Just got back from staying Feb 3-10. Unfortunately, our initial impression of the resort was not great. We are two adults traveling with two little kids, and despite our travel agent being quite clear about our room requests (and I realize not everything can be accommodated), we were put in a room with one bed for the four of us. To shorten the story, it took until the next evening until they found us a suitable room, on their third try.

Most of my resort experience is in Cuba, so the food seemed spectacular in comparison.

The beach was quite nice, although too rough for children. However, there's a wave pool and waterslides for the kids, as well as a great kids club with a kids pool.

The staff is friendly and helpful.

A couple of things I would change at this place, though... If they cater to families with kids, snacks need to be more readily available between meals. Get rid of the people ambushing you near the entrance to the dining room to get to you check out their other hotels/timeshares. Move the self serve coffee station indoors somewhere, or find another way to make sure every coffee isn't full of ants.

As far as a la carte restaurants go, we didn't try the Mexica, but the Oriental was pretty good, and we enjoyed the Italian so much that went twice. Don't bother with the Caesar salad though. The dressing is watered down yogurt with salt.

Hope this doesn't sound too negative. We loved the place, and realize nothing is perfect. We are already planning to go again next year, and try to take other families with us.

I'll start my review by saying that this was my first trip on a resort ever, so I have nothing to compare it to, nor did I have big expectations, we went to the Allegro from Dec 8, 2011 to Dec. 15.

The goods:

The entertainement staff was amazing. They made us dance, they talked with us, they brought us clubbing to the Coco Bongo. It's a club at a 5 minute walk from the Resort, nothing amazing about it, it's a room, A/C and music. I'm pretty sure our trip would have not been as fun without the entertaining staff. Kuddos to them.

Some waiters were amazing and kept the drinks coming all night. The Asian a la carte restaurant was totally amazing, everything about it was amazing, the ambiance, the service, most of the food. It's too bad it took us 3 nights to discover it, you need to take a reservation at the front desk, and its not open every night.

The excursions: OMG best part of my trip, I did the jeep excursion, the shopping excursion and the waterfall excursion, I loved all 3 of them, they definitely did my trip, they are very well organized, cheap, and you have a real idea of like is really like in the domenican. If you are fit and like a challenge, I challenge you to do the waterful excursion, I thought I was going to die 20 times during that excursion but it was totally awesome.

Our rooms, Our room was fine, it wasn't a palace and yes the decor was outdated, and who cares, we spent very little time in our room, we only stayed there to sleep and that's all there is to it. The onl bad thing about our room, beds were quite uncomfortable, it took me a good 3 nights to get used to it. But I expected that, you don't go from sleeping on a $2,000 mattress to a 3 1/2 resort bed easily. There was no HOT WATER! I told our nolitour rep about it, and after I told her it got a little warmer but it never got to a point where you can relax and enjoy a shower.

and now with the bads... the men! I traveled with a girl that was let's say very flirty who loves men attention so I assume its 50% of the reason why we got hit on sooo much. It was coming from every where.. so much that I didn't want to be on the resort by myself because I didn't feel comfortable with all that man attention. It was coming from the bartenders (one asked me if he could kiss my thighs?) from the male staff from the hotel who just alwas hang on the resort (one of them offered me his banana on the first afternoon) from the cooks and waiters in the kitchen, from the entertainment staff, literally it was the trip to boost your ego, and get laid if its what you're into. I'm sure had I been with someone less flirty the entire trip would have been different, but I definitely think that management of this hotel should talk to their male employees.

The bugs: they are EVERYWHERE! and they are f***ing viscious, i got mosquito bites in places a mosquito should technically not be able to reach? My friend literally got devoured, she looked like a leper, I made fun of her until they started attacking 4 days in. We carried Benz anti repellent in our purse every night at the disco and it did very little for us. I scratched those mosquito even when I was back to Montreal. I have some permanent scaring on my legs due to it.


