Not going to add much more to the previous reports, just to say that this is probably one of the best hotels in Cuba and with a little bit of effort, could be one of the best in the Caribbean.

However, if you are one of those who believe in tipping only when you get good service then you will have to get your own drinks at the bar or remind staff in the restaurants that you are waiting. The tippers are always get looked after. Shame really beacause the quality of the food was very very good and really was 5 star.

Small beach also, when busy a bit crowded.

Don't get me wrong we still loved it and the overnight trip to Havana is superb, not to be missed.

Second trip to Paradisus.

This hotel was so good last year we decided to go again at the same time of year.

The hotel is on a nice peninsula in lush grounds extremely well maintained. All the accomodation is either in 2 storey blocks or separate 2 room bungalows.
The bungalows have a nice secluded outside shower and I would recommend the ones on the lagoon side of the resort.

We stayed in block 38 (same as last year) due to its central location to pool and restaraunts and had a corner ground floor room which we requested by email before arrival.

This is a quiet relaxing resort, the entertainment (animation) staff will leave you alone if you want but they have great little organised activities such as free local tours for the non-lazy.

The rooms are nice & large most with queen size bed A/C that does work and a fridge-bar.
The Fridge bar was my only very small complaint (same as last year) as they only had two small beers , can of coke & bottle of water (although they do restock daily). Compared to the competition in Mexico where you get a fully stocked fridge + optics this could be improved.

Room Service menu is included in the price of the holiday and for those arriving late or needing that snack at 3am this is a superb.

Lobby Bar
Open 24hrs with a huge variety of proper branded drinks , not the cheap copies as you see in other resorts. Waiter/Waitress service is extremely swift and very friendly, they get to know your drinks very quickly and most times I did not have to ask for the drink or refills !.
In the evenings the piano player is in full swing although you may hear "Girl from Impanina" once or twice during your stay.

Fun Pub/Disco
Open from around 10pm to late. A/C can make the place seem like the polar ice-cap and a bit small.

Pool Bar
Open from 10am to around 6pm . This is a great combined swimup & dry bar with the sun on the bar all day for those who like to bake'n'drink.
Say hello to John & Luis who always had my drink ready on the bar as I struggled through the water.

Pool Restaurant
Open 10am to around 5pm .This is a sit down affair for those who want it however they do a fantasitic pizza which you can take away and eat by the pool.
A big hi to Judith & Maria for fantastic service at this restaurant.

Beach Restaurant & Bar
Open 12 to 5pm . Again an open air sit down restaurant facing the sea , superb location and great fish on the menu.

Main Buffet.
This is open 1pm to 3pm and then for the evening from around 6:30 to 10pm. Dress Code for men applies in the evenings long pants no shorts. It is open air but we never felt too hot as there was a nice breeze in the evenings.
The food is fantastic here, great choice & the presentation is top notch.
The Grill had regular choice of Steak ,Pork, Chicken with at least 3 different fish types such as Talapia, Red Snapper , Calamaries & Tiger Prawns.
A side Cavery with two meat choices.
Huge array of side dishes, a pasta chef to cook up your own pasta and a large pizza selection made to order.
For dessert there are a wide range of pastries , ice-cream and of course a Crepe Chef to put together a mouth watering Crepe that must not be missed.

All Ala Carte restaurants have to be pre-booked and I would recommend that you either do this via email or as soon as you arrive to ensure you can get the right times.
El Patio
This is located close to the lobby area and serves a wide choice of Spanish & Italian style foods. This year they had a pair of Dancers doing latin & waltz in the middle of the restaurant as the entertainment.

Japanese
This is an entertaining night out sitting around a tepanyaki table watching your meal cooked in front of you. Very friendly cooks with a few cheesy jokes to keep everything light and easy.

Mediterranean
This was our favorite, a huge entrance brings you into a small cosy restarant with a pair of excellent guitarists as the entertainment. Here you felt like one of the family with a superb choice of dishes and great choice of good quality Spanish Wines.

Cuban
We visited this last year but decided to give it a miss this time . The menu for vegi's is really limited and is the only open-air ala carte restaurant so it can get a bit sticky as it does not have the cooling breeze like the buffet.

Pool
This is nice & large with plenty of sun beds to go around without the annoying 6am reservation escapades.
The blue foam tops on the beds serve as really nice floats so you can drag one into the pool and float around dropping into the pool bar every now and then for a top-up.

