Sgt. Sweetpants
New
Just got back from Roatan after a one week stay at Fantasy Island Resort. (Beginning of July, 2017). Long-winded trip report to follow.
Executive summary: Great diving. Great dive outfit. Not so great hotel experience.
The details: This was my first time to Roatan, so take this all with a grain of salt. That said, I've done my fair share of upscale dive trips, and budget dive trips. (lots of South Florida diving, a fair amount of Southern California diving, Cozumel, Palau, St. Maarten, Cancun, Playa Del Carmen, Cenotes in Quintana Roo, Bahamas, live-aboards, day-boats, shore-diving, etc.)
To help calibrate everyone, I'm generally not too snobby when it comes to the upscale amenities. I generally just want A/C, sunshine, cold beer, good vis, and peace & quiet. That said, I'm generally a dive 3 times a day on vacation sort of guy. Diving tends to be my focus, but not from sun-up to sun-down. When I'm not in the water, I don't want to be staying in a cesspool - so the hotel matters to me.
Fantasy Island was under some pretty heavy renovation efforts during our stay. Bobcat front-end loaders, tile-saws, and heavy hammering tended to go on until about 8-8:30pm every night, and started again around 6:45am every morning. It looked like they were approaching this renovation floor by floor, wing by wing. We asked to be moved to a room away from the construction and were met by blank stares.
Our room was recently renovated - apparently finished earlier the day we checked in, judging by the wet paint and caulk. Air conditioning was cold, but not responsive to the controls, and stayed at full blast for our duration. This wasn't a big deal, but we had to use the sliding glass doors to regulate the temperature in the room to avoid freezing. Good English-speaking cable TV selection for the rare occasion we sat down to watch before going to sleep. TV had busted speakers though, which was a touch annoying. "All inclusive" included alcoholic beverages, which sounded nice, but left a lot wanting. All of the mixed drinks were uniformly horrible. After trying what I thought would be extremely difficult to screw-up drinks (margarita, rum punch), I just stayed with beer for the rest of the week. No frozen drinks. Rocks only.
I applaud the apparent blitzkrieg effort to finish the renovation so that people are inconvenienced for the least amount of time, but it looks like we hit it at the worst possible time. Construction until 8:30pm just seems excessive to me, but I guess I'm getting grouchy in my 30s.
Food was about what you'd expect for an all inclusive resort in the Caribbean: filling, but nothing to write home about. Usually some sort of pasta dish, some sort of rice dish, some sort of chicken, some sort of beef, and some sort of fish. Salad bar was mediocre, but was doable for my vegetarian/pescatarian girlfriend.
Hotel staff didn't seem to care about their jobs. No real horror stories here, I just left with the impression that the place is largely staffed by a lot of unengaged kids. No real complaints on my part. But if you're looking for a professionally managed resort feel with smiley bubbly people, you're not going to get it here. The grounds keepers and the security staff are the only exceptions I noted: those folks were on top of their game. The grounds tended to be very well kept, and the security guards were not obtrusive and always responsive when we were driving on and off the property.
All told, I was left with the impression of a great property with a lot of potential, but poorly ran and poorly managed with a lot of inconsistency.
Now to the diving -
Chris and Ria run the dive shop as a team. From what I gathered, they've picked this up within the last year or so (?). Part of the impetus for the trip was for my girlfriend to get her open-water certification before another planned dive trip at the end of the year. Chris was her instructor, and did a really spectacular job. They were extremely flexible in accommodating both shore dives and boat dives as part of the GF's training. I was cognizant of trying not to be the overbearing dive-nazi boyfriend, and tried to let them do their thing, but Chris was able to work in some really great dives that I was able to enjoy solo while he and the GF worked on skills training from the same dives.
Looks like Fantasy Island is running 3 dive boats currently. Unfortunately, the weather during our trip was a bit hit or miss. Mostly overcast with occasional stretches of sunshine. Not sure if it was the overcast or because it's the shoulder season, but there wasn't a lot of dive traffic. We basically had an entire boat to ourselves along with one or two other divers who joined us at different points in the week. This was really nice for the girlfriend as there was no pressure to deal with cattle-boat crowdedness while still gaining confidence. The crew was professional and engaging - really nice people. Since the number of dive bookings was so small, we basically got to make up our own boat schedule. Some days we dove at 8. Some days we decided we wanted to sleep in and dive at 9. The crew just rolled with it.