The food. hmm what could I say about the main restaurant, it took us a couple of days to understand that some things you shouldn't try while some other was deliscious, we experimented on the first 2 days, breakfast food is definitely the best. Fruits are not so fresh, we basically ate meat and veggies the entire time. I'm not a picky eater but I can definitely tell that everything was kind of blend and flavourless? A lot of things were overcooked. That being said we were never left hungry. There was always food and you could eat as much as you wanted. Although if ou arrive there in the middle of the day, you might have no food due to opening hours of the restaurant. Wine tastes like juice and beer tastes like water, be warned.

The bar and the drinks. Trying to order a drink was not easy. I'm fully bilingual, I speak english and French and most bartenders spoke very few words in English. Trying to get anything that was not on their small menu was a big challenge. Drinks are suuuper small, almost like the size of a shooter, I'm not sure why? Seriously management, we go on vacation to enjoy the open bar do something about the size of the glasses. We would just order 4 or 6 at the same so we wouldn't have to get up so much. Obviously the drinks are watered down, if you want a buzz you need to drink fast and a lot, we did that a couple of times but at the end we bought rhum outside of the resort and added it to our drinks. More efficient that way, bottles of rhum outside of the resort are a ridiculous 3$. Better than all the tips we had to give to the bartenders for getting 20 something drinks throughout the evening.

The music/disco: In the center of the resort is the "theater" where the bar is, the entertainement area and small disco. It's definitely enjoyable if you're drunk, because otherwise, its pretty lame. The music is old, a mix of spanish music and american hits a bit dated from the mid 2000s. There's no special effects or anything, the chairs and pushed in a corner and voila you have a dance floor. Entertainement staff will make you dance if you don't have no one, they are great for that, showing you new dances. The music during the day was the worse, mid 90's success. Sometimes they would put Celine Dion's entire CD and I just wanted to die. Seriously I don't go to Central America to listen some Celine you know?

THE LOCALS!! OMG I don't have enough bad things to say about the locals. Seriously, those people ruined my vacation for sure. We arrive on a Thursday night, and we had fun on that night. and then Locals arrived on the Friday night, those people will literally take over the entire place and will make you feel like you don't belong there. I literally felt like an outcast and those people have no matters whatsoever. When we first saw them it was at the bar on the friday night, and it was a ZOOOOO! They were screaming, they were taking over the entire place, it was almost impossible to order a drink and since there are no waiters you have to find a way to squeeze yourself in there. The worse, the men stare at you like you are meat. I didn't understand much spanish back then but I definitely understood when 2 of them invited me to go into their rooms. Way to introduce yourself. From the moment that the arrived to the moment that they left those people were everywhere. They're beside the pool, at the bar, in the restaurant, they act like they want everything and they want to be served first. The best feeling was when they left on the Sunday afternoon. It wasn't a minute too soon. When we talked to our Nolitour rep about it, they basically said "we know but they pay more for that week-end that we do for the entire trip" which in my mind doesn't excuse their behavior. I understand that the hotel needs them to be able to survive, i just wish there was more separation between them and us that would allow us to feel like no. 2.

The sellers: No matter where you will go, whether its on the resort or out people will attack you and try to sell you stuff. On the beach there's of the resort, female want to sell you massages or braid your hair, even if you tell them you hate braids they will still show you their catalogue of different hair style to convince, they are totally annoying, my friend got braids done, the asked her to pay whatever she wanted, she gave 20$ for 20 minutes of work. This woman waited about an hour and then came to ask us more money, saying that life is hard there. The worse. Outside of the resort I am telling you it's like being eaten by sharks. They will try to sell ou sunglasses, objects made out of wood, if you're interested let me tell you right now, you can easily get the prices dropped by 50%. It wasn't possible to enjoy walking on the street, people would be all over you.

The beach wasn't nice at all, there were no rocks or anything but there was a lot of debris on the beach and it seems nobody was there to cleanup? There is a bar on the beach but its fairly far and obviously they will not come to you for drinks. With the size of the drinks and all there's no enjoying a drink on the beach like I thought I would be doing for the entire week. The chairs were free so that was the good thing about it.

