Hyatt Zilara Cap Cana, Dominican Republic, March 2024
We booked this for our anniversary trip in March of 2023 with World of Hyatt points transferred from Chase. That was right before the big 2023 deval which pretty much doubled the amount of points needed to say here along with many other all inclusive hotels. We used 105,000 points for a 5 night stay. Today, you’d need to double that at least. Hyatt’s calendar goes out 395 days so we were thankful to book it for the next year.
Hyatt Zilara Cap Cana is an adults only hotel that shares space with Hyatt Ziva Cap Cana which is the family friendly hotel. A lot of all inclusive hotels in the Caribbean have a similar set up and it works great especially for those without kids. If you are staying at Ziva, you can’t bring your kids over to Zilara but if you are staying at Zilara, you can go over to Ziva as much as you want and do anything you’d like. It’s really the best of both worlds.
We’ve heard so many good things about this hotel and it is consistently rated as one of the best all inclusive hotels out there. I’ve heard that before though and we were left disappointed so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I had high hopes but I was ready to be let down again. First impressions make a big impact and I think that sets the tone for what you can expect. In my experience, this is definitely the case with upscale all inclusive hotels.
Checking in and getting there
In the last all inclusive resort we stayed in about six months ago, checking in was a chaotic mess. No one greeted us, one guy pretty much yelled at us and another thought we were leaving. Total chaos which mirrors the rest of our stay. Here, it was the opposite. While we did arrive around noon, which is early to check in, there was no mass of people as we pulled up. Someone greeted us and took our luggage. One person brought us to sit down and talk to us real quick, another brought us some type of purple drink that was great and another brought us a chilled towel. No waiting in line to check in. This was definitely 5 star. Then one of the managers came over to check us in. Although we were early, he let us check in but first he explained and gave us a map. He also explained our Explorist benefits which included late check out. This was much needed as we had a later flight. Then someone came to bring us to the room.
I should back up real quick and briefly mention the airport PUJ) and transportation experience. In order to get into and out of the Dominican Republlic, you need an E-ticket. Without that, you’re not gonna get very far. It’s free and pretty easy to get but this throws a lot of people off. Going through customs didn’t take very long, we got our luggage and then found our transportation pretty quickly. Only annoying thing is that it’s a rather far walk from one end to the other with no people movers. The ride to the hotel was about 20 or so minutes. Cost was about $25 one way. We prearranged it ahead of time.
Back to the hotel. The room was nice and it was upgraded due to our Explorist status from a resort view to view of the pool and a little bit of the beach. The room is nice but not amazing. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but at this price point I think it needs to be a little bit better. The bathroom is nice with a big shower. The balcony has a big couch. There is a free minibar that gets restocked daily. The AC worked pretty good but it did get a little hot at night sometimes. No real issues with cleanliness or anything else. We did find a lizard in our room which we were able to remove without killing it. Stuff like that is just gonna happen in the islands so you can’t get upset about it. We’re used to it since we live in Florida. Despite our best efforts, we get a few lizards in the house each year
Review of the hotel
I’m not going to do a day by day breakdown since we pretty much did the same thing every day so I’ll just summarize what we did. Before that, I should mention that there’s plenty of things that we didn’t do. The hotel has several restaurants that we didn’t go to such as French Polynesian, Asian, Indian and Club restaurants. At some resorts, getting a Club room could be a good investment as you get better alcohol and more food options. We didn’t miss anything here. Booking a club room wasn’t even an option for us but we didn’t feel like we were missing out on anything. The club pool didn’t look that exciting and there never seemed to be a lot of people in the club lounge.
There’s also a lot of activites throughout the day but we didn’t participate in much of any of them. There’s archery, various other games on the beach, yoga, exercise classes in the pool and various classes in the gym. They’re all included. There’s also plenty of things going on at night from movies on lawn to stage shows. We only caught the magic show since it was early. It was all your basic carnival stuff that you’ve seen before but it was was well done. We didn’t go to any of the other production shows because they were at 9:15 and the sun just wears us out.
