RalphJr
Registered
Cozumel Hotel and Resort
October 19th, 2014 for nine days, all-inclusive resort stay: The staff for the most part was courteous, attentive and professional. I had some difficulty with some rusted dive gear fittings and Martin from the maintenance department was most helpful in solving the problem. On the third day of the stay the wing of the hotel we were located in was involved in an electrical outage. We were required to change rooms after enduring an entire day without electricity. The front desk personnel did not keep us updated on the status of the repairs being attempted and we only found out from the grumblings of our neighbors that a move to another wing would be required. We were not offered any help moving or any other consideration for the inconvenience. I fault only the front desk people on duty that day. They seemed indifferent to the hassle of us moving; maybe they just had their fill of unhappy campers due to the problem? The majority of our stay found only helpful and attentive people at the front desk.
The rooms themselves were clean, comfortable and well maintained by the cleaning staff. The all tile diver friendly floors had a tendency to condense water on them if the AC was not running but this is to be expected in the tropics. The big beach towels provided by the hotel worked well to control the damp floors. Ventilation in the bathroom was passive only and a good air freshener was a must. Chedraui Market is within walking distance and a quick trip yielded an appropriate air spray. There were ample hooks and racks on our patio for hanging wet bathing suits and dive gear. The hotel campus is conveniently located to the dive operation with a tunnel under the busy roadway for easy access to the ocean, lockers and boat dock. The Wi-Fi worked in both rooms at a reasonable speed although my phone was more finicky about the signal location than my laptop.
The food and drink service staff was great, well trained and responsive to our every need. The buffet style food was really way better than I had anticipated after reading other postings about the Cozumel Hotels food on the web. There were always a reasonable number of choices in fresh fruits, salads, vegetables, complex carbs, meats, beverages and deserts. Often there were custom made omelets for breakfast, various tacos and fajitas prepared to order on the grill or hand carved meats for lunch and dinner. Food of some sort was always available somewhere and I would best describe it overall as home-style comfort food with a Mexican twist. The green Mexican Salsa was a real hit with us but may be too spicy for many gringos. Good well quality liquor was included in the very reasonable price and there was a full bar equivalent service in several locations around the complex. We dont drink when we dive so this was mostly an underutilized feature for us. The mystery meat that they grilled up for the special order hamburger was as bad as or even worse than described in the other comments that you will find about this resorts food. I had to try one just because I could not believe it could be that bad well it is. If the hotel management reads this report I recommend that you lose the burger. It is really, really inferior to the rest of your food.
I recommend the Cozumel Hotel and Resort without reservation (save the burger) and will stay there again myself in the future.
Dive Paradise
Dive Paradise is the diving operation located adjacent to or is part of the Cozumel Hotel and Resort beach front property. There is a tunnel walkway under the street from the hotel to the dive office and hotel beach area facilities. DP operates many boats that access all of the popular Cozumel dive sites. The smaller faster boats are a few dollars more but in my opinion worth it. They have a full range of possible dive schedules and can easily accommodate all skill levels of diver. If you can get together a group of six or eight divers you can control the dive agenda on one of the smaller boats. This is a big plus if you will not be there long enough to dive all 24 or so popular sites.
The walkway down to the pier is lined with spacious lockers, dip tanks to rinse your gear in and racks to hang gear for drying. There are several laddered ocean access points making it fairly easy to do a new gear checkout dive. Geronimo and Angel were the key people in charge accepting payment and arranging for your selected dives and any rental gear. They did a good job. Nitrox 32 and 36 are available for the same $10.00 USD per tank fee.
The people we traveled with use this operation a couple of times a year and we basically allowed them to lead the way. On their recommendation we requested to have Juan Colis as our dive master and he did not disappoint. Juan was great at finding the small critters that are easily missed and he moved at a slow enough pace to suit our photographic stops.
