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My husband and I stayed at IHD from Jan 26 to Feb 9 2012, and we thoroughly enjoyed it, although we ran into a few little glitches at the beginning.

First the good because it's mostly all good...

The design of the whole complex is work of art, with breathtakingly beautiful grounds, tropical gardens, ponds, fountains, and architecturally designed buildings, which are all kept immaculate.
Staff are constantly cleaning, doing maintenance, gardening, even sifting cigarette butts out of the beach sand. It's remarkable.
Wherever you go in the resort, it is a feast for the eyes, indoors and outdoors. Photos can't do it justice.

Most of staff is very friendly. The animation team is energetic and entertaining, and a few - like Lady Gaga and Super Mama - are total characters.

English is not spoken by many guests. You hear mostly Spanish, along with other European languages, so a lot of the staff struggle with English.
We found the best thing to do was learn how to ask for what we wanted in Spanish.
Besides making an effort with their language, tips are very much appreciated & will make great friends out of the bar, restaurant and room-cleaning staff.

All the food was very good. We always looked forward to meals. We went to the Japanese restaurant and the steak house, which were great, but never got around to trying the Mexican or gourmet a-la-cartes, only because the buffet was always so darn good. It offers a humongous assortment, with something for every taste.

We saw one evening show - The Lion King, which was very enjoyable, with well-performed dance & imaginative choreography. We didn't go to other shows because we were always too tired by evening, and we enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere of the lobby lounge & bar after dinner.
Bar staff are generous with drinks, with the best mixed drinks at the lobby bar in the evenings, served to you in your big comfy chair, with piano music playing in the background, and a cool night breeze wafting through the open arches surrounding the area. It was perfect luxury.

Internet WiFi is available throughout most of the resort, however there's a fairly steep charge for it, and it doesn't work well in the ground floor guest rooms, as the signal comes from the roofs of the buildings. We were able to get a connection sitting outside on our terrace but not inside the room. It was nice to be able to chat online with my kids while I sat by the pool though.

The pools are gigantic. There are actually 3 separate pools joined together, plus a jacuzzi, all separated by walls & islands with trees and greenery. One large round pool is quite deep - good for real swimming. One is not as deep - about shoulder level. And the biggest one, the one with the swim-up bar, varies in depth & surrounds the island supporting the jacuzzi. This pool has a gradually sloping, wade-in side, that stays shallow far enough in, that toddlers can sit & play in it. All the pools are kept spotlessly clean.

The beach is long & wide, with soft warm sand & crystal-clear turquoise water. The beach bar resembles a lighthouse, and nearby snack-bars offer a variety of treats and munchies all day. There are abundant sun beds, many under palapas for shade.

.. Which brings us to the not so good, which unfortunately needs to be included here...

One annoyance was the lack of availability of sunbeds because people would stake claim on them early in the mornings, by leaving their towels on them, and then not go back to use them until much later in the day, if at all. To walk to the beach and find a free chair was very difficult, especially a shady one, even though most of them were empty except for towels.
One late morning, we couldn't find a free sunbed despite the fact that there was barely anyone on the beach! We gave up and went back to the pool.

Another day, we were lucky enough to find two free sunbeds, next to two towel-draped ones. For the whole afternoon that we sat there, it was interesting how nobody showed up to use the two reserved sunbeds beside us. When we finally left to get ready for dinner, the towels were still on those empty sunbeds.. and countless others around us were the same.

The hotel has a rule stating that sunbeds may not be reserved, yet nothing is done about it. I understand that they don't want to upset guests, but by not enforcing their policy, they are upsetting all the guests who do follow the rule and then lose out because of it.

As reluctant as I am to admit it, our stay at IHD started off a little rocky.
Our junior suite was on the ground floor facing the pool bar. The first time we entered it, we were hit with a pungent odour, not just musty but acrid. We kept waking up all night feeling sick from it. So after a day or so, we decided to ask for a room change. It turned out it was a Dominican long weekend & the hotel was full to capacity, so we were told we would have to wait until the following Tuesday.

Meanwhile, there were so many guests at the resort that weekend, there was an endless stream of people walking past our room, meaning we had to leave the drapes closed for privacy.
We also found that the mini-bar fridge didn't work, nor did the coffee-maker, and the toilet tank leaked and wouldn't always flush.
Between Thurs night & Tues, we did our best to air out the room whenever we could, and the maids managed to leave the room smelling somewhat fresher each day after they cleaned. The mini-bar fridge was replaced after a few requests.

When Tues came, and we were finally shown another room that had no smell, it didn't have the walk-in shower or the couch & coffee table that our junior suite had. It was very empty compared to ours.
So, seeing as we were settled & unpacked in our room anyway, and the crowds outside had died down after the local long weekenders had left, we decided to stay put in our original room. Besides, the odour didn't seem as bad as it was, and a nice maid replaced the coffee maker that didn't work after no success at the main desk.

The rest of the vacation was delightful (well, except for the sunbed hogs) and we didn't want to leave to come home.

However, when did get home, and opened our suitcases, we were again smacked in the nose with the acrid odour that we first encountered in our hotel room.
Obviously, the smell in the room hadn't really faded as much as we'd imagined... but olfactory fatigue had merely stopped us from noticing it as much.
And now that we had brought the dreaded stench home with us, everything in the suitcases reeked. All clothes, whether worn or not, had to be washed as soon as they were unpacked. What's worse is: now some articles of my clothing still smell bad even after washing them.

Despite those few annoyances, we loved IHD, it's just so beautiful, and to be fair, we were offered a different room and didn't take it, so we can't blame the hotel people.
I do suggest they inspect that particular room to find the source of the odour, and fix it. Some mustiness is to be expected with the humidity, but this goes beyond mustiness.

All in all, would we recommend the Iberostar Hacienda to friends and family? Yes!
Would we go back again? Without a doubt, yes!