.png)
PUNTA CANA
April 29, 2022
Another trip, another flight with my good pal, JetBlue. We took off from JFK at noon and arrived in Punta Cana around 3:20 PM. As per usual, I never book transfers in advance, so I ordered an Uber to the airport. Here's the issue with this, though: once I left the inside of the airport, I lost wifi and could no longer communicate with the driver, but I wasn't able to see if he had arrived unless I was physically outside of the airport. After nearly 30 minutes of in-and-out communication with the Uber driver, I finally spotted him and we were able to get on our way to our resort, Majestic Mirage Punta Cana. The ride cost $15 USD.
When we arrived, it was still early enough for us to hopefully get some beach time in, so we were eager to get through our check-in process as quickly as possible. We met our butler and were shown to our room, where we ended up waiting almost 40 minutes for our suitcase to finally arrive at our door, causing us to lose the daylight we needed to lounge on the beach.
​
We got dressed and went off to dinner, a little peeved about the beach situation. After dinner, we got drinks and hung around the bar for a bit, trying Mamajuana for the first time. It was stronger and more bitter than we expected, and neither of us could finish it. After a little bit longer of drinking, we decided to head back to our room and get ready for the next day.
Pina Colada and a marg to get D.R. started off right.
Pina Colada and a marg to get D.R. started off right.
Daily Details
Hotel: Majestic Mirage Punta Cana
Playa Arena Gorda, Carr. El Macao - Arena Gorda 23000, Punta Cana 23000
April 30, 2022
The sky was cloudy this morning, but that didn't stop us from trying to maximize our time at the beach. We grabbed breakfast, then went straight to the beach bar where we ordered two caipirinhas: passion fruit for me and lime for Jarren. We laid out on the beach for a while until it started raining, then went back to our room to get ready for an early dinner.
Dinner came and went and it was still raining. With nothing to do, we decided to head to the coffee shop to take a break from all the alcohol. When the rain didn't stop and the entertainment didn't start, we retired to our room to try again tomorrow.
May 1, 2022
Another rainy day. We originally had plans to go golfing, but had to curb them because of the weather. We headed down to get our covid testing done, then grabbed breakfast at the buffet because it was the only breakfast restaurant whose path was completely covered by an awning the whole way. Once breakfast was done, we decided to head back to our room to ride the rain out. We hung out in the hot tub on our balcony for a bit, then Jarren shared that he didn't think it would be the worst thing in the world to go hang out on the beach regardless of the rain. The rain had slowed some, and there really wasn't much to do in the room. I agreed, so we both got dressed in beach attire and headed out there. Jarren brought our little phone photo stand to take pictures because so far, we didn't have any from this trip.
​
On our way out to the beach, we stopped by a small cabana, thinking we'd just chill out in there until the rain eased up a little bit more. We walked over and then noticed two workers inside, clearly with the same plan as us. I ended up getting to talking with both of them, finally getting to put my Spanish to use. Jarren, on the other hand, was eager to go find our own spot, so we said our goodbyes and went on our way.
​
We found some beach chairs nestled under some trees, semi-shielding us from the rain. We sat our stuff down and Jarren set up the phone on the stand to take photos. I was mindlessly taking photos when Jarren started saying all this icky stuff about how great our life is together and how I'm the best thing that ever happened to him (Disclaimer: he'd probably say he said it differently, but this is the narrative we're sticking with lol). Anyway, we're the only people out there except for one couple who is walking along the shoreline not too far away. Jarren pulls the ring I'd been dreaming of my entire life out of his pocket and gets down on one knee and I watch as the couple's face lights up. You'd think we knew them, that's how excited they seemed. He asked me to marry him, to which I responded said "Yeah!" He slid the ring onto my finger and, with perfect timing, it stops drizzling and the sun came out. We walk back to our beach chairs, giddy and with toothy grins, and people start coming out onto the beach to join us, having no idea what just happened minutes before in the rain.
​
The beach gets packed as the sun fully emerges. We get drinks and spend the rest of the afternoon there as I watch my ring catch the light and ask Jarren every five seconds, "Have you seen my ring? Some guy got it for me."
​
When the sun begins to set, we head back to our room to get ready for dinner, and also to share the news with everyone we know. Once done, we head out to dinner, then grab some drinks and stop for coffee. Another night with not much going on, we decide to head back to the room and binge a few episodes of The Ultimatum on Netflix before falling asleep.
We've always been coffee people.
May 2, 2022
As my luck would have it, we awoke to pure sunshine. The brightest, sunniest day of our trip just had to be the day we were packing up to leave. Luckily for us, we didn't have to get to the airport until nearly 3 PM, so we had a good chunk of the morning to finally enjoy what was in front of us.