We also didn’t go kayaking since we have our own kayaks but we did sail the hobie cat almost everyday. That was a ton of fun. At other resorts, someone sails it for you. It looks like the Secrets next door had that but for us, we got to do it on our own. I haven’t sailed much of anything in a while except for a sailboat in 2022 for an hour so my skills were a little rusty but I quickly got the hang of it again. You can go out for a half hour time slot and you’d book a day in advance. Again, this is included.
There are of course a few things that are not included such as the spa. I didn’t get a chance to check out the whole space but from what I saw, it’s made to look like it’s built into a rock. Really cool looking but way too expensive. There’s also a specialty restaurant experience that is new called the Blind Butcher. It’s $149 a person and includes some type of performances throughout the dinner. I’m sure the food is good and it’s nice but I just don’t see going to an all inclusive resort for about $1000 a night with great food only to pay another $300 for more great food. They were selling it hard too.
The food was mostly excellent
For breakfast and lunch, we mostly ate at the buffet which was “assisted service”. Think Covid-era situation where all the food is behind glass and someone else serves it to you. I don’t know if it was always like that or they left it there because it seems more upscale than a normal buffet and it certainly didn’t feel upscale. As a person that doesn’t need people do wait on him, I found it ever so slightly annoying especially because some of the people working there didn’t speak any English at all. But I guess it would have also been annoying for people to touch everything with their hands and just be slobs like at most buffets so I suppose there’s a trade off.
The food at the buffet for all meals was great. At breakfast, the waiter offered to make us a smoothie and it was great. There was a big selection but I think the dessert case really stole the show. The rotisserie chicken was some of the best I’ve had anywhere. You could also get steak, fish, pasta, Dominican food, fruit, freshly cut cheese, salad, etc. Easily one of the best buffets I’ve been to. All inclusive resorts typically have big buffets but the food quality isn’t always great so that was a nice change. The service was much better. You finished something, your plate was gone right away. Your drink was halfway done, it was replenished. Really incredible.
As for other meals, we ate at the steakhouse and the Italian restaurant. The steak was great especially because it had a wood smoke flavor to it. Really great. The Italian restaurant just wasn’t our thing but this could be a matter of taste. The red sauce includes onions and parsley no matter what you order. I usually don’t eat onions and while I know that sauce usually has various things in it, normally it doesn’t include a ton of onions. So I couldn’t eat there. Heidi got something there but she wasn’t a big fan. I guess a lot just depends on what you’re into.
As far as the drinks go, they were great. This has been a major issue for me with all inclusive resorts over the last few years. They use the generic brand alcohol so they taste pretty bad. Not sure why other people don’t notice this. Perhaps they just drink so much they don’t notice? I’m far from an alcohol snob as I’m not a top shelf guy but these drinks at other places taste like they’re made with rubbing alcohol. These drinks tasted great and there was never a wait to get one. There were always plenty of bartenders and the waitresses came around at the pool quite often to offer you a drink. Again, that’s hard to find at a lot of places these days.
Pool, beach and waterpark
Speaking of the pool, there was only one main pool at Zilara and I never bothered to go over to the Ziva pool to deal with the children but it seemed similar. The pool was big and it was never even close to crowded. The temp was good and it was clean. There was a swim up bar as well. I thought it was closed one day because there was no one sitting there but sure enough it was open. There was always space by the pool but as it got busy towards the weekend, there was less space. As I said, the club pool looked OK but nothing too special.
The beach is much nicer than a lot of the beaches in Mexico but I wouldn’t call it the best beach I’ve ever been to. Right in the middle which is fine. The water was warm and it was really blue. However, there was some seaweed which wasn’t horrible but it did take away from the beach somewhat. You could get around it for sure but it was nearly impossible to get in and out of the water without touching any of it. I was hoping to spend more time at the beach but for whatever reason, I didn’t.
