Gran Bahia Principe Ambar - Dominican Republic

Gran Bahia Principe Ambar, Dominican Republic hotel review Visited: January 2010

Posted by raknapp8

Don't stay here unless you like being surrounded by thieves. We stayed here January 10 - 15 in rooms 64201, 64203 and 64116. Two out of three of our couples were robbed of $550 and $200, from the room safes!

The thieves gained entry to the safes, locate the money and took some of it (leaving the rest so it appeared all the money is still there). In both cases this occurred on the last day of the stay. Also, in both cases the robbery was not discovered until we arrived home. Nice finish to the vacation.

I believe this was an inside job with more than one person involved. In one case upon returning from dinner, my brother-in-law was unable to open the room safe. Phone calls to the desk resulted in a visit from maintenance who also could not open the safe. The manager then responded. After some time trying different things (and actually blaming my brother-in-law for not using the safe properly), he then changed the safe battery, opened it, and then hastily left.

In the other case the manager (George) told my parents to "just set the code at 1,2,3,4,". My parents are elderly and did just as they were told. I didn't find this out until too late and changed the code, but the theft had apparently already occurred. These were not the only problems we had, but by far the most serious.

We called ahead to have a wheelchair for my dad. "No problem", we were told each time. Upon arrival they wanted my dad to visit a doctor first. After sitting outside the "doctor's" office for 40 minutes, we gave up and decided to call the desk later and try again. We did this for the entire trip and never did get a chair for him. They tell you what you want to hear, then when you are out of sight they do not care anymore.

Our room key failed no less than eight different times. The first time (on the very first day) after repeated calls to the front desk and assurances that one was on the way, I went down to the desk to get replacements. I was told "we never send room keys to the rooms". Sounds reasonable, but why wasn't I told that before we waited two hours?

The next time the keys failed we were told we were doing something wrong, and somehow we were damaging the keys. On the second to last day they finally changed the door battery and guess what - no more problems (no apologies either).

Do not believe that we are picky travelers who expect everything perfect. This is not the case. We tipped generously throughout the entire trip, gave the maid and room persons $5/day, tried to speak Spanish when we could, and we were always polite. We expected some things to go wrong, and that was not a problem. However, what did happen was a problem that I wish someone had warned us about.

The rest of the problems were basically minor. If the thefts had not occurred, the other issues would have been easily overlooked. It was not all bad, the rooms were great, the grounds perfect, the ocean wonderful, the weather nice, and the food good. However, there are too many other great places to stay that are warm and have all the same amenities to ever stay here again.

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