We got back late Saturday night from the Dominican Republic.

My wife, our two kids, my mother, and our nanny went away to a resort for a week as a bit of a family vacation.

I still worked all week as I’ve got too many things on the go to step away. I just decided to have a change of scenery for my office.

I’ve got almost no experience with resorts as it’s just not my type of travel, but my daughter is obsessed with a program called Paw Patrol. If you have young kids, you might know it.

It’s basically a team of superhero dogs who go out and try to solve the world's problems. 

They look like a group of anthropomorphic ESG Village People, but my daughter goes nuts for it, so I allow(ed) it. 

Nickelodeon owns this franchise, and they have a resort in the Dominican Republic, so we wanted to surprise her with a trip there.

We thought it would be fun to watch our kid's head explode when her favourite characters come to life.

Anyways, we arrived at the resort, and they didn’t have our reservations.

My wife had booked back in November during Black Friday deals and got a special 50% off. 

She had put down a $500 deposit, with the rest to be paid later.

Well, when we flew in and arrived at the resort, they could see that the deposit was made, but they had cancelled our reservation because they didn’t get the remaining payment…

…and didn’t even tell us they cancelled.

Even though they had our credit card on file and could have billed us and even our phone number to get a hold of us.

They just cancelled the reservation.

We argued with the staff for two full hours, asked to speak with a manager, had to phone their call center (who was unbelievably rude), and all this other wasted stuff.

In the end, we ended up having to make a brand new reservation at full price, and they would not honour the $500 deposit we had made and just kept it.

They basically stole from me.

I was fuming. 

Nickelodeon wants to compete in the hospitality and theme park industry with companies like Disney, and this is how they treat paying customers.

What a joke.

We spoke with another guest who was at the resort a couple of days later, and she had a similar experience.

The whole resort looked less than 40% full; now I know why…

Anyways, the place was crap, and we would never go back. It ended up having almost nothing specialized for kids or anything to do with the famous characters they are known for and really very little going on in general. 

The beach was nice enough, but when you pay for a thematic experience, and they don’t even make a basic effort, it really leaves you feeling ripped off.

And by the way, when we were checking out, we noticed that the horrible reception staff had the UN Agenda 2030 colourful pin on their uniforms (something the restaurant and resort staff didn’t have). I am now double against Nickelodeon and will stop my kids from watching any more of their programming. 

In the end, my family and I made the most of it, as we were happy to be together, and I really just love travelling with my kids.

But I would NOT recommend Nickelodeon resorts to anyone.

Okay, enough ranting; I just needed to get that off my chest.

Let's change topics…

What I WOULD recommend is that anyone interested in Panama joins us for our upcoming Expat Exploration & Investment Tour happening March 13-19th:

https://expatmoney.com/panama-expat-exploration-investment-tour

I am happy to extend the Business Class Membership pricing to any subscriber who wishes to join us, but you need to fill in the application and make the payment this week so we can finalize the numbers for the trip.

Learn more here:

https://expatmoney.com/panama-expat-exploration-investment-tour

Speak soon,

Mikkel

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