Name: Don Cesar Apart-hotel
Address: Calle Francisco Caamaño Deño, Pueblo de Pescadores, Las Terrenas, Las Terrenas, Las Terrenas, Las Terrenas, 32000, Dominican Republic
Rating: 7

Air conditioning

Garden

Terrace

Outdoor furniture

General

Laundry

Services and amenities

Free Wi-Fi

Internet

Airport transportation

Transfer services

Transfer

Spanish

English

French

Languages Spoken

Picnic area

Sun Deck

Recreation

Parking

Swimming pool

Outdoor pool

Beach facilities

Next to the beach

Pool and beach

Children swimming pool

Kids' TV Networks

Kids

Location

At the apartament hotel

Samana El Catey International Airport

Don Cesar Apart-hotel

Las Terrenas

child-bed

child-bed-fee

external-private-bathroom

private-bathroom

shared-bathroom

10-beds

11-beds

12-beds

13-beds

14-beds

15-beds

16-beds

17-beds

18-beds

19-beds

2-beds

20-beds

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23-beds

24-beds

25-beds

26-beds

27-beds

28-beds

29-beds

3-beds

30-beds

31-beds

32-beds

33-beds

34-beds

35-beds

36-beds

37-beds

38-beds

39-beds

4-beds

40-beds

5-beds

6-beds

7-beds

8-beds

9-beds

king-bed

queen-bed

limited-time

lounge

treatment

no-window

bay-view

bosphorus-view

canal-view

city-view

courtyard-view

garden-view

golf-view

harbour-view

inland-view

lake-view

land-view

mountain-view

ocean-front

ocean-view

oceanside

panoramic-view

park-view

partial-ocean-view

partial-sea-view

partial-view

pool-view

river-view

sea-front

sea-view

street-view

sunrise-view

sunset-view

water-view

with-view

annex

basement

main-building

1-bedroom

2-bedrooms

3-bedrooms

4-bedrooms

5-bedrooms

6-bedrooms

not-guaranteed

wired-internet-access

smoking

sauna

duplex

safe

mini-bar

breakfast-for-1

breakfast-for-2

pets-allowed

wi-fi

kitchen

Omg where do I begin what a mistake staying in this run down smelly place. The apts are cheaply decorated and smell like they’ve been closed up for a year. We barely slept with the horrible smell. Don’t go by their pictures which I’m sure were taken many years ago. This complex is in need of major refurbishing. The only functioning pool needs refurbishing and resurfacing. It looked dirty but I guess it was that it needs repainting.  
The staff is friendly and try to be accommodating but they couldn’t make up for the deficiencies of the place. I would skip it no matter how inexpensive it seems to be. In low season it’s $79 plus tax which comes to about $90 the night. (Which in fact it’s not really cheap at all)You can find something better. Read reviews good and bad and decide whether to take the risk. 

Overnight stay

The Don Cesar is located at Las Terrenas (Dominican Republic north). The village is still authentic and colourful. We had an amazing time at the Don Cesar residential. The location is perfect, 2min walk from bars, restaurants and beach ! It is a family place, quiet and well laid out. Two pools, and a lot of green space to chill out. The flat we rent was clean and sunny, lot of space for the kids as well.

Perfect beach front place !

Residential Don Cesar resort is only 20 minutes’ drive on new highway 133 from Samana El Catey International Airport in Dominican Republic and about 2-hour drive from Santo Domingo Capital City. We spent four weeks there in January 2017.

As advertised this property is only across the road from the beach and it doesn’t have a beach club. But nobody tells you that this section of the beach is not very clean and for this reason the ocean is not really swimmable here. You can jump in the water to refresh yourself, but there is too much sea grass around to really swim. In four weeks we were there I have never seen anyone swimming there. To get to the ‘real’ and clean beach we had to walk west, about 20 minutes, since Residential Don Cesar is located about 1.5 km from beautiful ‘Playa Colibri beach club’ which is also part of long Ballenas beach.

The surroundings… in front of the property it’s a jungle out there, because there is lots of traffic. People on scooters are buzzing around at high speed. We had to be very careful crossing the road. There are number of restaurants and bars nearby. It is noisy at night, but since our apartment was in the middle of complex, we didn’t here street noise.

Condo I 2-2
When we arrived Estefano who works as a security guard at the front gate, showed us to our apartment (I 2-2) which is privately owned and doesn’t belong under ‘Don Cesar’s’ management. This apartment offers contemporary décor, air conditioning, a seating area with sofa and a kitchen with stove, fridge, dining area and (minimal) kitchenware. It has two bedrooms and one bathroom.

