We did Punta Cana last year and loved it. I wish I could remember the resort. If you search on here I've discussed it before fairly recently. It was fairly small and isolated, so it was nice and got away from the big busy resorts. Was all inclusive and was nice. Food was a good mix of American food and local food. We went scuba diving, fishing, hiking, 4wheeling, etc. was fun.
We also recently went to an all inclusive Hilton resort in Costa Rica and really enjoyed it. I thought the food there was good as it was pretty authentic local food and not really Americanized. My wife wasn't a big fan of the food as she isn't huge on new and different foods. Did scuba diving, rode ATVs, tubing a local river with rapids, rode horses, ropes course and zip lines in the rain forests, etc. one of my favorite excursions was riding ATVs through the jungle and getting a tour of some of the small villages. We even stopped in at a local bar for drinks and mingled with some of the locals and even drank some of the local favorites, most notably taking shots with the locals of raw turtle eggs mixed with a local rum and hot sauce. Fun stuff. Even stopped to help a local change a tire on their car and got all smiles and thumbs up even though there was a distinct language barrier. Even got to play a little soccer with some of the local kids. While we didn't speak each other's language, we enjoyed each other's company and friendly competition. Yep, CR was a good time.
I liked Costa Rica better as it was a little less developed/commercialized in the northern area that we were in. The excursions were a little more fun and adventurous than DR. Bri liked DR better as she likes to relax more where I like to be busy and adventurous. If you go to CR, stay in the upper portion as the southern portion is not nearly as welcoming to Americans and the resorts are further north.
A quick note, most any of the tropical resorts will have English speaking workers as a majority of their customers speak English. I did find some of the non resort workers in Costa Rica had difficulties speaking English when we went in town; most were small shop owners, Etc. Any that worked in the tourism/service industry spoke pretty decent English.
