Riu Palace Antillas

This hotel was nice - the room was spacious and clean, staff was very friendly, pool was large, food was good and there were a lot of options for food and things to do. This hotel is definitely more for those who want to party and have a good time! If you are looking to relax and have some tranquil, quiet time, this may not be the place for you. The pool area starts serving drinks at 10am, which is the same time the music starts playing and the party begins. You have to get up pretty early to reserve a spot on the beach or at the pool (they unchain the beach chairs at 6am). Pool spots are usually all taken if you go out later, but you can almost always get a space at the beach, it just won't be under a hut. Dinner is first come first served and you need to be in line around 5:40 if you want to sit at 6. Food in the restaurants was decent - the Italian place was our favorite. The buffet is always a nice option as there is no wait and you have a huge variety of foods.

I just spent 4 nights at this location. It had some good points: l the liquor one could drink, and nice water at the beach. But there were two glaring problems: 1) Restaurants -- All the specialty restaurants do not take reservations. So one is forced to stand in long lines (sometimes an hour or more), and wait, or either eat at a time when one doesn't care to eat (it's sort of "now of never) because places could book up for the night, and not have enough space, and there was no way to know this in advance. So if you show up only when hungry, you could be completely out of luck. This could all easily be corrected by just taking reservations. But this resort refuses to do that. 2) No place to escape the noise -- To me, the entire point of going to an adult only place is that one should be able to relax in peace and quiet ... no screaming children. But this place, instead of screaming children at the pool, had loud thumping music at the pool, plus occasional hyper loud events, like water aerobics to somba music. They had maybe 10 people in the pool dancing, while the other couple hundred of us tried our best to ignore them. It amazed me the resort was willing to disturb a few hundred people just to get a few people to dance to loud music that no one wanted. The sound was so loud at the pool, one could not get away from it. I was not even able to enjoy the balcony of my room as the music was so loud, we could hear it thumping even up on the 17th floor (plus through the double-paned sliding glass door, so forget about taking an afternoon nap!). The only place I was able to get away from the bad music was at the beach. So I went there just to listed to the sound of the waves. I was sorely disappointed with they brought speakers, and started screeching with megpahone-like volume about somba classes on the beach. Fed up, I went and complained. The resort has a stage area that went largely unused. Why not hold the somba there where the rest of us were not forced to endure it against our will. I was told if they did it there, hardly anyone would show up for it. I explained that this should tell them just how many people really wanted it. All I got in return was a blank look, and a shoulder shrug. I complained to the resort management, and they did nothing ... not even so much as an apology. I've been to far better places that do give us quiet areas, so I would not recommend this place to anyone who wants to relax on their vacation.