Divers report - Anthony's Key Resort????

[AquaExplorer]

OK...the wife and I are looking at a great deal for 7 nights at Anthony's Key.

I did some searches but did not find much in the past six months regarding this resort.

We are newbie divers and would appreciate any feedback.

 

[Aspendiver]

Rotan Honduras diving vacation rates and trip quote - Bay Adventures

 

[Doc]

This message board doesn't have a lot of reports on AKR, but what there are paint a pretty good picture. I wouldn't worry about the reports being more recent than 6 months- it has maintained its act for many long years. Old reports are still quite valid.

Positives? If you are new divers, they will take pretty good care of you- they see a lot of freshly minted divers in their mix of cruise ship divers- most are attracted by the promise of "Flipper".

It's a good place to take a family with kids, and if you want to hit the lively party scene of the West End- it's just a short cab ride away.

The negatives I see about the place are the 65 steps up and down to the restaurant for every meal, and the water taxi back and forth to your room. Makes it kind of hard to 'dash back to the room' for this or that forgotten pre-dive item. Some rooms are on the main island of Roatan's hillside and they are completely breeze-less, the rest of the resort isn't a whole lot better, but they do have a/c in all units. Wind and wave during Sept>March can be rather difficult what with the "Northers", but this would be similar to any West End or North Side operation.

To counter this, they have a nice fleet of deep-vee ProDive boats. Sometimes they get a bit full.

All in all, for a high-end priced resort on the island of Roatan, it is still a bargain by any Caribbean comparison. Good consistent dive operation, restaurant, accomodations, and general service. kind of unusual for Roatan! Aspendiver's website shows AKR and a different resort on Roatan, FIBR, where most of the above positive descriptors are harder to come by. (Although I prefer the "diving zone" of FIBR, these local zone variations are very well discussed here on SCUBABoard) Newer divers are likely to enjoy AKR's diving more.

 

[AquaExplorer]

Thanks RoatanMan! Aspendiver's site also shows the "special" I was talking about for AKR.

My only worry is actually NOT the steps or water-taxi, but as new divers I have heard horror stories about "cattle boat" operations and someone said AKR was that. We do not want to get rushed because they want to drop 20+ divers in the water as fast as possible.

Any insight into that?

 

[vfox]

Our trip to AKR was a couple years ago, but we didn't feel we were on a cattle boat at all! Our captain and divemaster were fun and were able to interact with us all and we never felt pressured about any part of the dives.

By the 3rd day the steps 3 times a day for food were getting old, though.

The other thing is to take bug deterrant (Cactus Juice, DEET, etc) and do NOT forget to use it ! I only missed an application or 2, but I was covered in bug bites. Not dangerous, but large, unattractive welts and very itchy.

The diving and the dive boats, though: Not a single complaint on that front !

 

[LynnB]

We were in Roatan on a cruise in August and did our dive with Anthony Key. I did not feel any pressure from the dive boats as far as trying to get us into the water.
The diver masters were great and we really enjoyed it. Nice boats and crew was very accomodating.
We are going back in June and checked into staying there but it was a little more pricey than we wanted to spend for the four of us.

 

[udtfire]

akr is a great family operation where the focus is on the guest youll luv it

 

[Doc]

, but as new divers I have heard horror stories about "cattle boat" operations and someone said ....

It depends a lot on the reporting diver's life experiences. Take a look at this: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ge...ns/224209-cattle-boat-what-does-mean-you.html

By my standards, in no way is AKR a cattle boat opeartion.

The do take a good load along, but more importantly- they have good space allotted for individuals, a good DM ratio, and willingness to break the groups into styles and abilities.

Many newer traveling divers allow themselves to get caught-up psychologically in the hub-bub of a dive boat. We're all a bit keyed up and nervous on the first dive of the week. If you allow yourself to absorb other people's angst, it's easy to see why so many people equate a "large capacity boat" with "cattle boat".

 

[leadweight]

Its been a while, but I stayed at AKR right after it was rebuilt post hurricane Mitch. Its a class operation.

 

[gvre]

We just got back from a week there last night. We are advanced divers with over 150 dives each. We have dove French Polynesia 4 times and over 14 Islands in the Caribbean.

The resort is clean in good conditions. We had air conditioned superior cabin over water. The cabin had a covered deck. It could use some updating. We were paired with 11 divers, all were very experienced and it showed from the start. The dive boats are excellent and here they shine, great boats. We did 3 dives a day except the last. The reef is typical Caribbean walls with lots of swim through caves and channels. We noticed alot of the coral on the west end is dying, this is due to run off from new development. Saw Turtles, a couple of seahorses, reef fish, and rays. We did the dolphin dive and this was great as we were able to interact with the dolphins. We went there on a friends recommendation. We are in no hurry to go back.

I would give it a 6 on the diving scale and an 7.5 for the resort.