the color/level you have. This is the most confusing part. Everyone is called VIPs but it really doesn't mean anything. For example, we thought we had booked a room with 2 queen beds (Glad our friends didn't join us). Some of the beaches as well as bars and restaurants are only accessible with your level so don't expect that you have full access when they tell you that there are 10+ restaurants. With our level we could only make one reservation for our entire stay. However, the food is relatively good variety and consistent. We were told they would have veg*n options and they did, but rarely a protein. In a country where food typico would always include Frijoles, it was very challenging. The Pearl often had Quinoa and mushrooms. Indochine was amazing, but again, we were not "permitted" to dine there every night. If you travel globally, this place is a wonderful value. Set your expectations accordingly. The drinks are weak & or watered down, but would you really want to be somewhere that everyone is hammered by 1pm? The performances were amazing and included! We also felt the excursions were excellent and affordable (We went to the Damajagua Waterfalls and our friends did the The Cable Car Puerto Plata ). We also really enjoyed some of Spa treatments as well. The jacuzzi's are not hot like many cultures prefer. It was amazing to have access to the ocean front and so many different pools. Also, if you tip, the staff remember you and take better care of you. Honestly, I think we will find a different resort that does not allow kids under 18 or 21. Sounds like a parent describes some of this issue in great detail. I will add, most of the personal speakers seemed to be blasting music and were on the arm of what appeared to be underage kids.
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Date of stay: January 2023
Rooms
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Travelled on business
Room Tip:Tip your bartender and servers generous and earlier to get better service.
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management Team, General Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Jan 18, 2023
Dear guest, Thank you so much for taking some time to express your impressions during your stay at The Tropical. Your review and comments are very appreciated by us in order to improve our operation. Thank you so much for your opinion. Best Regards The Management
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This is really an all Inclusive resort. If you decide not to pay for it, it is very expensive to dine there and you have to pay at the Check In desk to make a reservation and pay ahead of time. We found 3 places to dine just down the beach on the road that was not as expensive. One was Mexican and the other was owned by a Canadian and Mexican couple. Our room had a fridge and coffee maker so we bought $40 groceries and it lasted 2 weeks. Sunday night is a huge banquet for all guests..... dinner, drinks and show. The beach was clean and we were able to go to other parts of resort by walking or by shuttle which came by every 10 to 15 minutes. There was entrrtainment every night and guests could go to any of the many restuarants... not just the buffet ones.eg, seafood, steakhouse, Mexican Indonesian, Indian. There are many pools and acitivities around the pool that was well organized and the staff were extremely friendly and accommodating.
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Review collected in partnership with RCI
Date of stay: January 2020
Value
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Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management T, Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Feb 18, 2020
Dear guest, Thank you for your review and for taking the time to write about your stay in The Tropical. It is of great importance to know our guests experience in order to improve our services. Thank you again for your detailed review, it is very useful for us to know your opinion. It would be a pleasure to host you again in the future. Best regards, The Management
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Check-in was fast, easy and everyone was really nice. Disappointed in our RM #4214. Received a room with a rusty tub and you only had warm/hot water in the AM. We always showered after the pool and the water was very cool making it hard to take PM showers. The maid did the room around 4:30, so we had to get clean pool towels to take showers. Bed was hard as a rock and very uncomfortable. I asked for padding and all they did was put a blanket between the sheets. Didn’t help! Space of the room was adequate but dated, location of the room was close to everything. Grounds are nice and the pools are beautiful. Pool water was freezing! Disappointed that they didn’t have hot tubs. ONLY hot tub they had was in the spa area and in order to use their “tiny” hot tub you would have to pay for spa services. Large area for the buffet, but the sales people “vultures” waited outside to grab you for the timeshare. They are very sleek at it. They tell you they want to give you the welcome package to follow them. All of a sudden you find yourself sucked into a timeshare presentation and all they give you is a bottle of rum/Mamajuana. It was a rainy day so we figured we’d stay and look. Of course, they show you the beautiful rooms, the ones you NEVER get! We couldn’t shake our guy, we even left to get some lunch and he followed us to lunch until I told him we weren’t buying (3.5 hrs later). They have specialty restaurants but if you aren’t VIP, you can’t go to all of them. Highly recommend the Brazilian. For 1 week they will only give you 2 reserved spots, however, if you go down to the office after 3pm and ask if they have any cancellations you can get more dinners. The resort is very big on VIP, so if you aren’t VIP there are so many places you aren’t aloud. Everyone we talked to that owned there told us NOT to buy. Every time they open a new section, the current owner’s level just got bumped down. A lot of disappointed resort owners. The beach is just okay, it’s not the white sandy and the water was. Small casino on site. We booked our tours w/Felix from Amstar at the resort and he was absolutely fantastic! Tours are almost half the price if booked on at the beach. We did the city tour with the cable car, and the dune buggy tour. Both I highly recommend. We also used Amstar for our transportation back and forth from the airport. I wouldn’t recommend renting a car, as the drivers there are crazy. For the price we paid it was definitely worth the trip.