The hotel also has a water park which is really nice. It includes a lazy river, a small pool, 4 water slides and then another 4 slides that are pretty much the same. The first four slides has one that you go down in a tube, two that are enclosed and one that is pretty much a straight drop. I tried them all and they were good but the straight drop wasn’t worth the effort of climbing all the way up there. The other four slides that are the same are fun to try to race someone as you can go at the same time. The lazy river isn’t as long as others I’ve been on but there’s a lot going on. Several waterfalls in addition to other water features keep it interesting. Not exactly lazy. I could have stayed there all day. There’s also two food trucks there which are also included. They serve burgers, ice cream and soda. Not the best food but at least you don’t have to walk back over to the other side of the resort to eat.
Other parts of the hotel and service
As far as the rest of the resort, there are shops (which I didn’t bother with), coffee shops, fire pits and various places to sit and hang out. I really like the hanging chairs. They were a nice touch. Everything is really nice but the resort was lacking that one big wow factor that I’ve seen at other resorts. That didn’t really bother me though since usually that’s all for show and whatever wow factor it is, there’s usually no practical use for it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s parts of the hotel that are amazing like the firepits at night, the Indian restaurant that is set up like a vintage train car and the French Polynesian restaurant that has seating inside a big bird cage thing. It’s just that the first impression from a visual standpoint is that it’s nice, but not amazing.
For our anniversary, they gave us a bottle of champagne, some snacks and put a “happy honeymoon” sash thing on our door. Guess something got lost in translation there. Overall, we had a fantastic stay that was very relaxing. I can’t stop talking about the service as that was the best I’ve ever seen. There’s a lot of attention to detail as well like the waiters offering to make us a smoothie. At the steakhouse, the waiter asks you to check your steak to make sure it’s done right. My steak was pretty much raw the first night so I asked them to cook it a little longer. The manager then came over and apologized even thought I wasn’t making a big deal out of it. That’s the level of service that they have going on over there. All of the employees do this salute thing to you no matter who or where they are. If you pass a maintenance guy on the hall, he’ll do it. Everyone does it. Kind of unusual but no one misses a beat with that.
Very few negatives
I’d say the only real negative was the time share guys. They are right outside the buffet during breakfast so you can’t avoid them. One guy was very pushy and even though we told him no on the 3rd day, he followed us half way back to the room on day 4 trying to pressure us. I had to talk to the manager about that to make sure she stops doing that to us and anyone else. The last thing I want to hear from my clients is that I sent them to a place where they were harassed by a timeshare person.
Leaving was pretty straightforward. Checking out was easy. They offered to take our bags but it was literally 50 feet and I didn’t want to waste the guy’s time. Easy ride to the airport but our airline had a system crash so it took 40 minutes to check our bag. Going through customs was pretty easy. The main terminal was really busy and didn’t have great AC. Not my favorite airport but I’ve seen much worse.
Conclusion
Overall this a great trip. Ton of relaxing, fun, great food and amazing service. Can’t really ask for much more for an all inclusive. Would I recommend it? I suppose it depends on the price you’re getting and what the alternatives are. At almost $1,000 a night for when we went, I can’t imagine spending that type of money to sit at the pool all day. You could go almost anywhere for that type of money. I’ve also booked clients into some great all inclusive resorts for 4 nights for $1000. While I’m sure the level and food and service are not on the same level, I question whether the extra money is worth it. There reaches a point where you’re getting diminishing returns. If the price was more like $700 a night, then yes, I would recommend it.
If you’re using points, I think a lot depends on how many points you can accumulate and what you want to use them for. Some people can come up with 400,000 points a year so using half of those for an all inclusive resorts isn’t a bid deal. If getting 300,000 points took you years, you are only taking a few dream vacations so if this is what you envisioned, go for it. If you were thinking about going to Europe or Asia, then you should probably save your points for that trip instead.
If you’d like to learn about traveling for free using points, join our Facebook group Simple Travel Hacks. It’s for beginners to learn the basics where no question is a bad question.