Beach
The beach is shared with two sister hotels and the better part of the beach is opposite these hotels. Dont forget that you can use all the facilities of the other hotels so take advantage and take a walk to the other end of the beach , grab a drink at each of the two the beach bars on the way.

Evening Entertainment.
Very sedate entertainment and not the usual audience participation. Good quality band with the nice mix of local & internation flavours. Unfortunately there is no-where to go outside the hotel in the evening.

Staff & Tipping.
All the staff were extremely friendly and always had a smile & "ola" for you.
While tipping is not necessary we felt that one or two peso CUC now and again made quite a difference.
We would recommend that you bring small gifts to give out to the staff. We brought some childrens crayons & colouring books , soaps toothbrushes etc. Take a look on the forums for idea's.

Weather
Travelling in Dec (Cuban Winter) the weather was a little variable from blistering hot one day to torrential rain the next.


Things not to miss:-
A meal in the Mediterranean Restaurant
Sweet Crepes in the Buffet
Cheesy Jokes in the Japanese
Local trips organized by the entertainment staff.
Take a look a the other hotels on the beach and realize you paid the extra for good reason
Get the guys to take you out in a Hobbie Cat (Free but tip well)
Snorkel near the massage hut.
Take a horse & cart to Guadalavaca around 12CUC and far more fun than the usual hot & sticky taxi ride.

Just returned two days ago from a fantastic two weeks at PRDO, the hotel was just wonderful everyone was so friendly, most staff speak wonderful english and they are very friendly people considering they have so little. and work so hard.

I had read reports before going and did have some concernes but there seemed to be minimal disruption from the building works going on in fact i was not disturbed al all.

The spa that is currently available is not good hence thats why they are building a new one, the jacuzzy X2 where not really worth useing but thats the only negative I could find.

Access to the private beach is currently only available by useing a bus provided by hotel, I cant comment on it as I didnt go I used the other beach that was very easy to access, and the beach restaurant was great for lunch.
The speciality resturants for dinner, I did hear some people complaining they could not get reservations but I booked befor going via e mail so this may be a good idea for any future travellers.

For me my favourite was the El Patio resturant the food and service was great.The bar service is great there is only one to use in the evening unless you want to go to the club which i did a few times, the great thing about the club is that is air conditioned.

Air con is a must it was just wonderful to go to my room after the heat and humidity, outside on one day we recorded the outside temperature on the beach at 40 degrees, thats hot I can tell you.

The best place for me was at the pool you can swim up to the pool bar and drink your heart out,just the place to cool down.

The food was excellent something for everyone even picky eaters, I just adored the shrimp and red snapper.
There was only one thing I missed HP sauce lucky for me someone had brought a bottle with them however I didnt find out until week two, but it was great to share and if you ever read this report thanks for the sauce.

Just returned two days ago from a fantastic two weeks at PRDO, the hotel was just wonderful everyone was so friendly, most staff speak wonderful english and they are very friendly people considering they have so little. and work so hard.

I had read reports befor going and did have some concernes but there seemed to be minimal disruption from the building works going on in fact I was not disturbed al all.
The spa that is currently available is not good hence thats why they are building a new one, the jacuzzi X2 where not really worth using but thats the only negative I could find.

Access to the private beach is currently only available by useing a bus provided by hotel, I cant comment on it as I didnt go I used the other beach that was very easy to access, and the beach restaurant was great for lunch.
The speciality resturants for dinner, I did hear some people complaining they could not get reservations but I booked befor going via e mail so this may be a good idea for any future travellers.

For me my favourite was the El Patio resturant the food and service was great.The bar service is great there is only one to use in the evening unless you want to go to the club which I did a few times, the great thing about the club is that is air conditioned.

Air con is a must it was just wonderful to go to my room after the heat and humidity, outside on one day we recorded the outside temperature on the beach at 40 degrees, thats hot I can tell you.

The best place for me was at the pool you can swim up to the pool bar and drink your heart out,just the place to cool down.

The food was excellent something for everyone even picky eaters, I just adored the shrimp and red snapper.

There was only one thing I missed HP sauce lucky for me someone had brought a bottle with them however I didnt find out untill week two, but it was great to share and if you ever read this report thanks for the sauce.

Well your not going to find a great deal going on outside the hotel, in fact theres nothing after dark, you would even struggle to take a walk unless you wanted to walk around the hotel grounds, the entertainment is hotel bassed and theres a show every night,it was very well presented, great dancing. and only one night did they ask for ordience participation , which was a great bonus for me.