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Review collected in partnership with RCI
Date of stay: February 2020
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management T, Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Mar 3, 2020
Dear guest, Thank you so much for taking some time to express your impressions during your stay at The Tropical. Your review is very appreciated by us and your comments very useful to improve our operation. We have taken all your observations into consideration and share them with the involved departments in order to detect possible shortcomings and opportunities for improvement. Thank you so much for your opinion. Best Regards The Management
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I'm not even sure where to begin with how terrible this place is. When I read other reviews giving it high marks I have to wonder what their standards are because this place is below par in almost all ways! First, one of the reasons we chose The Tropical was because they allowed us to NOT have the all inclusive. We are not big eaters and don't feel we benefit from all-inclusive resorts for the most part. When we checked in, after waiting in the wrong line for over 20 minutes, they did not tell us that without the all inclusive ($82 per person, per day) in order to eat in the restaurants we would have to pay a $60 flat fee per person for our dinner - regardless of what we ate. WHAT!??! We felt our hand was forced and paid the all inclusive fees because we didn't have a car to get off the resort to restaurants every day to eat. The pool and the "VIP" status was disappointing to put it mildly. The VIP status is a joke as far as we could tell. You were limited to 2 or 3 beaches and pools. The adult pool had no bar and none of the pools had any wait service. That was on top of the fact that people were up at 6:00 am putting towels on one of the 10 beds that were at the adult pool. The VIP beach was ok and had a bar but in order to get a bed with shade you had to line up at the gate before they opened at 8:00 each morning and race to get something. There's so much more that I can't add because I'm limited on characters. JUST NO - go anywhere else!
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Date of stay: March 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management T, Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Mar 21, 2020
Dear customer, Thank you for sharing your comments with us on your recent vacation at The Tropical. We can assure you that all of our clients’ opinions are very important to us because it is the more reliable source of information to improve our services and facilities. We apologize for any inconvenience that you might have experienced during your stay. Thank you for your opinion. Kind regards, The Management
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I stayed at the Tropical Lifestyle resort as part of a girls trip. Found this resort off of Groupon and it was a great deal. The Pros: The resort is has tons of pools and beaches. The resort is pretty large, you have the option of taking the shuttle bus to different parts of the resort or walking and exploring. The drinks were pretty good and the bartenders and wait staff were entertaining, as well as the evening shows.
The Cons: I don't think designers of the rooms in the resort thought the layout through. Each room has a standing shower surrounded by fogged glass, with a glass door. Few inches away is the bed. The key problem with this shower, is that the shower floor and the room floor are the same level, my shower door did not have a water tight seal so every time I showered water would trickle out. Leaving a big puddle everytime, regardless of how I turned or adjusted the shower head. I constantly had to request for more towels because of this.
When I checked in my room, the room had an odor and felt overall stuffy. I started sneezing but just assumed it's my allergies acting up being surrounded by so much nature. Rather than make a complaint about the odor I opted just to buy air freshener and give the room a good spray and let it air out while I went to the beach. The odor smell improved, but the room still had something off about it and it always felt damp. Once again o assumed maybe its humidity from me opening my balcony. The night before checking out I found the source of the odor and the damp feeling--MOLD. the walls were covered with Mold. I attached pictures for reference. So I am unsure if there was a leak somewhere inthe ceiling or walls, or it may be a result of creating a glass shower that not only does not have a water tight seal, but no real ventilation. Cleaning staff failed in this area, as the room was technically not cleaned.
The food was just ok. Quality of the food is not really a con, rather the reservation dining process is the con. There are a variety if restaurants that the staff raves about, but it's like next to impossible to get a reservation. All the restaurants are always booked. So you're stuck with the buffets, which the menu never really changes. Eating the same thing over and over again.
Aside from the mold situation, I would have given this resort a 3.5 in comparison to the other DR resorts I have stayed at. But factoring the mold I had to give this a 2.