Water: I knew I couldn't drink from the faucet over there, but I didn't expect to work so hard for water. When you get there you have a bottle of water for free in the fridge, our Nolitour rep told us that they would not fill it back up, we would have to do it ourselves, which I tought was a little old, I mean would it be that hard to have I don't know the maids fill them up and replace them? There only 2 places I think on the resort to have them filled back up so if you're thirsty at 8 am in the morning you might have to take a walk on the resort to get some water.

So all and all it was a good trip, I was really disapointed that people didn't talk more English or French for that matter, I'm pretty sure that trip would have been totally different had I spoke Spanish. It definitely gave me fuel to start learning Spanish though. So it's not all bad. It was a lovely trip but I am far from sure that I would return to this resort, it was cheap and I got what I paid for, but I'm sure that a lot of employees could have gone further to make our stay even more fun, especially the bartenders. I brought with me over 100$ of one dollar bills to tip to have even better service and even than that didn't do miracles. So i suggest you do the same if you plan on going to Allegro. I wouldn't recommand this place and I wouldn't convince anyone not to go either, it was a 50/50 for me.

we went to the allegro because we could,not get to our original resort. it seemed comparable to our original destination. my wife and i have travelled to the dominican many times and we always try to bring friends along that have never been there, and so was the case here. the couple that travelled with us have never been out of canada before. For the first 4 days we noticed at breakfeast there was never any bacon. there was absolutly everything else you could imagine, but no bacon. The resort was slow due to the fact it was october and slow season. i just assumed that due to the fact it was slow they would not be offering the total package and along these line the buffet was cancelled and in its place we had many el lacarte .but on the 5th day i asked about having bacon for breakfeast the next morning.the response was immediate. we were giv,n about a pound of bacon brought to our table, while everyone else at the resort watched. and then every morning ffor the rest of our holiday, we recieved bacon with our breakfeast without asking. everything else was ,as usual amazing. this resort was all and more than i would hope for and our friends have already been back to the same resort. thank you to all the managment and staff for an amazing holiday.p.s. the slide in the pool was too much fun for a 54 yr old.lol felt like a kid again.

Allegro is a very laid back resort with lots of perks. I went with one of my girlfriends (she's 20, I'm 24), and our time in the Dominican couldn't have been better. The resort is constantly being cleaned and maintained (they love their power-washing!), the staff is very friendly and our room was always kept neat. We didn't care to pay the $20 for the safe, and in the end our things were safe anyway!

Food at the buffet and a la carte is always fresh, the themed nights have really great specialty dishes. Drinks were fine for us, not watery at all. The only thing we didn't enjoy was snack options between meals and after dinner (mostly hamburgers/hot dogs and fries), but we filled up enough with the daily buffets!

The entertainment staff... incredible. ALL INCLUSIVE means all inclusive ;) they work very hard to make sure everyone's having a great time, tip them if you can! We made some good friends with the staff, definitely coming back soon. Hector and Carlos on the beach are really great to talk to, Charlie (one of the Occidental staff) is hilarious. The animators really know how to dance and have a good time, and the DJ makes the tiny disco at the resort a fun night every night. We're really going to miss them all, especially our free daily SPANISH lesson by the pool! Even when the animators were too busy, the diving instructor (Hansel!!) gave us our spanish lesson! And now I can say more than 30 words, and a few sentences. Thanks, guys!

The beach is amazing, however a little windy. The pool is also really nice. Dominican weather is a bit crazy, so it rained on and off during our trip (January 27-February 3), but when the sun is out you can have a really nice day. Watch out for mosquitoes! I normally get bit more than the average person... I was eaten alive. But if you drink enough beer, it doesn't really matter. Just don't go frolicking on the grounds at night and you'll be fine. Visit the CoCo Bongo at the plaza after the resort bar closes at 1 - it's open until 7am and free for us to get in. The casino on the resort is a little dated, but lots of fun.

If you're looking for an inexpensive, all inclusive, relaxing time then this is a good resort for you. Lots of young people, and lots of families.