Scratch_Monkey
Registered
TL/DR - If it is your first time to Cozumel and you want something easy with regard to trip planning and is a good value, I think staying at the Iberostar and diving with Dressel Divers (the on-site dive shop) is a great choice. The resort is nice and the dive shop is good. Because the shop is on-site, it's easy to get to and they do four trips per day so you can get a lot of dives in. Plus Nitrox is free.
If you already have experience with this resort and shop (or go to Cozumel regularly), there is probably nothing new in my report so this is geared for people who may be going to Cozumel for the first time.
I did research on Scubaboard and on r/Scuba on Reddit and saw a lot of recommendations for Iberostar and Dressel Divers (and some warnings). Iberostar was our first ever all-inclusive and we really enjoyed it for what it was. The rooms were not huge but they were nice, with good A/C, and the shower had plenty of pressure and hot water. Each room comes with a balcony with wires to hang your stuff to dry plus a couple of chairs to lounge in. There is a safe in the room and a mini-bar which is restocked daily (soft drinks and only two beers!) and is included in the all-inclusive price. They also provide a couple of glass water bottles to fill at water stations spread throughout the property. You can literally spend a week there and never think about money at all outside of tips if you are so inclined.
All inclusive meant that all your food and alcohol are covered. To be clear, the food, IMO, was the least good part of our stay but it was fine. They have so much stuff that you can find something that you enjoy. For what it's worth, I felt that the hamburgers and fries at the snack bar (which was open all day) were the best thing if that tells you anything.
It's a fairly big property so be aware that you may have to walk a ways to get to food or the dive shop. Breakfast and dinner are served on one end of the property but the dive shop/beach (and lunch) are at the far other end. So if you get a room near the dive shop, be prepared to walk a ways for breakfast in the AM. It's not a bad walk, though, and you will probably see interesting critters (birds, iguanas, coatis, etc..) along the way. One of the "warnings" we got about Iberostar was the distance from breakfast to the dive shop would make eating then getting to the shop on time difficult. We did NOT find this to be the case. We'd start walking to breakfast about 5 minutes before 7AM (when they opened) and were done with breakfast by 7:30 with plenty of time to get back to our room for our gear, than to the shop by 8.
Dressel Divers was a great dive shop! The staff (Iva was on the ball and super helpful) and the dive masters (Valentin was so helpful with my wife on a particularly strong current dive) were all super nice and the deckhands (especially Johnathan) were there at the ready to assist without even being asked. The boats are large and generally have three or four groups on them but it appeared they did try to put experienced people in the same group.
Basically, each morning/afternoon, you look at a white board by the shop for your name. It will tell you which boat your on, when to meet, and who your DM is. You wait at the shop until they tell everyone on a particular boat to go board where you meet your DM who tells you what tanks are yours for that trip. While the boat does come back to the pier for the surface interval, they treat each pair of dives as a two-tank dive so you are assigned both your tanks at that first dive.
When your boat is called, you need to carry your gear to the boat and set it up. You also generally moved your gear from your first tank to the second after that first dive. The deck hands can help but you are expected to do it yourself. Between the morning and afternoon dives, you have to take your gear off the boat and store it while you get lunch. This was also one of the "warnings" I had heard about this dive shop: that carrying your gear back and forth could be a pain. I mean, it wasn't as nice as just leaving it on the boat all day, but it was fine and you get into a routine.
If you dive Nitrox, someone will come around with a clipboard and an analyzer where they will analyze your tank with you watching and then you record your tank number and the O2% on the clipboard. I think the main issue I saw with this was that they often used the serial number stamped into the cylinder to identify the tank instead of a sticker. That's fine, but less easy to see when the tank is secured to the boat. You also really need to remember that second tank number to make sure you are using the tank that you witnessed being analyzed. It should be fine as it should be in the same place you left it but you never know.
The dives were great! And "they" aren't kidding when they say you get drift dives in Cozumel! The current was pretty strong and present on most of our dives. Most of the time, it was pleasently quick where the group could easily stay together but occasionally it just ripped you along. I can see how it could be easy to get separated from your group if you weren't careful. Part of the dive briefing included making sure you knew the boat name and the radio frequency Dressel's used so if you did get separated and come up by yourself (or just with your buddy), any boat that found you could contact your boat. They also said to purge your octo before you surfaced as boat captains looked for that surge of bubbles to know when divers where coming up. This is a great example of why everyone needs to carry an SMB on every dive, if only to be visible to the boat traffic.
The dive locations are all pre-planned and printed on a board so there is very little varience around where they go. This was another one of the warnings people had about Dressel's: If you want to go to a specific place, you are probably out of luck. But if you've never been to Cozumel before, maybe you don't care where they take you as as they are all good spots? The Palancar area, especially, was very cool. The reef formations where just cathedrial-like in how huge they were. Just amazing.