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Date of stay: December 2020Trip type: Travelled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management Team, General Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Dec 24, 2020
Dear guest, Thank you so much for taking some time to express your impressions during your stay at The Tropical. Your review and comments are very appreciated by us in order to improve our operation. Thank you so much for your opinion. Best Regards The Management
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If you like to be fensed in inside a big camp with 2 star rooms this is perfect for you. For us as have visited near 60 countries and hundreds of hotels this was a disaster. The advert says 4 star hotel. Haha maybe 15 years ago, with our experience I would say maximum 2 stars. We don't use to stay at all inclusive resorts because the food in buffet uses to be bad and restaurants noicy. But here they say you have 11 restaurants and 9 of them alacarte 👍 fine, then it could be ok with all inclusive as costs 82 usd a day (all inclusive is mandatory) Oh, no, don't think you can use all 9 Ala carte restaurants, up on arrival they tell you you can only use Ala carte 3 times a week!!!! The resort is incredible big, you need to take the shuttle bus to go to the beach, where you just can stay at two small parts if you not are VIP member, then you Ave access to better beaches, more alacarte restaurants and facilities. The resort are fenced in and located outside everything, so if you want to see the country you have to take expensive taxis. To get in to city center it costs 40USD, Airport 50USD. Beaches around like 40-75USD. The Wi-Fi is free, but horrible, you are lucky if you get 5 mins a day. For us it is important with Wi-Fi when we are all ways need to keep contact with work. Forget about that. And what was worse, first morning a guy came up on us, asked if we wanted to get a guided tour to see plaves and what we can do with our wrist band (all inclusive) Nonono, it was nothing like what he said, we was more or less forced out om a tour to see time share properties and a meeting with two rude agents as was not nice. It took half of our first day... The only thing as helped up our stay a little was the staff as are incredible nice and helpful. But most of all Yesenia, this lovely, helpful, serviceminded woman saved the vacation from a total disaster. If you consider to go here, check the place if it really are what you hope. Their website aren't talking the truth
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Date of stay: February 2020Trip type: Travelled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management T, Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Feb 29, 2020
Dear guest, Thank you for choosing us as your holiday destination and taking part of your valuable time on posting this review of us in TripAdvisor. We very much appreciate your feedback, as it is through this medium that we are able to address guest issues and discrepancies. Please be assured that we have already informed your comments to all relevant departments of the Club in order to follow up and improve our services and operation. We would like to apologize for any inconveniences that you may have experienced; we sincerely regret that, on this occasion, we were not able to fully meet your expectations. With best regards, The Management
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Roof was leaking in bathroom called to get fixed told us to stay in the room until the maintenance man came, he never came and we missed out on the welcome party. Found cockroaches in the room as well, told guest services we wanted another room and they didn’t believe us and they wanted proof of all the problems. They did end up giving us another room but the whole situation a hassle. The resort itself is beautiful. The whole reservation system for dinner is terrible, guest services screwed up times multiple times and we missed out on the Brazilian steakhouse because it’s only open a few days a week. I would return but would only stay at the new rooms don’t stay in the older buildings I believe they are bldg 3 and 4. All in all the staff was pretty good, it was a little annoying that they hound you to buy into the timeshares but if you go on the tour they end up leaving you alone after that. The main buffet is terrible go over to the pearl that buffet is much better and the quality of food is 10x better than the other one. A couple of things need to change if I were to go back, the rooms need to be updated and things need to change with the guest services. Also tried to reserve a restaurant and I showed up. 10 min before they opened because we were about to leave for an excursion and they wouldn’t write my name down for the restaurant we wanted to go to, they told me to come back at 3:00 pm which I wasn’t able to come back at that time because we were still on the excursion, so we ended up eating at the buffet more times than we wanted to.
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Review collected in partnership with this hotel
Date of stay: February 2020
Room Tip:stay in the new building I believe are bldg 2 and 5 or stay at cofressi.
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management T, Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Feb 22, 2020
Dear customer, Thank you for sharing your comments with us on your recent vacation at The Tropical. We can assure you that all of our clients’ opinions are very important to us because it is the more reliable source of information to improve our services and facilities. We apologize for any inconvenience that you might have experienced during your stay. Thank you for your opinion. Kind regards, The Management Team
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Worst resort ever!! The resort is cut up into those who pay and pay and those who are trying to have a family vaction. The New Years Eve Gala was segregated with those who pay sitting above the common folk sitting down on the gravel. They try up selling you and getting to buy into there resort....but not one memeber I spoke with was happy with what they had. Apparently you buy in one year and the next the rules change and you loose ammenities but can get them back for a hefty fee. Be careful of this resort its like a ponzie scam for buyers! Had to call 4X to get extra pillows. In 7 days they put beverages in a fridge only 2x and that was after 6 requests. The pullout sofa beds are down to the coils. My son had horrible sleeps
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Review collected in partnership with RCI
Date of stay: December 2019
Value
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Trip type: Travelled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management T, Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Jan 7, 2020
Dear guest, Thank you so much for taking some time to express your impressions during your stay at The Tropical. Your review is very appreciated by us and your comments very useful to improve our operation. We have taken all your observations into consideration and share them with the involved departments in order to detect possible shortcomings and opportunities for improvement. Thank you for staying with us and we look forward to be able to welcome you back. Best Regards The Management
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Charged us 160$ for a special dinner for New Years dinner on top of the rate of the stay even though it's all inclusive. No name brand liquor, horrible food. 3$ for safe, 2$ if you lose your beach towel which is ludicrous, 2$ if you lose your room key. Staff was nice and ground were nice. Room was dated and old. Wouldn't ever go back. Maybe if they treated me as if they cared about me having a nice vacation instead of thinking of all the extra charges and pennies they could squeeze out of me, I would've had a better opinion of this place.
