My wife and I just returned from a week at the Bahia Principe Luxury Ambar. Overall, we felt the resort was very nice, with spacious, comfortable rooms, pleasant staff, good food, and a wonderful beach.
Bahia Principe is a sprawling complex of several individual but co-located resorts. Staying at any of them gives access to facilities of the others with the exception of the Fantasia resort. You must also only use the buffet restaurant at your own resort, and, of course, there are limitations such as children not being allowed at the adults only facilities. Arrival for the Ambar is actually at the lobby for the Aquamarine, where you and your luggage will be taken to the Ambar by shuttle (golf cart). The Aquamarine and Ambar lobbies are only separated by about a 5 minute walk, if you did want to walk it, but the shuttle is much better when toting your luggage. Pickup follows the same routine in reverse at the end of your stay.
The first room we were given had some maintenance issues – the air conditioning wasn’t working properly, primarily – but Nikki from Guest Services in the lobby took care of it and had us moved to a different room. Nikki was just the best, even arranging for a bottle of champagne and some room decorations on my wife’s birthday while we were there. Likewise, the rest of the staff at the resort were always friendly and helpful. High marks for housekeeping – our room was always spotless, and we always had everything we needed.
We were in a corner junior suite, which we picked mainly due to the soaking tub (my wife loves to soak in the tub). The room was spacious and well appointed, with plenty of room and comfortable furniture. The bed was quite firm, which is just the way I like it, but my wife thought it was a bit too hard. The air conditioning could have also been cooler, we thought, but I wouldn’t call it uncomfortable. The mini bar was a bit of an issue. The first one we had didn’t work at all. Maintenance replaced it, and while the second one worked, it didn’t really get drinks cold, just slightly cool. The resort uses peltier cooling refrigerators, which don’t get nearly as cold as compressor systems. If you want a cold drink in your room, you’ll have to call for ice. The soaking tub was also a disappointment. Only the hot water worked – if you turned the faucet to cold, no water came out at all. The small trickle of hot water that did come out of the faucet would have taken hours to fill the tub to a level sufficient to soak in. My wife really only considered using the tub if we had a rainy day, which we did not, so it wasn’t an issue. I would suggest visitors consider the tub more of a room decoration than a functional tub.
The beach area was wonderful. Our last several beach vacations have been to Cancun where the sargassum was so bad that the beach was not usable. That was not an issue at all at the Ambar beach. Only on one morning was there a small amount of seaweed on the beach due to a storm overnight, and the resort had a small army of people removing it very early in the day, making for a pristine beach. The water was blue and clear. We spent the entire week enjoying the sand and ocean. The pool area was also very nice, and we went there to cool off when needed and to have drinks at the swim up bar. I suggest bringing your own Yeti type cup which the bartender will use to make your drink if you like. If you don’t, drinks are served in small glasses, maybe 8 or 10 ounces (about 250 mL) – I was ordering beers two at a time in the heat of the day.
One annoyance was that guests reserve chairs at the pool and beach well in advance despite signs forbidding it. Many chairs were reserved the night before, as evidenced by wet and/or seaweed covered belongings the morning after the overnight storm. Often the people reserving these chairs made no appearance until lunchtime or after. Several couples who caught our attention did this with four chairs at the pool and 6 at the beach, never arriving until mid afternoon and never spending more than 5 minutes in their seats in any given hour. Guessing when they would finally show up got to be a joke between us. While I put this mainly on rude guests, the hotel should do something to enforce the rules or they will continue to be broken.
We ate breakfast and lunch at the beachside restaurant every day. The fresh grilled options were good, with selections of fish, beef, and pork that varied a little each day. Pizza there was also pretty good, and there was the usual assortment of buffet items. Our favorite restaurant for dinner was the Limbo, which also had our favorite bar. Portofino was also good, as was M.E.A.T. The Los Olas churrasco was just OK – we found that most of the meats were overdone, and the sides served at the table were so bad as to be inedible, although there were other perfectly fine sides available on the buffet, along with a huge salad bar in line with the churrasco experience. The only other restaurant we tried was the Makio Japanese restaurant. We did the a la carte, not the show cooking. It was, in a word, awful. The only entrée offered was teppanyaki, the same as the show cooking but without the show. You got a choice of protein, which came with a side of something similar to fried rice. The food was overcooked and dry, the restaurant was very hot and loud, and there was no real choice of what to eat. Do yourself a favor and skip this restaurant – it is not on par with anything else at the complex, including the buffet. Some of the restaurants have their own special drink menu, so be sure to check that out – we liked the negroni at Portofino and the circus cocktail at M.E.A.T., along with everything at Limbo.
The resort is very active and has activities and entertainment all day and well into the night. I could have done with a bit less loud music late in the evening, which could be heard in my room as if I had a radio on in the room. If you’re not one to stay out late, you should request a room away from the pool to be further away from the bulk of the noise. There are quite a few feral cats on the property, and while they’re cute and much more accustomed to humans than ferals you might see at home, they are still feral and could bite/scratch or have parasites - I would avoid them.
Overall, this was a nice resort that I wouldn’t hesitate to return to at some point in the future.
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