​
We decided to go straight to the beach to get as much time with it as we could. We headed straight to the beach bar to get drinks and enjoyed the waves under the sun for a few hours. When it was almost time to check out of our room, we ran back up to get ready to go, then went down to check out.
We were told we could leave our bags in the lobby and enjoy the resort until it was our time to leave, so we went over to the buffet for lunch while we waited for our time to leave. I looked on with envy as I watched families stroll past us to the lobby with their golf clubs, knowing that was something I'd been excited to do when we got here. We had lunch, then walked over to the bar for one more drink. When we were done, we got into our taxi and went back to the airport, eager to get home to our lil doggos and start planning a wedding.
General
Tips and
Reviews
Cost to Travel:
Honestly, I only booked this trip because we got the flights for a steal of a deal. I wasn't dying to go to D.R., especially because I didn't think we'd get much culture out of this trip, just a typical resort vacation, but I couldn't pass the price up. We flew roundtrip from JFK to PUJ with JetBlue for $248.97 per person. A 4 day trip in April from NYC to PUJ usually costs between $360 - $400 per person.
​
Majestic Mirage Punta Cana Review:
Cost: $1,116.02
Length: 3 nights
Room: Mirage Club One Bedroom Suite
I really don't know how to review this resort without being biased. We booked Majestic Mirage because of the absolutely sensational service we received at their sister resort, Majestic Elegance, in Cancun back in 2021. Apart from my own experience with Majestic, I also had high expectations coming here because the reviews online seemed to collectively agree that the Punta Cana resort was better than the Cancun resort. Remember, this is based off of my own personal experience and no one else's, but man, were those reviews wrong. I will not be going back to Majestic Mirage. The price we were charged did not match the service we expected, and honestly, one day into the trip I was already counting down the days until I got to go home. I am writing this review in 2023, so I don't remember all of the details, but I do remember some standouts.
Our butler was never really present, didn't really respond to texts, and all around just wasn't very helpful at all. When we first got there, we'd realized that the rest of the trip may have rain and that first day was probably our only chance for some good beach time. Our butler didn't arrive to our room with our suitcase for almost 40 minutes after we'd gotten in there, leaving us unable to go to the beach as the sun was beginning to set. We'd shared earlier that we didn't mind taking our bag up to the room on our own, but he insisted and ended up screwing us over.
Our room was fine, basically exactly what we thought we were getting, but the tap for the shower didn't work properly and was actually falling off of the wall by our second day of use.
​
There wasn't really any entertainment or activities here. We ended up being confined to our room for the majority of our trip because of the rain, and there just wasn't much to do. There was one show per night in the common area, but truthfully, they weren't great and didn't draw very many people. There was only so much drinking we wanted to do when we were stuck in our room for the majority of the time. It got bland very quickly.
​
We went to dinner one night at the steakhouse, got seated, and then the waiter didn't come back to us for - I swear to you I'm not making this up - one hour. ONE WHOLE HOUR. Like, are you kidding? People were seated after us and taken care of, even LEFT BEFORE US while we just sat and watched. It was beyond insane to me.
​
The thing that really set me off, though, was the covid testing arrangement. We needed to have a negative test in order to board the flight back to the USA, so we got tested the day before we were supposed to leave, bright and early. The woman taking our tests didn't ask for any of our information, barely swabbed our noses, and didn't even glance at the copies of our passports we took down to her. When she was done swabbing us, she didn't say anything, just moved on to the next people on line. She wouldn't even acknowledge us when we tried to ask if there was anything else we needed to do, so we just left. When night rolled around and I realized I hadn't received an email response about our test, we went down to guest services to inquire about it. They had absolutely no record of us ever taking a test. This caused me to panic, because we absolutely needed a test result to get on our plane the next day. We were instructed to try again in the morning. Ridiculous. I'm honestly livid even just thinking about it now. We did end up going back the next morning, and the experience was completely different. She still barely swabbed our noses, but at least finally took down our information. We received results 30 minutes later. What was so hard about doing that the day before, I couldn't tell you.
​
Yes, I got engaged here and it was wonderful. Yes, the beach is nice and the staff are generally pleasant, but that's the extent for me. In a resort area like Punta Cana, there are nothing but options, so I won't be wasting my time here again, and I do not recommend you do, either. 5/10 stars.
​
Things I'd Like To Do Next Time:
I don't think I'll be coming back to Punta Cana, as there are so many other locations in D.R. that give you the same experience. If I was coming back though, I'd just want to spend some time off of the resort. I'm not sure what I'd do, but I definitely don't feel like I got to experience D.R. at all due to being on the resort the whole time.