Staff and service: The true highlight of our experience. Chloe the Cruise Director, our room steward Erwin and everyone else we encountered was positively lovely and wonderful.
Cabin (balcony spa deck 1108): see below
Dining: We had the flexible "your time" dining but was only able to enjoy the main dining room two nights because the wait on the other nights were SO long - anywhere from 30-60 minutes, which wasn't worth the wait. We ate at the buffet most often and the food was plentiful but simply not satisfying. Also sometimes long lines at the buffet when they'd only have one side open. Blue Iguana and Guys were the best options.
We booked a balcony spa deck room (1108) on the left side which was a poor choice -- there is a deck right above the room with a ping pong table, jumbo chess board and corn hole which meant kids were running back and forth at all hours. Very loud. And the balcony is barely covered which means there's no sun protection and worse people on the deck above you are staring down upon you. No privacy. The odd # spa deck rooms would have been a far better choice since the adults-only deck is on top of them. Also the boat was very rocky for 2 nights and we definitely felt it up here. We took preventive motion sickness meds fortunately which worked, but it was tough sleeping.
We had really wanted to go to Monkey Jungle so we hired a driver for the day, but unfortunately the monkey experience still wasn't available for our trip dates, so the driver just took us around "real" Puerto Plata - stopping in the area of town he grew up in, we met his family, etc. That was really cool. Also visited a bunch of other stops - cigar making, chocolate factory, fort, etc. People are trying to sell you stuff EVERYWHERE and it's cash only, even at the nice beach restaurant we went to (D'Chiringuito Bar Restaurant which was AWESOME -- the best meal we had all week, I had the fresh seafood skewers with fried plantains, amazing)
Slow tendering process, beach was SO crowded, lines for BBQ lunch, etc etc