Stayed here five nights in late April for a girls’ trip and had a fabulous experience. My previous all-inclusive stays have all been at Excellence Resorts (which I loved) so I was a little anxious to try Secrets initially. It won in the end since they offer more double-bed options and some ladies in our group didn’t want to have to share a bed.
Room:
Stayed in a Preferred Club Junior Suite Ocean View Double. The room was comfortable & clean but felt a little tight. The closet is small and didn’t have enough hangers for all of our dresses. I texted our butler, Anibal, and he quickly had additional hangers sent to our room. There are drawers in the cabinets under the TV that offer more storage.
While the bathroom itself is large, it also felt cramped somehow. The double-sinks are nice and large but don’t offer a lot of counter space for organizing cosmetics and things. The shower is unnecessarily huge and kind of awkward: the door swings out, opening towards the bathroom slider, as opposed to the wall where there is a hook. So you have to open the door and reach around, dripping, to grab your towel from the bar or hook, then kinda shimmy around the door so you can step on the bathmat. I don’t know how to describe it better, but it’s a bad setup. But, it was clean and the water pressure was good. There’s a separate water closet with the stereotypical glass door you see at most AIs.
The mattress, pillows and linens were VERY comfortable. I slept wonderfully every night. The air conditioning and ceiling fan are powerful.
The patio lounge seat was comfy but the outdoor tub seems like a waste of space. Our room was at the end of the hallway so we only had neighbors to one side. Still, the outdoor space isn’t very private – and on the backside/hallway of buildings 8/9 you have a direct view to all the balconies of a few of the non-preferred buildings. So if you’re here on a romantic trip, keep that in mind when you’re outside.
Beach:
Loved the beach! Deep and wide with plenty of loungers and palapas. Soft, white sand. Calm, clear water. When you arrive at the beach, you can take towels and select your lounger(s). Interestingly, the staff don’t setup the lounger for you like they do at Excellence. You simply take your towels and go on your way. (Though I’m sure if we had requested it they probably would have do so for us)
Once you’re settled, a staff member will come by with an ice bucket with waters and a little flag that you can stick in the bucket or sand to indicate when you want service. Even without the flag up, they come around frequently to check on you and ask if you’d like anything. We had the pleasure of meeting Javier and Maria as our servers during the 5 days and they were both wonderful.
The beach bathrooms were very clean and constantly being refreshed.
A man will come by with a wheelbarrow full of coconuts and offer you one to drink. I really enjoyed this - Coconut water is so hydrating! Great way to start the day.
Plenty of kayaks and paddleboards available if you feel like paddling around.
The swim area is sectioned off from the open ocean with a big net. I assume to help keep out the sargassum. I’ve seen horror stories about the sargassum this time of year, but it wasn’t bad. Sure, some floated in and settled on the beach, but staff raked it up regularly. And then they carted off the piles, so it was never sitting around rotting and smelly.
Pool:
We never used the main pool. There was a bit too much going on – music and rowdy people. But it is huge and there are tons of loungers. The Preferred pool is really nice, albeit smaller. Much quieter. Never trouble finding an open sun lounger. The water was a perfect temperature; just cool enough to be refreshing but not chilly.
Food:
Overall, pleasantly surprised. We didn’t have the opportunity to try all the restaurants, but I’ll provide a quick recap of those that we did & which meal of the day we were there. Portions overall are quite generous.
Market Buffet (lunch & breakfast) >> Northing special. Lots of variety but quality to be expected of an AI buffet.
Rosewater (lunch & breakfast) >> Breakfast was good. Server Teo is a star!! We never waited long for our food. Lunch was also good but took much longer to get food.
Barefoot Grill (lunch): Grabbed some nachos and fish tacos in between beach time. Nachos were blah, the guac wasn’t fresh-made. Fish tacos were decent, nice and crisp fish with a heavy hand of slaw on top. Took forever to get service / food.
Beach pop-up (lunch): Dominican day, they had a selection of rice, some fried chicken and pulled pork or chicken sandwiches. I had a pulled chicken sandwich and some rice and beans. The chef grilled the bun, warmed the meat on the flattop and served. Very good. I would have appreciated if they had a salad or veggies to go with everything.
Seaside Grill (lunch & dinner): Good food. Fair warning – coconut shrimp is NOT the crispy, golden fried shrimp you are expecting. It is grilled shrimp with a coconut milk based sauce. Very good, but not what I intended to receive. Serve yourself some Mai Tai at lunchtime (there’s a jug of it by the restaurant entrance), it’s delicious. Had steaks at dinner and they were all cooked as-ordered and well-seasoned.
Portofino (dinner): Delicious. I had salmon (mid-rare) and was shocked at the quality of the fish and how perfectly it as cooked. Others in the group has chicken parm and lasagna and all were equally impressed. Loved the ricotta cheesecake dessert.
Himitsu (dinner): Just okay. Had a regular table, not the hibachi experience. Apps (gyoza & spring rolls) were great but my dinner was underwhelming. Ordered the beef pad Thai. It was far from pad thai. I received linguini noodles in a gelatinous sauce with some chunks of beef and veggies tossed in. Weird. One person in our group got the shrimp pad thai and the shrimp was very overcooked. Others had salmon and said it was good. The fried ice cream dessert was the star of the show.
Bordeaux (dinner): So good we went twice. First time around, I had the beet starter following by beef short ribs with mushroom risotto. Really delicious. The beef was so tender and the flavor was outstanding. Second time I had the salad and filet of beef. Both awesome again. The beef was cooked as ordered (mid-rare). We also got a couple orders of the fried camembert and it was so rich and tasty. The crème brulee is good but the chocolate fondant is incredible. It’s like a molten lava cake and the vanilla ice cream that accompanies it is so incredibly creamy and good.
Service:
Excellent. Everyone we interacted with as kind and helpful. So many servers and bartenders seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves and their interactions with guests. Housekeeping and turndown service were prompt and efficient. The room was always well-stocked with bottled water.
I liked how in the app you can pre-schedule room service. So every night before bed I would schedule a pot of coffee to be delivered at 7:30 am. They were always on time, usually early. This resort had a box (like Excellence does) where if you have your ‘do not disturb’ set, they will just deliver your order into the box from the hallway. There’s a cubby in the closet you open to then retrieve it.
The common area bathrooms were constantly being cleaned and refreshed. In fact, all common spaces were immaculately clean and well-kept.
Random Stuff:
Bring sunscreen. I was shocked they didn’t have complimentary sunscreen available at the beach or pool concierge stations. (Excellence does, along with after sun cream and eyeglass cleaner)
I received a few mosquito bites, but wasn’t pestered enough to need to use repellent. They DO provide insect repellent spray in the rooms.
Nice mix of evening entertainment but odd choice of venue. Most of it was setup in the main lobby, there wasn’t a lot of seating. There is a theatre on the property (on the far side of building 1) that we didn’t even know existed until our third night. And even then we had to ask where it was.
Very quick ride from the airport, maybe 15-20 min max. I booked through Costco Travel because it was the same price as booking through Hyatt but included roundtrip transfers. Was a seamless process.
Arrival at the resort was kind of chaotic. Not sure if it’s always like that or if we arrived at a particularly busy time. Once we got to the Preferred Club check-in area it was calm.
Overall a great, relaxing trip. However, given the price, I’m not sure I would choose Secrets over Excellence again in the future (especially if it were just me and my husband). For what we paid for a pretty basic ocean view room at Secrets, you can get a large 2-story ocean view suite w/ a plunge pool at Excellence.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Edit: My bad, there was a typo in my room view captions, was building 8, not 9.