Pros:
- If you can upgrade to Premium, don't hesitate. The standard rooms are below average, but the premium ones are rather big. It's like a whole different experience. It includes a butler service, very useful to coordinate the restaurant reservations (make sure you tip them properly and in advance). Premium includes also a private section of the beach in which there are always available hammocks.
- The Japanese restaurant was a lot of fun.
Cons:
- The buffet is below average. They provide a minimal number of tongs, so they end up being used to pick up all kinds of food. This is unsanitary. I am allergic to fish, and they place the fish and the meat next to each other--one night I was planning to get meat, but lucky me noticed the tongs had pieces of salmon.
- The kids club is too far from everything, very isolated, and the only way to communicate with them is to call reception so that they can forward your call to their landline. If you're not in your room, you're out of luck.
- Lots of mosquitos throughout the resort (at least at the end of December where I stayed with my family).
- Entertainment is quite poor. Night shows are amateurish. There are no slides in the pools. They run "foam parties" in the pools, but having drunk people around while you're with your children in the water is not pleasant, to say the least.
- No fish in the water. If you like to see fish (hey, you are in the Caribbean after all), Bavaro beach is not your place.