Ocean Blue Hotel/Wedding Review - quite long

[vale]

Review

Ocean Blue / Sands Golf and Beach Resort

 

Flight

 

We flew from Manchester to Punta Cana, we flew with Thomson. The flight was very good, more leg room than most we have been on. What can you say about an eight hour flight, except that we made it through it!!

 

Check in

 

There were 7 in our party altogether, 6 of us and one other. When we got to check in they didn't seem to know we were coming, didn't seem to have any record of us, they had a record of the one other person, but not our party of 6. I was a bit concerned at this as we were coming to get married, I was thinking if they didn't know we were coming, do they know we are getting married. The member of staff that dealt with us on reception was very good, he looked a bit confused when trying to find us on the computer, as our reference number appeared to be for someone else but he dealt with it speedily and was very pleasant (I had read other reviews that stated the reception staff were unpleasant and rude, this was not the case with us). He asked us to wait while he sorted it out, he took about 10 mins came back to us and said they would give us all a room upgrade, so we weren't disappointed. We were in Villa 6, on the third floor which was good. He gave us our room key, we went to our cases, the bell put our room number onto our cases and we went to our rooms. Our children got on the trolley first because there wasn't any room for us. When the trolley took a while to come, we (my now husband and I) decided to walk to the villa. When we got there our bags had arrived and we went to our rooms. The rooms run on consecutive numbers i.e. 6307,08,09. So again we were please that we were all close to eachother, although 08 and 09 were on the other side of the building so our two older childre were opposite us but we had the better view of the pool and the sea!!.

 

The Hotel

 

The hotel itself is lovely, rooms were very nice and we didn't need any other bulbs in the rooms (we had read that the lights could be a bit dim, this did not seem the case to us). There was wear and tear in the rooms but again not a problem. One thing to mention once you have put all of your clothes away in

the dressing table drawers, don't open all of the drawers at the same time, it can tip up. Very stupid of us, be we managed to do this (you thinking why would you have all of the drawers open in the first place, well to be truthfull, I don't know why we did either but we did and managed to tip it up, totally our fault, not the fault of the hotel of the furniture). We didn't request anything speacial before hand but we got all we needed, two beds in each room as there were 3 adults in one room, two and child in one room and one in the third room. We didn't have a single complaint about the hotel. We also found the water pressure in the showers to be okay, and was always hot enough.

 

The Food

 

We pretty much used all of the a'la carte (sp) restraunts and found them all very nice, although I didn't go to the Mexican as I don't like spicy food but other in my party did and really enjoyed it. We didn't go to the restraunts that you had to pay for as we didn't feel the need.

 

Mexican - Members of our party that liked spicy food really enjoyed this restraunt.

 

Route 66 - We all enjoyed this restraunt, we went there three times in total and enjoyed all times, very nice, the service was good and the food was lovely.

 

The Italian - we tried this once, it was okay but we didn't go back there again.

 

Domincan Restraunt - This was where we had our wedding dinner, which we really enjoyed. We only visited here once.

 

La Brasa - The food was okay here, the starter of chicken wings was absolutely lovely but the main wasn't as good but we still really enjoyed it. The service here was really good.

 

The Buffet

 

We had breakfast here every morning and always found something to eat (well I ate the same thing every morning). There was lots of variety and all in our party could find something to eat, even my daugher whom is very picky. The have a section where you can choose your ingridents for omlettes, which i visited every morning. There was various other things like hard boiled eggs, bacon, and the normal breakfast stuff. The had a bread counter, different breads and rolls. You could also make toast for yourself here. They also had counters with lots of sweet things, fruit, croissants so there really was something for everyone. We also never had any trouble getting a table of getting coffee in the mornings. The service here was very good.

 

We went here a few evenings and the food was lovely, my husband seemed to especially like the chinese counter where you could choose your own food to put in it. They also had a pizza section, spaghetti section, meat sections where they carved the meat off the bone, cooked steaks and various other meats. Some of the days they had a fish sections but as i'm not a great fish eater, didn't visit it once. The had dessert sections with ice-cream which I visisted on every vistit (I love ice-cream). They had the normal things like chips. The had a selection of cooked vegetables, cooked potatos. They had

fresh fruit section at every meal. I've probaly left some things out but you get the picture, I felt they had lots of variety.

 

Snack Bar/Restraunt by the Beach

 

We tended to go here most lunch times as it was closest to our villa, the beach and the pool we tended to use. It was very nice. It had a selection of food, rice, chips, pizza, chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers, salad, fish and again ice-cream, which I had every time I went in there. Really enjoyed the food her as well.

 

The possible only complaint that I may have had was that my niece that came with us is vegetarian and they didn't have as much choice but saying that she never went hungry and enjoyed what she did eat, she would have just like a bit more variety.

 

Mikes coffee shop was also very good. It has a variety of tea and coffee and lots of cake to eat with your tea and coffee. A nice place for just relaxing out of the wonderful heat. We went in here a few times and enjoyed it very much.

 

Excursions

 

We only went on two excursions, the Monster Truck Safari, which we all enjoyed. I would recommend this excursion to anyone, this is the 4th time we have been on it (we have visited the Dominican Repulic a few times previously). We also went horseriding which we really enjoyed. This was only a two hour excursion (although from start to finish, this took about 4 hrs).