I also thought, in general, the reef and sea life looked pretty good. We saw a lot of fish, the coral was in reasonable shape, and you had a good chance of seeing turtles, rays, and a nurse shark or two. But, because most of the dives are in a pretty strong current, you don't really get to explore much. You just kind of watch everything as you wiz on by.
You can book your stay at Iberostar through Dressels (Dive and Stay), directly on the Iberostar website, or on the IHG website. I'm sure you can go through a travel agency as well but I didn't explore that. In my experience, IHG had the best price as well as the ability to cancel with only a single night penalty assuming three or more days out. Iberostar direct was the 2nd best price and the most expensive was the Dive and Stay option through Dressel.
If you book through Iberostar directly (but not if you book through someone else), you may get the option to choose your room and that can be useful to ensure you are close to the dive shop. Because we ended up so close to the shop, we stored our gear in our room instead of using the lockers provided onsite and it was super easy to run to the room for whatever in between dives.
If you book your dives in advance with Dressel, you get 20% off your dives (or more if they are having a sale). We ended up booking 8 two-tank dives in advanced as well as a Cenote excursion in Playa Del Carmen. If you dive more, you just pay more at the end. I would try to balance paying for enough dives in advance to take advantage of the discount but not over-do it in case you end up skipping some dives for whatever reason. They will apparently give you a voucher for un-used dives, though, that lasts up to five years if you plan on going back.
Would I stay there again? Yes. Mainly because I think that between the resort including all food and alcohol and getting a discount on the dives if you pay in advance and free Nitrox, it represents a good value. And since they do four dives per day you can get a lot of diving in, even if you don't stay that long. I think the total cost for me and my wife (five nights, eight dives each, including tips, airport transfers, and that all-day Cenote exursion) was about $3,300 (not including air fare). That's close to what we spend for about a week in Roatan but we stay in a much more budget place there.
Did we get to explore the Cozumel island? No. So if you want to do things other than dive, a resort or hotel closer to town may be a better option (or just be prepared to pay for cabs back and forth). But for a lot of diving without a lot of planning, Iberostar/Dressel is a great choice. Or if you just want to do a lot of diving, it seems like you get that opportunity there due to four dives per day.
I believe you can hire other dive shops to pick you up from Iberostar as well. So maybe, if you want to try other sites/experiences, you can pick a day or two where another shop picks you up but you do most of your diving with the on-stie shop?
If you already have experience with this resort and shop (or go to Cozumel regularly), there is probably nothing new in my report so this is geared for people who may be going to Cozumel for the first time.
I did research on Scubaboard and on r/Scuba on Reddit and saw a lot of recommendations for Iberostar and Dressel Divers (and some warnings). Iberostar was our first ever all-inclusive and we really enjoyed it for what it was. The rooms were not huge but they were nice, with good A/C, and the shower had plenty of pressure and hot water. Each room comes with a balcony with wires to hang your stuff to dry plus a couple of chairs to lounge in. There is a safe in the room and a mini-bar which is restocked daily (soft drinks and only two beers!) and is included in the all-inclusive price. They also provide a couple of glass water bottles to fill at water stations spread throughout the property. You can literally spend a week there and never think about money at all outside of tips if you are so inclined.
All inclusive meant that all your food and alcohol are covered. To be clear, the food, IMO, was the least good part of our stay but it was fine. They have so much stuff that you can find something that you enjoy. For what it's worth, I felt that the hamburgers and fries at the snack bar (which was open all day) were the best thing if that tells you anything.
It's a fairly big property so be aware that you may have to walk a ways to get to food or the dive shop. Breakfast and dinner are served on one end of the property but the dive shop/beach (and lunch) are at the far other end. So if you get a room near the dive shop, be prepared to walk a ways for breakfast in the AM. It's not a bad walk, though, and you will probably see interesting critters (birds, iguanas, coatis, etc..) along the way. One of the "warnings" we got about Iberostar was the distance from breakfast to the dive shop would make eating then getting to the shop on time difficult. We did NOT find this to be the case. We'd start walking to breakfast about 5 minutes before 7AM (when they opened) and were done with breakfast by 7:30 with plenty of time to get back to our room for our gear, than to the shop by 8.
Dressel Divers was a great dive shop! The staff (Iva was on the ball and super helpful) and the dive masters (Valentin was so helpful with my wife on a particularly strong current dive) were all super nice and the deckhands (especially Johnathan) were there at the ready to assist without even being asked. The boats are large and generally have three or four groups on them but it appeared they did try to put experienced people in the same group.
