. Having stayed at both properties, the "Over the Water" rooms at CCV are almost identical as the Key Deluxe rooms at AKR. Both are the best rooms they offer.
But gosh, that’s not how “comps” or “comparatives” work...you don’t simply compare what you might consider “the best rooms they offer”. It doesn’t work that way.
The “best rooms” at AKR that you reference are that “short” boat ride away (every time you forget anything), and they’re parked on terra firma. Away from the ocean. In a thicket, shielded from any breeze in the months of April/May that you mention as the entire resort is tucked on the sloping Northwestern edge that blocks the prevailing SE breezes.
The CCV Cabanas and Bungalows are on stilts over a live and actively changing reef. CCV also offers less expensive on-shore rooms, what, 10’ off the shore? The pictures of the AKR offering look similar, but since you’ve been there, you know they’re situated over the channel muck dive which is a great dive, but it tends to stink every 12 hours as it is an intertidal zone.
You don’t mention the deeper differences, but it should be noted that AKR offers three single tank departure boat dives daily, kind of a hump in my book, plus
only two night boat dives per week.i usually avoid this resort comparison for a number of reasons. 1) AKR does in theory let you access their shore dive in very limited hours, so if you’re ready to muddle thru that process and barren entry, if waves allow, you’ll have the AKR shore dive all to yourself. 2) the night dive at CCV is pretty much so an assumed thing, a dozen and more people can be seen wading out on the lovely shore dive, visiting the intact 130’ wreck sitting 300’ off in 55fsw.
Often there’s a droning “the two drop-off dives are always the same”. Well, yes they are if you slot into that “MID” diver group I described above. To that group of people, yes, everything looks the same. The more experienced divers relish the drop off dives and push them well past 1:30 bt’s. I’ll entertain criticism of that “same drop off dive’ if somebody would log 1:30. Hasn’t happened.
I’m old and have been shot a few times (you shoulda seen the other guys), and I have limited movement. I still get 4x a day at CCV plus a minimum of 1 night dive x 5. I’m getting 25+ dives a week and I can barely walk, certainly not wearing gear. The dive staff without asking makes that happen, and that applies to anyone who limps. Boats are handicapped ready by Honduran standards
And then, again just for us old people, two steps to the dining room, or ramp. Same all over.
So 22 tanks of boat dives at CCV if I'm feeling frisky, but at AKR, hmmm, 17. At the low end of $45 per tank/dive these days,
looks like AKR is shorting you $225, not including the night dive access conundrum.
I’m digressing from the comparatives, but there is so much more to consider than price...well, at least for me.
If you’ve stayed at both, you know the level of service provided in that price structure is sim0ly not the same, starting and ending with your entry and exit at the airport.
Doc claims this quite often...
Why yes I do. That’s because I’m not distracted by bright shiny objects (Oh look, a chicken) and I look at the full picture, not dazzled by the
undeniably inflated price now being offered as a BOGO.
No one resort anywhere is best for everyone. I come to dive.
