Cozumel Palace - Dive op and Shore Diving?

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The house dive op is Aqua Safari, but one of the advantages of the Palace is that you can have one of the many boutique dive ops in the area pick you up there as well. Read a few threads here to get a feel for what is offerred and many of the shops have their own websites to browse. Many of them will hold your gear (other than wetsuits) and rinse for you daily, so they are just as convenient as using a house op. The house op is fine, but generally uses larger boats with larger groups (I understand they also offer smaller boats for some groups upon request). Many prefer the 6 or 8 packs used by the many local ops.

Shore diving at the Palace is done, but not by many. It is not in the area of the better dive sites but is much closer to town. I've stayed 5 times at the Palace and have never done a shore dive there. I don't know if the house op offers an unlimited tank option for shore diving, but I've certainly not seen many take advantage if they do. Snorkeling at the Palace I have done. It is not terribly impressive, although there are still many things to see - but not the riot of actiity at the southeren dive sites.

The more typical dive schedule for those staying at the Palace is a two tank dive in the morning, taking a boat from the house pier to the southern sites. Some ops offer and afternoon dive, some don't, or only if you can filll a boat. The house op offers an afternoon boat dive - but only to Paradise reef - same site every day. Most ops offer an evening or night dive, also often at Paradise reef. Many ops only offer this once or twice a week, based upon demand.

You'll get many opinions about dive ops to consider - the good news is that fierce competition means many of the choices are very good.
 
I was the last year. The dive op is aqua safari. As noted, they do 2 dives in the morning and an afternoon dive. We used a non site dive op. We were picked up at the dock. It worked ok but all of our dives were so far south that in order to get an afternoon dive we had to go directly out with Aqua Safari. They always did Paradise Reef which is not in great shape. It has good fish populations. The boat had only very inexperienced divers when we were there. They had a dive master skated for more experienced divers. My wife loves looking for tiny critters out in the turtle grass. I guess there is not much call for that because the dive master was tickled pink to be able to go out and find small things. He was pretty good at it too.

Maybe the morning divers were more experienced. In Cozumel, most people only do two dives per day. On the afternoon dive, I thought things were dominated by discover scuba. So they were limited by where they could go.

The boat is pretty large and it takes out a bunch of divers, and no, I have no better estimate. Many of the off site dive ops use 6 packs which gives you a more custom arrangement.

---------- Post added July 13th, 2014 at 12:11 PM ----------

Oops, forgot the shore dive. I snorkels it a few times. It is iron shore. The rocks close in had immature French and queen angels. The shallow water was the most interesting. Out farther there was not much to see, a few fish and a little structure.
 
I was down recently. The Aqua Safari divemasters are superb, as usual. The new management is not. Lost reservations, "the customer is always wrong" attitude, and divemasters saying they are unhappy and considering leaving because of management. I love the Palace and I love the AS divemasters, but if the Palace -- which now owns AS -- doesn't make big changes in AS management, I will stay elsewhere.
 
I was down recently. The Aqua Safari divemasters are superb, as usual. The new management is not. Lost reservations, "the customer is always wrong" attitude, and divemasters saying they are unhappy and considering leaving because of management. I love the Palace and I love the AS divemasters, but if the Palace -- which now owns AS -- doesn't make big changes in AS management, I will stay elsewhere.
Why not continue to stay there but dive with a better-managed dive op?
 
Why not continue to stay there but dive with a better-managed dive op?

Exactly. Other dive ops will pick up there. Perhaps not those based out of the caleta but enough that you can find a dive op that is superior to Aqua Safari.
 
Divemasters are definitely doing a great job. Went out with my newly certified daughter on her first post-certification dive and they were extremely patient as it took her some time to equalize and descend.

I tried to book dives for the two of us on Tuesday today through the resort using credits and they would not take our reservation, reportedly due to uncertainties with the operation of one of their boats. They also would not let me make reservation for other later days in the week. This was pretty disappointing. I was told to come back tomorrow morning to check on reservations since they were optimistic things would be resolved. For those counting on using points to cover diving, keep this in mind.
 
We love the Palace. It's a fabulous resort, and one of the nicest AI's on the island.
But Aqua Safari? No thanks. We'll stick with Aldora.
 
Why not continue to stay there but dive with a better-managed dive op?

Good question and I should have elaborated. The Palace gives you $1500 in resort credits for a week stay. That's enough to pay for a week of diving for Ms. Ripple and me. With diving included, the Palace makes financial sense for me, and no doubt others. If I have to pay for diving on top of the hotel cost, I would probably stay elsewhere.
 
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