raviepoo
Contributor
- Messages
- 831
- Reaction score
- 7
- # of dives
- 500 - 999
I just got back from 5 days / 4 nights at the Fiesta Americana Dive Resort on Cozumel. I was extremely pleased with accomodations. Rooms are lovely and clean. If you stay in the main hotel rather than one of the tropical "casitas" out back you will have a gorgeous view of the water to greet you every morning.
The staff was extremely friendly and accomodating. When we first arrived there were only double bed rooms available. The front desk clerk promised to try to find a king bed room for us. Sure enough, the following day, Fausto came through and we moved to a room that had been vacated since our arrival.
There were very few children around this Memorial Day weekend - a real plus for my sweetie and me who are both child-free and enjoy peace and quiet. I don't know if this is always true.
We chose not to take the all-inclusive option. I now regret that. I thought we would go into town a lot for dinner and possibly lunch as well. We only ate off the property one time. We ended up doing 4 dives a day and by the time we finished we just didn't have the energy to haul our water-logged carcasses into town. We ate at the Fiesta Americana Restaurants.
If I go back to FA (and I was impressed enough that I am strongly considering a return trip in November) I will definitely opt for the all inclusive package. The food (with the exception of the "Italian Night" buffet) is was quite good. It may not be up to Primas or La Choza, but as part of the AI option it's defintely convenient and a good value. It's a good way to ensure a stress-free vacation.
AI would have cost us 30$ per day for each of us - a total of 60$ per day. Without the magic wrist bands we ended up paying MUCH more. The breakfast buffet was roughly 13$ per person. We paid 25$ a piece for the "Italian Night" buffet dinner. It was tasty, but the ingredients of my sparse meal probably set the hotel back about 2$. It just wasn't good value for the money. Lunches at the lovely REEF waterfront restaurant were much better and also a much better value. The most expensive items on that menu were the seafood entrees at roughly $16. I was able to get away with spending half that at lunch. The meal we had at the ala carte restaurant was delicious. I had a salad and fish tacos. My companion had soup and a steak. We ended up spending about 60$ for that meal. Bottled water cost 4$ at the restaurants or $2.50 at the small smoke shop by the pool.
My sweetie paid all the food charges when he checked us out earlier today. When I asked he wouldn't tell me the total. He was sufferring from sticker shock.
FA has a beautiful pool PLUS a nice beach area with a second pool. The water is warm and inviting. It looked clean to me. Large fluffy beach towels are provided.
Although we used Dive with Martin as our dive operator, we were able to use the lockers at the on site dive shop to store our gear. DWM picked us up on time (or EARLY!) twice a day at the FA pier. Our dive master, David, was great at finding local critters such as pipe seahorses and splendid toadfish. I was impresssed that he built deep stops (deep swims, actually) into the dive profiles for the deeper wall dives that we did. He did a lot of hand holding on our first dives with him, but once he got to know us as divers he loosened up a bit. At the start of each dive he announced a maximum depth and bottom time, based on the PADI air tables. Just the same we got in a few shallow dives that lasted over an hour.
I can't comment on DWM's rental gear as my sweetie and I both brough our own stuff. I noticed that the BCs were Mares. No one using the rental gear had any trouble with it, with the exception of one gentleman who kept adding air to his BC when he meant to be venting it. I don't think the BC was the root of that problem.
DWM's multi day dive packages are surprisingly cheap. If you do several days of diving a 2 tank dive is $50, and Martin offers a discount on that price if you pay by cash or check. Rental gear (if you need it) is included free of charge. Your discount dollar gets you first class service however. I've dove with 3 other dive ops on Coz and DWM gave me better service than two of the others.
Boats are scheduled at various times throughout the day, based on demand. The boats are hit or miss. All of the ones I rode on had shade. Some of them are small and fast. The one we were on most of the time was a bit larger and a bit slower, but it was comfy and un-crowded and it got us where we were going without any hassles.
