Thoughts on Tres Pelicanos vs Aldora

[pauldw]

How American.

That is nice. We need to have more compliments in our online community!

Then one of the prolific posters here cranked up his portable speaker with some terrible music for geriatrics.

Pink Floyd? The Doors? Oh, the horror! Dude, you know there hasn't been any good music to speak of for decades!

 

[pauldw]

Dude, you know there hasn't been any good music to speak of for decades!

OK, boomer.

 

[Dan G]

3P's has changed their fill station and we got almost all 3000#+ tanks just now. Unfortunately the AL100's get the same fill as the AL80's. I'm hoping there is a possibility of changing that. I have almost no other experience on Coz other than 3P's but we really like the way they let us dive.

Do you mean that the volume of gas in the AL100 matches that of the AL80 or do you mean the PSI for both is the same? If it is the former, that strikes me as odd. If it is the PSI, then an AL100 at the same PSI as an AL80 has more gas in it.

 

[BRT]

I did not. It didn't click until after I was done with all my diving that week that the working pressure on 100s is 3300. At the time, I was just thinking that 200-ish low is a little bit annoying, but not enough to complain about - and thinking how I was really sucking down the gas to be burning through almost 100 cu-ft as quickly as I was. If it had clicked that it was 500-ish low, I would have said something.

If they don't fill the tanks and cannot actually offer FULL AL100s, they should tell their customers that up front.

If they were even aware that the fill pressure on AL100's is different. I never see anyone that fills them differently than AL80's.

 

[BRT]

Do you mean that the volume of gas in the AL100 matches that of the AL80 or do you mean the PSI for both is the same? If it is the former, that strikes me as odd. If it is the PSI, then an AL100 at the same PSI as an AL80 has more gas in it.

AL100 has about 91CF at 3000#. AL80 has about 78. 17% more on the 100. Everybody I have seen in Mexico fills them in banks with the AL80's. I have even offered bribes to the fill station operators without real results. 3P's current fill station has 12 or 14 tanks in a bank. The former station (Meridiano) had a lot more. Everything gets filled to a nominal 3000#. We saw a lot of 3P tanks this month at 3200#, which was nice.

 

[horn34]

Pink Floyd? The Doors? Oh, the horror! Dude, you know there hasn't been any good music to speak of for decades!

Negative. This was crappy 80's light hair metal. Pure garbage.

Floyd or The Doors would have been fine. You could tell from the looks on the DM/captain's faces that this was a regular occurrence they tolerate because this guy is BFF with Steve and considers himself a de facto employee.

 

[Trailboss123]

I think some of the points I was trying to make in an attempt to help out the OP in making an educated decision (in the context and without restating what had already been stated), may have been lost in translation. So, to summarize, and I have no real horse in this race:

1. Departure time from the Aldora pier with Aldora is at 7:30am- Departure for Blue XT Sea is at 8am from the same location.
2. If you stay at Casa Mexicana, breakfast starts at 7am and you will need to walk 5-7 minutes down to the pier to meet your boat for departure (whichever boat you are going out with)
3. If diving with Aldora, you might end up going north to pick up others in your group, only to come back south right past where you were picked up before continuing south to dive.
4. I didn't mention it, but in my case, the same thing worked in reverse. After our morning dives, we traveled right past the downtown pier and continued north to drop off the family staying at the Aldora Villas, before returning back south again to drop me and my buddy off. I am not sure if this is still the current practice, but it did add some significant time to our day that made no sense to me. If I had been staying at the Aldora Villas, I would have LOVED it! I could have slept in later, eaten at a more leisurely pace and got back to my villa even earlier. In my case, I was staying downtown, which is the context of this post.
5. Your dive times might or might not be in the 80-90 minute range that gets so highly touted as a "value added proposition" of diving with Aldora. It is going to depend on the group you end up paired with and diving with on your boat.
6. Apparently and I absolutely believe it to be true, Aldora will do their best to pair groups up according to experience and SAC/RMV rate- but in my case it didn't happen, in spite of every attempt on my end to try and make it so- including pre-dive and arrival communication, on the boat communication, dive logs, cert card demonstration.....
7. This may or may not be relevant to others. Each person can weigh out the cost to benefit analysis for themselves, based on their personal preferences. Lots of variables to consider, in my opinion.

I wasn't trying to push an agenda or a particular dive op. Just trying to share some experiences and things to consider and follow up on.

 

[horn34]

I think some of the points I was trying to make in an attempt to help out the OP in making an educated decision (in the context and without restating what had already been stated), may have been lost in translation. So, to summarize, and I have no real horse in this race:

3. If diving with Aldora, you might end up going north to pick up others in your group, only to come back south right past where you were picked up before continuing south to dive.
4. I didn't mention it, but in my case, the same thing worked in reverse. After our morning dives, we traveled right past the downtown pier and continued north to drop off the family staying at the Aldora Villas, before returning back south again to drop me and my buddy off. I am not sure if this is still the current practice, but it did add some significant time to our day that made no sense to me. If I had been staying at the Aldora Villas, I would have LOVED it! I could have slept in later, eaten at a more leisurely pace and got back to my villa even earlier. In my case, I was staying downtown, which is the context of this post.
5. Your dive times might or might not be in the 80-90 minute range that gets so highly touted as a "value added proposition" of diving with Aldora. It is going to depend on the group you end up paired with and diving with on your boat.
6. Apparently and I absolutely believe it to be true, Aldora will do their best to pair groups up according to experience and SAC/RMV rate- but in my case it didn't happen, in spite of every attempt on my end to try and make it so- including pre-dive and arrival communication, on the boat communication, dive logs, cert card demonstration.....
7. This may or may not be relevant to others. Each person can weigh out the cost to benefit analysis for themselves, based on their personal preferences. Lots of variables to consider, in my opinion.

I wasn't trying to push an agenda or a particular dive op. Just trying to share some experiences and things to consider and follow up on.

Those are some of my gripes with Aldora, which I have communicated.

• Don't treat me like a 3rd class passenger because I don't choose to stay with all the retirees at Villa Aldora. It's a 10+ minute round trip to get them and pass the pier we just left. Pick them up first in the morning and drop me off first on the way back. (Lately, I've bypassed this by having them pick me up at Fonatur)
  
• Don't stick me on a boat with people getting refreshers, check out dives or anyone with under 10 total dives unless there are multiple DMs for the skill sets/dive sites. This happened to us with 3P as well.

 

[Lorenzoid]

If having to wait while the Villa Aldora guests get priority treatment is a marketing ploy, it sure worked on me. Second trip we made sure to stay at the Villa. Best trip yet.

 

[horn34]

If having to wait while the Villa Aldora guests get priority treatment is a marketing ploy, it sure worked on me. Second trip we made sure to stay at the Villa. Best trip yet.

I'm sure it's great for VA people, but really annoying for divers who've been told they must be at the Aldora pier by 7:30am. We rush through breakfast to get there, only to spend 10+ minutes going north and back to pickup up VA divers. And then dropping those same divers off first.

That treatment doesn't encourage us to stay at VA. We're more inclined to tell Aldora to EABODADIAF.