 

Things to do

 

There was a bowling alley, which had table football and pool also. They had a climbing wall, trampolines, archery, tennis, bikes. We went to the bowling alley and my daughter tried the climbing wall. They didn't try the rest as they like the pool too much.

 

On the whole we had a wonderful time, really enjoyed our holiday/wedding and would be happy to return here.

 

Review of the Wedding

 

Once we had checked in, I waited until the next morning after breakfast to see if the wedding co-ordinator had been in touch. As there was so much confusion at check in, I thought it would be best to go to guest services to find her. They managed to track her down on the phone and I spoke to her, she had an appointment booked with us for 2pm that day, so i breathed a sigh of relief, they knew we were here. I was thinking that if they didn't know we were coming at check, they might not know we were here for a wedding (paranoid I know but............)

 

We had the meeting with Massiel (I think that was her name, I don't think Julissa is doing weddings any more). She has all of our e-mails printed out (although there wasn't that many, we were only having a small one). She also had our translated documents from WEDO, which I heave a great sigh of relief. I knew they would be there, but as I hadn't had any confirmation from WEDO that they had sent them or the hotel that the hotel had recieved them, you do tend to look for hicups when there are none. Any way, we sorted out the flowers, the trio, where we were having our wedding dinner. We did originally want Labrassa, but someone had already hired it out as a private reception so we could'nt let us have it there so we had it in the Dominican Restraunt, the wedding co-ordinator suggested this to us as she said out of all of the restraunts, this one was the more elegant looking, so we went with her suggestion. For the flowers you have to pay before they are delivered as it it is cash on delivery, so we dropped the money off the next day. We also found out that our wedding was now at 3pm instead of 2pm, which we were pleased about also. We asked about the photographer and she said we had to deal direct with the photo shop, so after finishing with her we went there. We opted to have the silver option, you get 2 photographers, 100 photos - photos taken before, during and after the ceremony. We also booked to have it videod. Once we had been there, we went to the spa, I wanted to have the bride package. I booked that. So upto that point everthing was sorted.

 

The Wedding Day

 

On the day of the wedding, at the spa I had a manicure, pedicure, hair and make-up done. I was very pleased with the hair and make-up. I also booked for my three children to have their hair done, but wasn't very impressed with what they did, I could have done better myself. Once that was done, I went back to the room to wait for my other two girls to finish at the spa. Husband to be went to the best man's room to get ready. The only real hitch on the day was that when my daughter went to get into her dress, the zip broke. So, while my other daugher was doing the ties on my dress, my other daughter was in front of me so I could sew her into her dress. That was about the worst thing that happened, so really the day went perfectly.

 

The photographer came around 2:30ish to take pictures of me in my room and around the hotel. The other photographer went to the best man's room to take pictures of the groom.

 

At about 2.55pm, massille came to take us down to the beach, we finishe doing the photos around the hotel and got on the golf cart. The beach wasn't far, I probably could have walked there. Once we got the the beach, we walked to where the ceremony was going to take place. Whilst walking past the beach restraunt, I heard loads of cheers from everyone around, that was really nice.

 

We had the ceremony, it took around 15 mins, we had the champagne and then we took lots of photos on the beach. Once we had finished with the beach, we took photos in the grounds of the hotel. We probably finished all of the photos by about 4:30pm. The photographers that we had were great, especially Diana, she tooks lots of lovely photos.

 

Once all of the photos were taken, we went back to our rooms for a little while, just to cool down. As we were having our meal around 7:30pm, we decided to go bowling. So around 5:30 we went to the bowling alley and played until our dinner. Its was great fun, we don't have any professional photos of this but the ones we have, I think are wonderful. We had to have two lanes, I won on the lane I was on and the best man won on the other lane. We finsished this just before 7:30, so went straight to the restraunt for our dinner. I actually can't remember what it was that I ate, but I did enjoy it, and so did everyone else. We originally want to go the La Brassa, but everyone agreed, with hindsight, that we were glade where we went. We didn't find anything wrong with La Brassa, but we did prefer the Dominican Restraunt. After we had eaten, we came out and had to have a few photos done on the swinging seats, so we did. We then went over to the bar near the reception to have a drink, but we were all really tired and didn't stay there long. We went back to our rooms. This was probably about 10pm. We had had a wonderful day, I couldn't have asked for a better wedding, exactly how we wanted it.

 

You can see photos at:

 

Richard & Valeries Wedding 10-07-2008

 

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in contact.

[FYB87]

Great review! You guys looked like you had a wonderful time. Congratulations!

[Debs]

Great review, glad there were no problems (serious ones anyway!)

 

I believe you are correct in that Julissa had stopped being the WC just after we got married in April. But it looks like everything worked out just right for you anyway!! YAY!

[MelanieS]

Your pics on the beach are beautiful. Congratulations!

[GPBride2009]

Great review! And also beautiful photos! Those were done through "Tropical Pictures" Photography?

[vale]

Sorry for the late reply, not been on for a while, lots and lots of things going on at home. The pictures were taken by the resort photographer. Thank you all for all of your lovely comments.

[amberagd]

What a beautiful day you had! Thank you for sharing the pictures!