During the day theres plenty to do if you want it, Horse riding catamarans pedalos water arobics vollyball need I go on.

One small reminder if your going soon dont worry about the hurricanes they mostly miss this area.

Trips I would recommend are Havana swimming with dolphins and Santiaga de Cuba, if you dont plan on doing anything you need not take much money as there is nothing to buy there are no english cigarets to be found so take plenty if you smoke, and remeber to bring back some bacardi rum its

We stayed in the PRDO during the tail end of Wilma and unfortunately the first 4 days weather was somewhat hit and miss.

The hotel is situated next to a lagoon and because of the amount of rain within a short space of time, the lagoon was breached by the sea. This meant that throughout our holiday the sea was sometimes cloudy in the area of the lagoon and we were a little concerned for our health and stayed out of the sea when it was particularly bad.

On the good days the beach was fantastic with excellent snorkeling, especially near the wedding gazebo. This is a 100yds swim but well worth it and is relatively shallow. If you take a pedallo out past the gazebo and keep going, you come to a lovely private, little beach.

Rooms: We e-mailed the hotel and requested a particular room on the 2nd floor with a room next door for our teenage sons. When we arrived it would seem that our requests had been totally ignored. The rooms were, one on the ground floor and one on the 1st floor. They came back with 2 rooms on the ground floor but we held out for 2 rooms on the 1st floor as originally requested. Please dont think we were being awkward but after paying the amount we had for this holiday and sending e-mails ahead with our request, we were determined to get what we had asked for.

We have travelled around the world and my advice to anyone, please check your room before leaving the check-in desk. If the rooms are wrong, do not leave the desk until it has been put right. We have spent other holidays being fobbed off for a number of days before eventually moving rooms.

Food: We had a few minor problems in the first few days. The main restaurant has a good selection of foods, although lunch time choice is not particularly good. We ate there once at lunch time and had to complain to the Restaurant Manager because a chef had freshly cooked chicken on the grill which was still raw. I caught my son eating this and grabbed it from him. A number of other people had also complained of this. The trick is to ask for it to be cooked not just well done but burned. If you are not happy tell him to keep cooking it!

Apart from here there is a restaurant at the pool serving pastas, pizzas, sandwiches/fries, and a restaurant at the beach serving fish, burgers and similar. Both these are waiter service so be prepared for a wait (remember your on holiday - whats the rush?) My main disappointment about the holiday was that the beach bar did not open at night for a drink and a small snack, being able to listen to the waves lapping on the beach! (bliss - but alas!)

The speciality restaurants were good, our favourite being the Japanese. On our visit to the Japanese our chef was (I swear) a Japanese Elvis lookalike called Pavel and he swore that this was most definitely his first night on the grill. He was very funny and allowed our 14 year old son to help him, or as he insisted to show him what to do!
We had also e-mailed the hotel to reserve the Japanese restaurant on one particular night for a special occasion. When we arrived we were told we could eat there at 6.30pm and not 8.30pm as we had requested. When we asked why (having sent an e-mail several weeks earlier), we were told that other people had booked all their allocations for the entirity of their holiday in one e-mail. This made it very difficult for people just arriving and trying to book the restaurants.

Also it didn't help that in our first week there were 8 wedding parties, who obviously take precedence, (and of course they should).

Staff: Fantastic. The best we have come across. Even the garden staff are lovely. We took plenty of gifts with us such as pens, pencils, note books etc and the staff really appreciated them. We gave our friend the gardener (Juan Angel) a football top and an unused pair of England flip-flops and a small amount of money. He was absolutely over the moon, as were the maid and the mini-bar guy. We also tipped the bar people and waitresses in the restaurants.

We were never under pressure to tip but they worked so hard and were always so polite that any small amount (on top of their meagre wage) was always greatly appreciated. If I were to go back to this hotel it would be because of the great staff. Some to mention -in the main bar, William (head bar man)looks about 15 years of age, Manuel and Yaniellis (or smiler as we nicknamed her). Mickel from the entertainment was great and spoke in a cuban/cockney accent. He and his pal Michael (Will Smith lookalike) loved to play pool with the boys at night. Delia (waitress) was lovely. Juan Carlos was the security guard at the beach who loved his banter when my husband and boys went fishing at dusk.

Entertainment: For our teenage sons 14 + 16 it was poor. There were 2 pool tables near to the main bar, but these would usually be quite busy. There was another entertainment area which had giant chess etc but this was for the daytime activities as at night it would be in darkness.