The dives we made 19 of them. It has been 4 years since my wife and I last visited Cozumel and this was our fourth trip there. We dove many of the sites pre-Wilma and 1 year post-Wilma and in my opinion the reefs are looking almost back to pre-Wilma condition. There seemed to be more larger reef type fishes since our last trip and the reefs themselves seemed to be healthy. I dove Maracaibo for the first time and saw a really large Tiger Shark that swam up out of the deep to check us out. Visibility throughout our stay ranged from 80 to 150 feet with water temperatures at depth of 82F to 84F. Most if not all of the dives could be described as Drift-Dives. The simple fact that we have been to Cozumel four times now speaks to how beautiful the diving there is. I could write for hours and not adequately describe the beauty of just 5 minutes of one dive. So I will not even try - just go!
Volaris Mexican Airline.
We flew Volaris for the first time and they did a good job. All flights were on time with no lost luggage. We flew from Fresno, CA to Guadalajara MX. to Cancun MX. then did the bag drag on the bus to Playa Del Carmen and the ferry across to Cozumel. The airfare was about half the price of a US carrier and we avoided the 16 hour layover inherent in all of the plane routes available from Fresno to Cancun or Cozumel. Travel time from home to hotel was about 15 hours.
A few things to know: Volaris is a Mexican Airline and they expect you to speak and understand Mexican. All boarding announcements were in Mexican only. Some Flight attendants did speak some English but it was clearly a second language to them and information was sketchy. On entry to Mexico, in our case the first stop in Guadalajara we had to claim our entire checked luggage to go through customs and then recheck it for the second flight to Cancun. The luggage was checked through to Fresno on the flights home. The bus fare from the airport to playa del Carmen was 158 pesos and took an hour and 15 minutes the ferry was $13.00 each way and took about 40 minutes. The bus fare back to Cancun Centro was 58 pesos.
On my original online booking with Volaris I paid $58.00 USD for a second 55 lb. checked bag. Since my tickets were round trip and the website did not present an option to pay a second fee I assumed the price was round trip WRONG! I was forced to pay $100.00 USD at the ticket counter in Cancun to get my second bag home. I think the problem just stems from the English pages of their website not having all of the pertinent information. Once again this is a Mexican Airline and they expect you to speak and understand Mexican. I would fly with them again anytime since I have worse horror stories about US airlines!
October 19th, 2014 for nine days, all-inclusive resort stay: The staff for the most part was courteous, attentive and professional. I had some difficulty with some rusted dive gear fittings and Martin from the maintenance department was most helpful in solving the problem. On the third day of the stay the wing of the hotel we were located in was involved in an electrical outage. We were required to change rooms after enduring an entire day without electricity. The front desk personnel did not keep us updated on the status of the repairs being attempted and we only found out from the grumblings of our neighbors that a move to another wing would be required. We were not offered any help moving or any other consideration for the inconvenience. I fault only the front desk people on duty that day. They seemed indifferent to the hassle of us moving; maybe they just had their fill of unhappy campers due to the problem? The majority of our stay found only helpful and attentive people at the front desk.
The rooms themselves were clean, comfortable and well maintained by the cleaning staff. The all tile diver friendly floors had a tendency to condense water on them if the AC was not running but this is to be expected in the tropics. The big beach towels provided by the hotel worked well to control the damp floors. Ventilation in the bathroom was passive only and a good air freshener was a must. Chedraui Market is within walking distance and a quick trip yielded an appropriate air spray. There were ample hooks and racks on our patio for hanging wet bathing suits and dive gear. The hotel campus is conveniently located to the dive operation with a tunnel under the busy roadway for easy access to the ocean, lockers and boat dock. The Wi-Fi worked in both rooms at a reasonable speed although my phone was more finicky about the signal location than my laptop.
The food and drink service staff was great, well trained and responsive to our every need. The buffet style food was really way better than I had anticipated after reading other postings about the Cozumel Hotels food on the web. There were always a reasonable number of choices in fresh fruits, salads, vegetables, complex carbs, meats, beverages and deserts. Often there were custom made omelets for breakfast, various tacos and fajitas prepared to order on the grill or hand carved meats for lunch and dinner. Food of some sort was always available somewhere and I would best describe it overall as home-style comfort food with a Mexican twist. The green Mexican Salsa was a real hit with us but may be too spicy for many gringos. Good well quality liquor was included in the very reasonable price and there was a full bar equivalent service in several locations around the complex. We dont drink when we dive so this was mostly an underutilized feature for us. The mystery meat that they grilled up for the special order hamburger was as bad as or even worse than described in the other comments that you will find about this resorts food. I had to try one just because I could not believe it could be that bad well it is. If the hotel management reads this report I recommend that you lose the burger. It is really, really inferior to the rest of your food.
