The Crawl (March 2023) -By: Jordan Lanegan

Two hours from Albany to Newark in the fast lane. Forty-five minutes of quick-stepping person after person, everyone as impatient as the next, tap-tap-tapping and snaking their way through the TSA line. Another hour waiting for the plane to arrive and people to be seated. Minimal hours of sleep from the night before. Two hours to Fort Lauderdale. Twenty minutes of walking outside in the Floridan afternoon heat dressed in thirty-degree New York attire to the other side of the airport. An hour waiting to go through customs. Another forty minutes of checking bags and going through TSA, again. One hour of spare layover time to grab some grub and keep eyes open. Two and a half more hours of flying squished in the middle seat, with only fifteen half-ass minutes of dozing off right before touching down in Punta Cana, but alas — we have arrived. 

Except, not quite. 

Exit the plane. Another nuts-to-butts, follow-the-leader situation of hot and sticky shuttle transportation to the outdoor, breezy Dominican airport. Go through another customs that barely feels like customs. Head to baggage claim. Avoid tourist traps and hollering locals attempting to help you with your bags. Figure out where the hell you’re going. Get rounded up like cattle and marched to another bus with limited air conditioning. Hold on for dear life as the driver tailgates, runs red lights, barely navigates potholes and honks furiously as motorcyclists cut him off. 

Quickly grab your luggage and tip the man for the terrifying ride. Head to check-in with smeared mascara, debatably crusty hair, and an odor coming from your pits that even you cannot ignore. Smile, nod, hand over your credit card, drag yourself to the room, flop on the king size bed, immediately let out a sigh of sweet, sweet relief and turn on the shower to wash off all that damn nasty.

Who said traveling wasn’t fun?!

This exhausting leg of the trip I am familiar with. It rarely, if ever, is the traveling itself that people are excited about, but rather the destination, and typically my destination is never an all-inclusive resort. Let’s be real, not my style. I hop from hostels to cheap hotels to getting around on foot and saving my dollars for seeing what the place I’m visiting is really all about. 

All-inclusive resorts are funny. Vacations in general, really. You psych it up in your head as your big getaway and tend to put this enormous, unrealistic pressure on it. But the amount of people that I saw sitting awkwardly at their tables with nothing to say or rave about was almost comical. Deadpan faces, all around. They flew thousands of miles away and spent thousands of dollars to sit there just as unhappy as they were at home. The pressure of expecting everything to be perfect on these types of things is half the reason why everyone cracks underneath the idealization of it all.

Walking into the resort, I knew I’d feel a little out of my comfort zone. I’m much more comfortable with roughing it over being waited on hand-and-foot. I expected the environment depicted by the HBO show “The White Lotus”: the high-end, fancy-shmancy, snap to get what you want kind of place (let this be known: never, never, never, snap). I imagined many Jennifer Coolidge characters and saw myself relating more-so to her assistant, Portia. This was very much so the case. 

Don’t get me wrong, you can’t make a place like this up. Picturesque almost doesn’t even begin to describe it. Sunny, warm weather every day. Palm trees and crystal-clear turquoise beaches. Multiple pools with covered cabanas, swim-up bars and table-side service. 24-hour bars, casinos, nightclubs, and entertainment on two separate stages every evening. Soccer fields, batting cages, golf courses, tennis courts, spa amenities and boutique options abound. Private boat tours, snorkeling, scuba-diving, windsurfing and kayaking. To this end, it does not cheap out on its promises.

Where it does lack is in the quality of the food and beverages, something I’d known had I done some Googling beforehand. Although the dining areas are set up as five-star, fine-dining establishments, the food itself is buffet style, which is lackluster on its own accord. The food never changed from night to night and was mediocre at best, even when choosing to dine and pay extra for the restaurants – a single piece of broccoli was given for the vegetable at the steakhouse we chose one night… one, single piece. Another night, I was stoked to order room service for the first time and quickly realized it was a mistake when all we got were two sandwiches with one piece of meat, half a slice of cheese, wilted lettuce, and cold fries for $25. 

In a way, I get it. You have hundreds upon hundreds of people on the property and must find a convenient and cost-effective way to feed them all, but as far as the drinks went, I don’t think we received one drink that was made the exact same way. Consistency score, zero. Not to mention the time we ordered multiple shots of tequila and rum and only received tequila despite our best efforts to clarify what we meant. 

I understand that the appeal of doing an all-inclusive resort is that it’s easy. Everything is laid out for you. You’ve paid your dues upfront, when you wake up all you need to worry about is what excursions to do, whether to relax beach-side or poolside, what to eat and what to drink. It requires no effort. Sit, drink, eat, dance, be merry and attempt to forget your problems at home. 

But, despite me having traveled through Europe and Japan, I don’t think I was as prepared to see the drastic differences of being on a resort and then going off it. How can such a luxurious destination pulling in hundreds of thousands of tourist revenue annually have such a debilitating state of poverty on it’s surrounding parts? (After researching, I learned it’s because of the multinational corporations they’re owned by, so rather than money flowing into the local community and small businesses, it’s exported out of the country into the already deep pockets of the ultra-wealthy.) No wonder we feel as if the local community in places like this hate us. I would too. 

It’s difficult for me to travel in this style without feeling bad, or more realistically, without feeling the heavy implications of white privilege. The guilt goes without saying. I found myself often feeling empathic for the staff and all that they had to deal with (perhaps this is because I’m in the service industry, too.) Groups of many leaving unfinished plates, messy tables, and spilled drinks with no tip at all left for those who are cleaning up after them. All-inclusive does not mean tipping should be forgotten. 

As nice as it was to get out of frosty New York, I’m not sure I’d ever do another resort. While it may have had its bonuses, the adventurer in me was dying for more. I am a strong believer in doing anything once, and so for that reason, I would recommend not knocking it before you try it. Go get your Caribbean groove on.