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Review collected in partnership with this hotel
Date of stay: December 2019Trip type: Travelled as a couple
Room Tip:Don't go there.
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management T, Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Jan 9, 2020
Dear Guest, Thank you for taking the time to share your comments with us. Let us apologize for not exceeding your expectations in some aspects of your stay with us. All your comments are very helpful to improve our services. Please be informed that in most of the All Inclusive resorts there are many services with extra cost and we are not the exception. There are also regulations that all the hotels have to be covered with the losses caused by guests such as towels, bracelets, fixed assets, etc. We would like to apologize for any inconveniences that you may have experienced and we hope to have the opportunity to host you again. With best regards, The Management
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The resort was really nice and extremely clean. The beaches were so nice and there were a lot of pools and they were really nice. My favourite part of the resort was the restaurants. They had 11 restaurants available and you were allowed to make a reservation for 3 nights of your stay. What was amazing is that you can get more reservations if you have cancellations. The food at the resort was amazing, which made it amazing for a couples weekend away.
With that being said, what made this a 3.5 star is that the service was not great. I literally had to write a note in Spanish in order to get the maid in order to get more bottled water, kleenex, beer and body wash. They only brought the body wash and the bottled water. The fridge was never stocked with alcohol, and sometimes they didn't always replaced the towels. The bartenders were amazing though, that was the only place where the service was consistently great. On the beach I asked for some nachos and they said that they did not have any, so I gave the server a dollar and asked her to come back after when I had a chance to look at the menu. Not only did she not come back, there were no other servers that came by, so I went up to the sushi bar and got myself some sushi instead. The servers on the beach were awful, there were one or two that would come by consistently but you almost had to flag a server down if you wanted any service. Even worse is that even if you tipped them, it's like they don't even care. There was also not a lot going on at the beach, it was a beautiful beach to relax and for a couple or family looking to relax it's perfect, but if you are looking for a more upbeat beach experience with party beach sports etc.. not the best place to go.
All in it it was a very clean resort, amazing food, great for families or couples looking to relax. With that being said, the bar and restaurants (buffet included) were the only places you got good service, everything closed pretty early (and opened early for that matter) and the entertainment was good but it was not a good resort if you are looking to party. I would go back again for sure with family to relax, but not if I was looking for a "fun filled" entertaining week.
P.S. Everything was really expensive (Ex. excursions were way overpriced (min $55USD/Person and they tried to charge $110USD/person for an hour long couples massage).
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Date of stay: February 2020
Value
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from The Management T, Manager at The Tropical at Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Resort
Responded Feb 13, 2020
Dear guest, Thank you for your review and for taking the time to write about your stay in The Tropical. It is of great importance to know our guests experience in order to improve our services. Thank you again for your detailed review, it is very useful for us to know your opinion. It would be a pleasure to host you again in the future. Best regards, The Management
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The property consists of about 5 different resorts -all under the Lifestyle Holidays logo. we were told there was 1 hot tub located on the property but we never found it. They have several round pools that look like hot tubs but they are actually just pools.
The levels give you access to larger rooms or villas, additional beach, restaurants and even an ice cream shop. The membership levels starting from $30K to over $300K as I was told. But apparently you can "negotiate" that to a much lower level depending on the promotion they have on that day. The membership does not buy you anything. It just gives you price guaranty for 30 years during which you can book as many days as you wish at the four locations they have. If you buy into the program that day you will get elevated immediately to that particular level. Personally, I would not purchase anything without first reading the contract carefully though.
As for the particular level you will have, it is between the tour company and the resort. The one we had is black, which seems to be a basic VIP level.
Grand Rapids, Michigan38 contributions9 helpful votes
No sadly that stopped with COVID the field that was used is soon to be a new development
They don’t plan to consider the party area to the south of their real estate store, it is being completed as we speak
They did not have the “Dome Customer Appreciation Party either” sadly the recent events has caused a reduction in their buffet food quality both at the Casablanca and the Pearl too
I rated it overall a 3 star now, this was our tenth stay and most likely our last
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