We booked 6 nights at El Dorado Royale in a junior suite (further from the ocean, no pool access from the room, personal concierge rather than a butler, etc...) for just over $375/night. Given that it's an all inclusive resort with seemingly solid amenities, we were pretty pleased. Travel there was very smooth, using Lomas Travel to shuttle too and from the resort. Safety never felt like a concern in transit or once we were on the resort. There are two resorts (Generations and Casitas) that neighbor Royale making the restaurant selection that much better.
We checked in and promptly received beverages and moved on to La Isla for some food while our room was being readied. They have you leave the bags at the front desk, which is kind of weird because you still have to go back for them, but it's whatever. It dumped rain the first night so rather than explore we did room service and enjoyed being lazy. Between downpours we did see our first sign of wildlife: the coati!
Getting up the next day we met up with the personal concierge to book dinners for each night, as well as schedule our "not a timeshare" presentation for a free couples massage. The presentation was not great, but about all you can expect. The massage certainly made up for it: starting with hydrotherapy, then moving on to a full body massage on the beach listening to the waves slowly crash onto the shore.
Rincon was our first dinner, and Sara absolutely loved the chicken. Fuentes was our dinner the next evening, and while it had an up-charge for the dinner as well as the wine pairing, it was worth every penny. The staff made it clear "it was different here", and they delivered. A host, chef, and sommelier took over running thru the cuisine and what it was matched with. Our 5 course meal was fantastic, great pairings with well prepared and flavored dishes.
One of the activities was a greenhouse tour, and being slightly into tomatoes we decided that would be wonderful for us to do. It was incredibly informative and a good break from the "same old" resort activities. Only a few of the plants could kill you or cause severe pain and we were thrilled that was proactively communicated. The health bar as well as kick ended up being our favorite lunch options, the prior if we were feeling lighter and looking for a smoothie. The latter was wonderful for light beers and a burger in the sand.
The food all week was great, and definitely the best we've experienced at an all inclusive. If you like walking the beach and burning energy, it's probably not that great since the beaches are pretty rocky and disconnected. We loved the pools with swim up bar options, as well as a saltwater pool to add some novelty. The spa was amazing, the wild life was ever present, all in all it was definitely worthy of a repeat visit.