Site reports:
We visited a handful of sites around the Fantasy Island Cocoview Resort areas and adjacent french harbor: French Cay Cut, Prince Albert Wreck, Capt. Bud's Wreck, Newman's Wall, Coco View Wall, Valley of the Kings, and Mary's Place.
I won't detail each site - but generally I was really impressed with the diving. Really good clarity along most of the walls - 70+ ft seemed fairly common. The nearer more shallow dives tended around 40ft of vis. An abundance of coral. I think this was the most spectacular part of the diving here for me. The coral formations are varied and grow all up and down the walls. Not an astonishing amount of fish life, but enough to get your fix. Lots of different parrot fish and angel fish. The obligatory lion fish that you tend to see everywhere these days (still fun to look at.) Some free swimming morays (definitely an oddity for me, but they tell me that people have been feeding them to come out, so they have become more comfortable with daytime feeding and will approach divers. We were given a special briefing on how to fend them off if they get up in your business.) Lots of lobster. An occasional sting ray or eagle ray. I spotted a single Hamlet fish which was a bit of a highlight for me.
The highlight was definitely Mary's Place. It definitely lived up to the hype for me. I'd put it on my personal top 5 list of most interesting dive sites so far. We entered one of the splits in the rock formation at about 120ft, and then gradually came up by entering and exiting each of the rock channels. We had a grouper who joined our group of 4 divers who stayed extremely close to us for the duration of our dive. Close. Really close. He let me pet him at one point. Really a bit otherworldly. Like having your own pilot fish.
At the end of the trip, I was really impressed with the diving - really top notch. That said, vacation time is too precious to me to come back and deal with the sub-par hotel accommodation and blasé hotel staff at Fantasy Island. It's too bad, because their dive shop folks are of a very high caliber - they really deserve more business. It looked like Coco View was booming - 3 or 4 full boats running at least 3 times a day - maybe more. I'm personally glad that I didn't have to share Mary's Place with another 20 divers on the same boat. I wouldn't change the experience - but I probably won't be going back.
Hope this is valuable for anyone contemplating a trip to Fantasy Island in the near future!
-Ken
Executive summary: Great diving. Great dive outfit. Not so great hotel experience.
The details: This was my first time to Roatan, so take this all with a grain of salt. That said, I've done my fair share of upscale dive trips, and budget dive trips. (lots of South Florida diving, a fair amount of Southern California diving, Cozumel, Palau, St. Maarten, Cancun, Playa Del Carmen, Cenotes in Quintana Roo, Bahamas, live-aboards, day-boats, shore-diving, etc.)
To help calibrate everyone, I'm generally not too snobby when it comes to the upscale amenities. I generally just want A/C, sunshine, cold beer, good vis, and peace & quiet. That said, I'm generally a dive 3 times a day on vacation sort of guy. Diving tends to be my focus, but not from sun-up to sun-down. When I'm not in the water, I don't want to be staying in a cesspool - so the hotel matters to me.
Fantasy Island was under some pretty heavy renovation efforts during our stay. Bobcat front-end loaders, tile-saws, and heavy hammering tended to go on until about 8-8:30pm every night, and started again around 6:45am every morning. It looked like they were approaching this renovation floor by floor, wing by wing. We asked to be moved to a room away from the construction and were met by blank stares.
Our room was recently renovated - apparently finished earlier the day we checked in, judging by the wet paint and caulk. Air conditioning was cold, but not responsive to the controls, and stayed at full blast for our duration. This wasn't a big deal, but we had to use the sliding glass doors to regulate the temperature in the room to avoid freezing. Good English-speaking cable TV selection for the rare occasion we sat down to watch before going to sleep. TV had busted speakers though, which was a touch annoying. "All inclusive" included alcoholic beverages, which sounded nice, but left a lot wanting. All of the mixed drinks were uniformly horrible. After trying what I thought would be extremely difficult to screw-up drinks (margarita, rum punch), I just stayed with beer for the rest of the week. No frozen drinks. Rocks only.
I applaud the apparent blitzkrieg effort to finish the renovation so that people are inconvenienced for the least amount of time, but it looks like we hit it at the worst possible time. Construction until 8:30pm just seems excessive to me, but I guess I'm getting grouchy in my 30s.