The DWM website is http://www.cozumel-diving.net/martin/. The best information I've found about Fiesta Americana is on Expedia. If you're thinking about using either for an upcoming Cozumel trip, feel free to PM me with questions.
The staff was extremely friendly and accomodating. When we first arrived there were only double bed rooms available. The front desk clerk promised to try to find a king bed room for us. Sure enough, the following day, Fausto came through and we moved to a room that had been vacated since our arrival.
There were very few children around this Memorial Day weekend - a real plus for my sweetie and me who are both child-free and enjoy peace and quiet. I don't know if this is always true.
We chose not to take the all-inclusive option. I now regret that. I thought we would go into town a lot for dinner and possibly lunch as well. We only ate off the property one time. We ended up doing 4 dives a day and by the time we finished we just didn't have the energy to haul our water-logged carcasses into town. We ate at the Fiesta Americana Restaurants.
If I go back to FA (and I was impressed enough that I am strongly considering a return trip in November) I will definitely opt for the all inclusive package. The food (with the exception of the "Italian Night" buffet) is was quite good. It may not be up to Primas or La Choza, but as part of the AI option it's defintely convenient and a good value. It's a good way to ensure a stress-free vacation.
AI would have cost us 30$ per day for each of us - a total of 60$ per day. Without the magic wrist bands we ended up paying MUCH more. The breakfast buffet was roughly 13$ per person. We paid 25$ a piece for the "Italian Night" buffet dinner. It was tasty, but the ingredients of my sparse meal probably set the hotel back about 2$. It just wasn't good value for the money. Lunches at the lovely REEF waterfront restaurant were much better and also a much better value. The most expensive items on that menu were the seafood entrees at roughly $16. I was able to get away with spending half that at lunch. The meal we had at the ala carte restaurant was delicious. I had a salad and fish tacos. My companion had soup and a steak. We ended up spending about 60$ for that meal. Bottled water cost 4$ at the restaurants or $2.50 at the small smoke shop by the pool.
My sweetie paid all the food charges when he checked us out earlier today. When I asked he wouldn't tell me the total. He was sufferring from sticker shock.
FA has a beautiful pool PLUS a nice beach area with a second pool. The water is warm and inviting. It looked clean to me. Large fluffy beach towels are provided.
Although we used Dive with Martin as our dive operator, we were able to use the lockers at the on site dive shop to store our gear. DWM picked us up on time (or EARLY!) twice a day at the FA pier. Our dive master, David, was great at finding local critters such as pipe seahorses and splendid toadfish. I was impresssed that he built deep stops (deep swims, actually) into the dive profiles for the deeper wall dives that we did. He did a lot of hand holding on our first dives with him, but once he got to know us as divers he loosened up a bit. At the start of each dive he announced a maximum depth and bottom time, based on the PADI air tables. Just the same we got in a few shallow dives that lasted over an hour.
I can't comment on DWM's rental gear as my sweetie and I both brough our own stuff. I noticed that the BCs were Mares. No one using the rental gear had any trouble with it, with the exception of one gentleman who kept adding air to his BC when he meant to be venting it. I don't think the BC was the root of that problem.
DWM's multi day dive packages are surprisingly cheap. If you do several days of diving a 2 tank dive is $50, and Martin offers a discount on that price if you pay by cash or check. Rental gear (if you need it) is included free of charge. Your discount dollar gets you first class service however. I've dove with 3 other dive ops on Coz and DWM gave me better service than two of the others.
Boats are scheduled at various times throughout the day, based on demand. The boats are hit or miss. All of the ones I rode on had shade. Some of them are small and fast. The one we were on most of the time was a bit larger and a bit slower, but it was comfy and un-crowded and it got us where we were going without any hassles.
The DWM website is http://www.cozumel-diving.net/martin/. The best information I've found about Fiesta Americana is on Expedia. If you're thinking about using either for an upcoming Cozumel trip, feel free to PM me with questions.
