Bay Island Diver:
Just wanting to know?
Why do so many people pay so much money to dive with the likes of AKR, Cocoview, Fantasy Island. The diving is expensive, the accommodation is expensive and you have virtually no choice over where to eat.
Compare that to booking a hotel in a dive centre such as the west end. You can then actually visit the dive operators and choose the one you like, eat in a different restaurant every night and even change hotels if you don't like it.
What is so attractive about resorts that make so many people forgo this level of choice?
Dear Troll:
I can speak as to this with the basis of my favorite choice, CoCoView.
I go on dive trips to dive. I want maximum diving for my dollar. I would disagree with your first paragraph. At CCV I can do Roatan for $115 a day, have absolutely unlimited diving (6x a day if I can stand it), dive at a fabulous shore dive location 24/7, have safe, diver designed custom boats, live on a private cay with
no security issues or the need to lock my door, have access to a real PADI 5*, have a professional photo op at hand, have long term divemasters and employees.
I eat 3 great meals plus snacks, I am surrounded by dedicated divers who will share their secrets with others. I can venture off of the private cay two or three times a week, sampling some of the better restaurants on Roatan, and still be back for our nightly dive at 8pm. Let's face it, the restaurants on Roatan are no great shining stars, although there are some occasional metreorites.
I have sampled many and various on Roatan. Some "divers" pick certain accomodations because they prefer drinking to night diving. I'm in the water at 2000 hrs every night.
So, I don't have to think or anything. They feed me great food, I fall out of bed into diving. My room is on posts over a live active reef.
Or would I rather muck about on the West End with the backpackers? The West end, on the lee side of the mountain ridge, so all of the sand flies have great access to my skin? Would I rather figure out where I'm going to eat, taking the time to go and do that? Would I like to dive with glassy eyed DM's who have been there 1 week, month or year? Would I like the sound of music playing till all hours? Would I rather rent gear (most real divers do not) from a shack with pea gravel floors? Would I like to go from hovel to shack pricing out my packages of dives?
Maybe it's just me, but no, I wouldn't.
Now, you might compare your West End diving experience, ala carte so to speak, with AI's such as AKR and certainly FIBR, but even then, I would take AKR and maybe FIBR over most day dive ops. (There are some exceptions, but not many, including Bananarama and SubWay Watersports)
I like occasional week longs that are by the seat of the pants. We do Tobago and do land based diving in the Galapagos, so no AI snob am I, sorry to say. It's just when I dive, I dive. I don't want to struggle to get wet.
Your post history tells us much. You have six previous posts and all you have done is to spam the thread and direct readers to your website, usually off topic as people are asking about specific AI resorts.
Not any one resort on Roatan is for everyone, nor is any particular genre of accomodation. To each his own... Troll away, PADIdaddy.