The disco was a refreshing retreat. The main bar and entertainment area were not air conditioned or even had fans and could become unbearably hot. It was nice to retreat into the disco which was air conditioned. I would definitely recommend taking a small hand held battery fan (it was a godsend).

Pool: This was superb and there were always spaces available. We particularly liked the mattresses on the sunbeds as you were able to take them into the pool to lie on. They were also extremely comfortable. We also liked the poolside cabanas, which were also a good form of shade for when the sun did come out. Another plus was the jacuzzi overlooking the beach. This is highly reccommended, especially when the sun is setting and the bar man will bring over a bottle of champagne. More romantic when its just you and your partner (Absolute bliss)!

My one big gripe with this hotel was the lack of lighting. On our 1st night we had a wander around the grounds but the lighting was very poor. It did not light up the pathways adequately and we stumbled across 4 giant crabs on our first evening. These could definitely have done some damage to unsuspecting toes. After this I refused to go out at night without taking my phone which has a torch. I would most certainly advise you to take a small torch. The lighting on the stairways of each block also came on when it was already dark. This was extremely dangerous as we were walking up and down stairs in the pitch black. This was sorted out in the last few days of our holiday, when it was changed for the lights to come on earlier before it got dark.

I would say that with a little tweaking, this hotel could be well worth its 5 Star grading. Just little things like some over-head fans in the bar and entertainment area, open the beach bar in the evenings and also the pool restaurant which could serve self-service snacks until late. Also improve the lighting around the complex, so that you may see where you are walking.

We visited the PRDO from the 26th October to the 5th November 2005. A lot of the reviews cover everything about this wonderful hotel but here are a few points that I

Well what can I say..... The hotel is out of this world, everything is thought out to a high standard to make sure your stay with them is top class.

The staff treated me like I was a celebrity. There are a few people who you have to meet when you get there and you will know what I'm talking about once you meet them they are:- Yanalis (she does the best foot massages you could ever have by the pool and always has a smile to great you with). Michael (he is in entertainment and if you have any problems he is the man to help you, he likes to say phrases from Bo Selecta, he is very funny) and last of all there is Manuel (he works in the main bar and will memorise all drinks for you every night. Put it this way there was 8 people in our group and he never forgot).

The food in this hotel is fabulous, I could of eaten in buffet every night it was that good. There is so much selection you can never get bored and as for the desserts I don't even want to get on them scales now I'm home. The best restaurant for me was the Japanese my only advise to you is if your going to go there make sure you book the "show table" because you will never see anything like that again.

There is not one bad comment I can make about my stay with this hotel. Put it this way its not called "Paradisus" for no reason because believe me it is pure paradise through and through.

I can't wait to go back next year as it is a place you definitely have to visit.

Our stay at the Rio de Oro was magnificent,the staff
the food the surroundings,the service,no complaints whasosever.

Apart from getting into Cuba, and being charged Seventy Pounds excess baggage getting out,I left with less than I arrived with,having given lots of stuff away. This is the only AI holiday I have ever been on that includes, safe, room service 24/7, mini bar,porterage to the room.

This hotel is the most beautiful hotel we have ever stayed in. we were tols that this is the best hotel in Cuba and they are right.

It is paradise. the hotel itself is very clean in all areas and staff very helpful and friendly. They make your stay so nice we did not want to leave. The food is good.

The themed restaurants are not to be missed. The buffet restaurant is good,plenty of choice. Restaurant staff look after you very well. Pool very nice,plenty of sunbeds.the beach is stunning.we spent alot of time on the beach.the beach restaurant is a must for lunch.

Entertainment was most enjoyable. Bar staff very nice people and drinks good especially champers. Room was nice and clean. We had a relaxing 2 weeks.

Would I visit this hotel again most definitely would.

Absolutely fantastic. This is the only way you can describe this hotel. We were automatically upgraded to a bungalow without asking as it was our silver wedding anniversary and the room was beautiful. We even had an outside shower and our own hammock.

The food was excellent with plenty of choice. There would be something there even for the most 'picky' eater.

The hotel has the most beautiful grounds and it was a pleasure to take a stroll either to the beach, the pool or the main complex. You never had the feeling of being with lots of other people. It was just paradise.

The staff can not do enough to help you if you need anything and are always smiling. You will get superb service without tipping, but if you did it was greatly appreciated.

We only managed to get away for a week this time but we have decided that we are definitely going back next year for two weeks minimum, and we can't wait.