When we entered our condo we were hugely disappointed. The place looked much better on the internet. Everything was old and outdated. It needs to be updated or fixed because it is broken. The whole place needs cleaning as most of the things were dusty and yucky… very sticky (remote controls, kitchen utensils). 

Kitchen was very poorly equipped. It consisted of very, very basic things. There were only three vine glasses, two plates (the others were cheap plastic), one cooking pot and one usable frying pan. Some dishes were disgusting, so we never used them. Fen for the freezer in the kitchen was very laud, making a lot of squeaking noise and is on its last days. There are three air conditionings in the apartment, but only one worked and this one was very laud. There are two outdated TVs but there is no subscription for cable channels and TV remote controls were very dirty, so we didn’t want to touch them. Small JVC stereo from the picture on internet doesn’t work at all. We didn’t have a coffee maker, toaster, dishwasher, washer and dryer, or hair dryer in a bathroom. There was only one bathroom with shower and one separate toilet where we had only one broken toilet brush. We had two sets of towels and bed sheets. No other supplies were provided during our stay.

This property features a nice balcony which is probably the best feature of this place. We spent lots of time sitting in loan chairs (and unsuccessfully attempting to connect to internet). All accommodations include a terrace on top floor with garden or sea views, but we went up on the top floor only once. There are two swimming pools in the garden between buildings. They kept then clean and we spent many days sun tanning and swimming in these pools. Guests at Residential Don Cesar will find a variety of food places, restaurants, shops and bars across the street in Los Pescadores village.

There is also free Wi-Fi throughout. But Wi-Fi sucks! Most of the time we were unable to connect, and when we did connect it was very, very slow. Residential Don Cesar also features a garden and a safe deposit box at the front desk, but we never used them. Free self-parking is also available.

Exathlon Brazil – Reality show
There are 80 guestrooms or units in total. Most of them were occupied by Brazilian reality TV Show. ‘Exathlon’ Brazil is a Brazilian reality show based on the Turkish format, screened and produced by Rede Bandeirantes and recorded somewhere on a beach in the Dominican Republic. It counts 20 participants, where 10 are famous athletes and the other 10 are anonymous, and will have to confront each other in physical games, in the search for a money prize.

A team of approximately 300 people (mostly Turks and Greeks) works on this reality show in Las Terrenas. The entire team involved in the production of the program, was staying at our condominiums, where they were making all recordings of the show just across from our balcony. They keep their doors open at all times to share the noise from their recordings with the rest of the tenants and other tourists in the complex. This is very disturbing and annoying for the rest of us as most of the recording happens over the night. We heard they stay there six months – every year!

Water
On our second day in Las Terrenas, I received a warning from someone on the Facebook that faucet water in Las Terrenas is contaminated. They said not to even brush teeth with it and we were supposed to boil it before cooking or drinking it. I had no idea or warnings about this. Amoebas, fungus and other parasites and bacteria are present. We should never use that water, only to mop the floors with some bleach and mistolin. From then on we were drinking only bottled water.

HomeAway.com booking
This time I missed the red flags right from the beginning, and things didn’t go any better throughout our stay in Las Terrenas. I began booking this place through Expedia which transferred me to ‘HomeAway.com’ without me realizing this change. They also charged me additional 10% for my transaction as their service fee. Somewhere hidden in fine print of our contract unseen by me, they mention that we’ll be responsible for our consumption of electricity. But I had no idea what was our consumption as we never checked power meter at the beginning. At the end the owners charged me for electricity $150 USD for our stay of 28 days. Total rip-off!

IN CLOSING
We did make the best of our situation, it's not like we whined & complained all the time, and it was what it was. We did read a lot of reviews on this site before booking & there were a lot more positive ones than negative or we would have not booked. But people didn’t mention the things we saw there, so in my review I was trying to write exactly about things that nobody mentioned before. 

Keeping in mind this resort was rated at a 3 to 3 1/2 star, we really didn't have high expectations. One travel agent told us that the only reason it is not rated a 4 star is because it's not right on the beach. That is complete bulls*it. In all fairness we might give it a 2 1/2 star. Once again not for the efforts of the owners of our condo, but the facility itself. They maintain beautiful garden and pools are clean. The majority of the resort is in need of some major & lots of minor renovations. 

In a nutshell for us it came down to did we get the value for our money, and we don't think we did. We could have spent three months in Mexico for the money spent here. At the end please remember these are our opinions & many people see things in different ways. Would we recommend this resort, no I don’t think so.

Have a good and healthy season. Follow Zdenko’s Corner on Facebook !

Don Cesar Apart-hotel

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