NICKELODEON RESORT PUNTA CANA

By Corri Hunt

Our family of four visited the Punta Cana Nickelodeon resort Christmas week 2022. Our kids were three and five at the time of our visit. This resort was not cheap, we paid $1,000 per night for our seven-night stay. However, this did include all food and drinks and the excellent amenities of the resort.

Resort Attractions:

This resort has direct beach access, and you can rent one of the beach bungalows for $40 for the full day, this is worth every penny and I recommend you do this at least one of the days of your trip. The weekends book up so we had to reserve it the day before. There are chairs under a pergola just behind the oceanfront bungalows for free, and these were not a bad backup plan when the bungalows were booked.

The resort also has a large beach front infinity pool with a swim-up bar 😊 We loved this as the kids were able to swim right next to us while we had a tropical drink at the swim-up pool bar. I also highly recommend doing this during your stay.

Finally, the resort has an entire waterpark! This area is a lot of fun for one full day. The chairs are limited and fill quickly so plan to get there when it opens. This is where you get slimed! This is an extra charge (I think it was $150), so it is not cheap but I have to say that I will cherish this photo for years to come (see top of article photo). They have a lazy river in the waterpark but it is very lazy (picture not moving without self-propulsion). They have a restaurant and bar and servers come around to take your food and drink orders from your chair. We had many slime juice drinks (green frozen beverage, they add rum to the adult version and I highly recommend).

Excursions: You can book many different excursions through the front desk. We did the Monkeyland excursion and definitely recommend this one. It is not too long, which is great if you have children with short attention spans, and it was not too touristy/tacky like many excursions. The tour picks you up at your hotel. The best part is that the tour takes you up into the beautiful mountains, the same mountains you can see in the distance from the resort. It is really beautiful up there.

KIDS club: We absolutely love places that offer childcare, and in a fun setting. The kid’s club is for kids 4+ but they offer private sitting options where you pay someone to watch your kid inside the kids club if under the age requirement. Our youngest was four weeks from being four and I was nervous they would not take him in the kids club, so we told the kid club staff he was four and they never checked and it was great! They do not have the best hours for the kid’s club, they are closed around lunch time and then they offer about 2 hours in the evening. One of the nights on our stay we booked the oceanfront dinner for two and put the kids in the club, but we did have to rush to and from dinner to make sure we got them on time before it closed. It was still great and I highly recommend you enjoy at least one kid-free meal on your stay.

Fun Bucket List to Check on your Trip:

o Order a drink at the swim-up bar

o Get a bungalow on the beach

o Order a slime frozen drink

o Attend the character breakfast

o Visit Monkeyland and let a monkey jump on you

o Order THE dessert at Spacewalker

o Get slimed as a family

o Watch the sunrise

o Get a photo with the Pineapple room

Now the CONS of this resort

Food: The food is OK but becomes downright unbearable by day five. I would recommend maybe limiting your visit to five days OR make sure you are trying all of the different restaurants onsite. While we stayed here we tried the Italian restaurant, Asian restaurant, and Spacewalker, but otherwise the majority of the meals are in the main buffet restaurant. We initially were worried we would not be able to get anything our kids liked at the sushi restaurant but when we finally went we learned they have kid menu options (like pasta) which our kids did eat. Also, bring some snacks from home for your kids as the restaurants close between meal times.

Spacewalker is their interactive restaurant (they send out fog/smoke into the restaurant at one point) but otherwise the only other fun part is ordering the dessert that is a giant chocolate sphere that looks kind of like earth and they pour chocolate on it to open like a flower. It was very exciting and you should do this here. Before arriving I was so worried this would be booked up, but it ended up being no big deal and reservations were easy to get as long as you booked them upon arrival. You do not ever need reservations for the main buffet restaurant.

Communication/Website: This is another major downfall of this resort, there is virtually zero communication before your arrival. For us, they sent zero email confirmation of even our booking and we had to call and ask someone to send us a receipt after we paid them $7,000. The booking is so unprofessional that at several points I worried we had somehow bought into some online scam. Fortunately, we did not! It is legit and everything was as advertised upon arrival.

**Important** Let me save you some anxiety and runaround and tell you this is the email address I used a few days before our arrival to request the spacewalker restaurant reservation and character breakfast (I have zero chill). personalconcierge@karismadominicana.com

This is the concierge email directly for the nick resort PC hotel. You can also call them at 809-833-4560 from 8am-4pm (they are an hour later than EST).

ROOMS: The rooms are not designed for a family, which is insane since this is a family resort. There is a large main bedroom, then there is a smaller living room area with sliding doors to divide the two spaces. This smaller living room area has a very crappy pullout couch bed for the kids. This resort needs to invest some money and replace these with some bunkbeds. Fortunately, our kids did not complain about their crappy sofa bed they slept on for seven days and loved having their own TV in their area complete with disney channel, disney junior, nick, nick junior, and a few other kids channels they loved. This was definitely a great perk when we wanted to relax and wind down before bed. If your kids can swim I recommend booking a swim-up room, all these swim up rooms do have a gate outside your sliding door to prevent littles from wandering out. If your kids cannot swim I recommend booking a top (third) floor balcony wrap around suite (we booked the Swank Suite with wrap around balcony). Being on the top floor eliminates the noise of stomping kids above you.

FINAL DECISION: I do recommend going here with your family. I give this resort 4.5/5 stars, the .5 deduction for the food and lack of communication prior to arrival.