Food was about what you'd expect for an all inclusive resort in the Caribbean: filling, but nothing to write home about. Usually some sort of pasta dish, some sort of rice dish, some sort of chicken, some sort of beef, and some sort of fish. Salad bar was mediocre, but was doable for my vegetarian/pescatarian girlfriend.
Hotel staff didn't seem to care about their jobs. No real horror stories here, I just left with the impression that the place is largely staffed by a lot of unengaged kids. No real complaints on my part. But if you're looking for a professionally managed resort feel with smiley bubbly people, you're not going to get it here. The grounds keepers and the security staff are the only exceptions I noted: those folks were on top of their game. The grounds tended to be very well kept, and the security guards were not obtrusive and always responsive when we were driving on and off the property.
All told, I was left with the impression of a great property with a lot of potential, but poorly ran and poorly managed with a lot of inconsistency.
Now to the diving -
Chris and Ria run the dive shop as a team. From what I gathered, they've picked this up within the last year or so (?). Part of the impetus for the trip was for my girlfriend to get her open-water certification before another planned dive trip at the end of the year. Chris was her instructor, and did a really spectacular job. They were extremely flexible in accommodating both shore dives and boat dives as part of the GF's training. I was cognizant of trying not to be the overbearing dive-nazi boyfriend, and tried to let them do their thing, but Chris was able to work in some really great dives that I was able to enjoy solo while he and the GF worked on skills training from the same dives.
Looks like Fantasy Island is running 3 dive boats currently. Unfortunately, the weather during our trip was a bit hit or miss. Mostly overcast with occasional stretches of sunshine. Not sure if it was the overcast or because it's the shoulder season, but there wasn't a lot of dive traffic. We basically had an entire boat to ourselves along with one or two other divers who joined us at different points in the week. This was really nice for the girlfriend as there was no pressure to deal with cattle-boat crowdedness while still gaining confidence. The crew was professional and engaging - really nice people. Since the number of dive bookings was so small, we basically got to make up our own boat schedule. Some days we dove at 8. Some days we decided we wanted to sleep in and dive at 9. The crew just rolled with it.
Site reports:
We visited a handful of sites around the Fantasy Island Cocoview Resort areas and adjacent french harbor: French Cay Cut, Prince Albert Wreck, Capt. Bud's Wreck, Newman's Wall, Coco View Wall, Valley of the Kings, and Mary's Place.
I won't detail each site - but generally I was really impressed with the diving. Really good clarity along most of the walls - 70+ ft seemed fairly common. The nearer more shallow dives tended around 40ft of vis. An abundance of coral. I think this was the most spectacular part of the diving here for me. The coral formations are varied and grow all up and down the walls. Not an astonishing amount of fish life, but enough to get your fix. Lots of different parrot fish and angel fish. The obligatory lion fish that you tend to see everywhere these days (still fun to look at.) Some free swimming morays (definitely an oddity for me, but they tell me that people have been feeding them to come out, so they have become more comfortable with daytime feeding and will approach divers. We were given a special briefing on how to fend them off if they get up in your business.) Lots of lobster. An occasional sting ray or eagle ray. I spotted a single Hamlet fish which was a bit of a highlight for me.
The highlight was definitely Mary's Place. It definitely lived up to the hype for me. I'd put it on my personal top 5 list of most interesting dive sites so far. We entered one of the splits in the rock formation at about 120ft, and then gradually came up by entering and exiting each of the rock channels. We had a grouper who joined our group of 4 divers who stayed extremely close to us for the duration of our dive. Close. Really close. He let me pet him at one point. Really a bit otherworldly. Like having your own pilot fish.
At the end of the trip, I was really impressed with the diving - really top notch. That said, vacation time is too precious to me to come back and deal with the sub-par hotel accommodation and blasé hotel staff at Fantasy Island. It's too bad, because their dive shop folks are of a very high caliber - they really deserve more business. It looked like Coco View was booming - 3 or 4 full boats running at least 3 times a day - maybe more. I'm personally glad that I didn't have to share Mary's Place with another 20 divers on the same boat. I wouldn't change the experience - but I probably won't be going back.
Hope this is valuable for anyone contemplating a trip to Fantasy Island in the near future!
-Ken