Basically, each morning/afternoon, you look at a white board by the shop for your name. It will tell you which boat your on, when to meet, and who your DM is. You wait at the shop until they tell everyone on a particular boat to go board where you meet your DM who tells you what tanks are yours for that trip. While the boat does come back to the pier for the surface interval, they treat each pair of dives as a two-tank dive so you are assigned both your tanks at that first dive.
When your boat is called, you need to carry your gear to the boat and set it up. You also generally moved your gear from your first tank to the second after that first dive. The deck hands can help but you are expected to do it yourself. Between the morning and afternoon dives, you have to take your gear off the boat and store it while you get lunch. This was also one of the "warnings" I had heard about this dive shop: that carrying your gear back and forth could be a pain. I mean, it wasn't as nice as just leaving it on the boat all day, but it was fine and you get into a routine.
If you dive Nitrox, someone will come around with a clipboard and an analyzer where they will analyze your tank with you watching and then you record your tank number and the O2% on the clipboard. I think the main issue I saw with this was that they often used the serial number stamped into the cylinder to identify the tank instead of a sticker. That's fine, but less easy to see when the tank is secured to the boat. You also really need to remember that second tank number to make sure you are using the tank that you witnessed being analyzed. It should be fine as it should be in the same place you left it but you never know.
The dives were great! And "they" aren't kidding when they say you get drift dives in Cozumel! The current was pretty strong and present on most of our dives. Most of the time, it was pleasently quick where the group could easily stay together but occasionally it just ripped you along. I can see how it could be easy to get separated from your group if you weren't careful. Part of the dive briefing included making sure you knew the boat name and the radio frequency Dressel's used so if you did get separated and come up by yourself (or just with your buddy), any boat that found you could contact your boat. They also said to purge your octo before you surfaced as boat captains looked for that surge of bubbles to know when divers where coming up. This is a great example of why everyone needs to carry an SMB on every dive, if only to be visible to the boat traffic.
The dive locations are all pre-planned and printed on a board so there is very little varience around where they go. This was another one of the warnings people had about Dressel's: If you want to go to a specific place, you are probably out of luck. But if you've never been to Cozumel before, maybe you don't care where they take you as as they are all good spots? The Palancar area, especially, was very cool. The reef formations where just cathedrial-like in how huge they were. Just amazing.
I also thought, in general, the reef and sea life looked pretty good. We saw a lot of fish, the coral was in reasonable shape, and you had a good chance of seeing turtles, rays, and a nurse shark or two. But, because most of the dives are in a pretty strong current, you don't really get to explore much. You just kind of watch everything as you wiz on by.
You can book your stay at Iberostar through Dressels (Dive and Stay), directly on the Iberostar website, or on the IHG website. I'm sure you can go through a travel agency as well but I didn't explore that. In my experience, IHG had the best price as well as the ability to cancel with only a single night penalty assuming three or more days out. Iberostar direct was the 2nd best price and the most expensive was the Dive and Stay option through Dressel.
If you book through Iberostar directly (but not if you book through someone else), you may get the option to choose your room and that can be useful to ensure you are close to the dive shop. Because we ended up so close to the shop, we stored our gear in our room instead of using the lockers provided onsite and it was super easy to run to the room for whatever in between dives.
If you book your dives in advance with Dressel, you get 20% off your dives (or more if they are having a sale). We ended up booking 8 two-tank dives in advanced as well as a Cenote excursion in Playa Del Carmen. If you dive more, you just pay more at the end. I would try to balance paying for enough dives in advance to take advantage of the discount but not over-do it in case you end up skipping some dives for whatever reason. They will apparently give you a voucher for un-used dives, though, that lasts up to five years if you plan on going back.
Would I stay there again? Yes. Mainly because I think that between the resort including all food and alcohol and getting a discount on the dives if you pay in advance and free Nitrox, it represents a good value. And since they do four dives per day you can get a lot of diving in, even if you don't stay that long. I think the total cost for me and my wife (five nights, eight dives each, including tips, airport transfers, and that all-day Cenote exursion) was about $3,300 (not including air fare). That's close to what we spend for about a week in Roatan but we stay in a much more budget place there.
Did we get to explore the Cozumel island? No. So if you want to do things other than dive, a resort or hotel closer to town may be a better option (or just be prepared to pay for cabs back and forth). But for a lot of diving without a lot of planning, Iberostar/Dressel is a great choice. Or if you just want to do a lot of diving, it seems like you get that opportunity there due to four dives per day.
I believe you can hire other dive shops to pick you up from Iberostar as well. So maybe, if you want to try other sites/experiences, you can pick a day or two where another shop picks you up but you do most of your diving with the on-stie shop?