I recommend the Cozumel Hotel and Resort without reservation (save the burger) and will stay there again myself in the future.
Dive Paradise
Dive Paradise is the diving operation located adjacent to or is part of the Cozumel Hotel and Resort beach front property. There is a tunnel walkway under the street from the hotel to the dive office and hotel beach area facilities. DP operates many boats that access all of the popular Cozumel dive sites. The smaller faster boats are a few dollars more but in my opinion worth it. They have a full range of possible dive schedules and can easily accommodate all skill levels of diver. If you can get together a group of six or eight divers you can control the dive agenda on one of the smaller boats. This is a big plus if you will not be there long enough to dive all 24 or so popular sites.
The walkway down to the pier is lined with spacious lockers, dip tanks to rinse your gear in and racks to hang gear for drying. There are several laddered ocean access points making it fairly easy to do a new gear checkout dive. Geronimo and Angel were the key people in charge accepting payment and arranging for your selected dives and any rental gear. They did a good job. Nitrox 32 and 36 are available for the same $10.00 USD per tank fee.
The people we traveled with use this operation a couple of times a year and we basically allowed them to lead the way. On their recommendation we requested to have Juan Colis as our dive master and he did not disappoint. Juan was great at finding the small critters that are easily missed and he moved at a slow enough pace to suit our photographic stops.
The dives we made 19 of them. It has been 4 years since my wife and I last visited Cozumel and this was our fourth trip there. We dove many of the sites pre-Wilma and 1 year post-Wilma and in my opinion the reefs are looking almost back to pre-Wilma condition. There seemed to be more larger reef type fishes since our last trip and the reefs themselves seemed to be healthy. I dove Maracaibo for the first time and saw a really large Tiger Shark that swam up out of the deep to check us out. Visibility throughout our stay ranged from 80 to 150 feet with water temperatures at depth of 82F to 84F. Most if not all of the dives could be described as Drift-Dives. The simple fact that we have been to Cozumel four times now speaks to how beautiful the diving there is. I could write for hours and not adequately describe the beauty of just 5 minutes of one dive. So I will not even try - just go!
Volaris Mexican Airline.
We flew Volaris for the first time and they did a good job. All flights were on time with no lost luggage. We flew from Fresno, CA to Guadalajara MX. to Cancun MX. then did the bag drag on the bus to Playa Del Carmen and the ferry across to Cozumel. The airfare was about half the price of a US carrier and we avoided the 16 hour layover inherent in all of the plane routes available from Fresno to Cancun or Cozumel. Travel time from home to hotel was about 15 hours.
A few things to know: Volaris is a Mexican Airline and they expect you to speak and understand Mexican. All boarding announcements were in Mexican only. Some Flight attendants did speak some English but it was clearly a second language to them and information was sketchy. On entry to Mexico, in our case the first stop in Guadalajara we had to claim our entire checked luggage to go through customs and then recheck it for the second flight to Cancun. The luggage was checked through to Fresno on the flights home. The bus fare from the airport to playa del Carmen was 158 pesos and took an hour and 15 minutes the ferry was $13.00 each way and took about 40 minutes. The bus fare back to Cancun Centro was 58 pesos.
On my original online booking with Volaris I paid $58.00 USD for a second 55 lb. checked bag. Since my tickets were round trip and the website did not present an option to pay a second fee I assumed the price was round trip WRONG! I was forced to pay $100.00 USD at the ticket counter in Cancun to get my second bag home. I think the problem just stems from the English pages of their website not having all of the pertinent information. Once again this is a Mexican Airline and they expect you to speak and understand Mexican. I would fly with them again anytime since I have worse horror stories about US airlines!
