ppatin
Contributor
First impression: The outside of the resort and the common areas were fairly attractive. The beach that it was located on was gorgeous and there was a nearly constant breeze blowing through. There were plenty of beach chairs and the outside tables, chairs, etc were clean and in good shape. Two things that I did notice were the pool and the beach showers. The swimming pool was only half full and had a slightly greenish tinge, but we were right on a gorgeous beach so it's not like I had any plans to use it anyways. Almost all of the beach showers were broken and none of the few that were functional had shower heads on them (this was to become a recurring theme.)
I came as part of a group of roughly two dozen people and there was a bus as well as a truck for luggage waiting to pick us up at the airport. Once we got there the front desk staff was less than impressive though. They knew when our group would be coming, but it took them over an hour to give us our keys so we could get to our rooms. Most of us grabbed lunch in the meantime, but it was a bad sign of things to come with the front desk staff.
Rooms: The room that I had was about what I expected for the price I paid although the bathroom was a little on the gross side. The housekeeping staff clearly worked hard to keep things clean, but at a minimum the shower needed to be re-caulked. The room had a newish looking flat-screen TV, and I think that the resort would have been better off without the TVs and putting the money into bathroom renovations instead. The shower didn't have a shower head, and it took a couple of requests to the front desk to get one installed. There was a safe which I was careful to always use since my dive buddy had her phone stolen from the room during our second day there.
One quirk that seemed to affect the entire resort was that for at least a couple of hours every afternoon there wouldn't be any water. We could never get an explanation for why this happened, but our best guess is that because of their limited water pressure the rooms would lose water while they were doing laundry. This in itself wouldn't bother me, but it was annoying that they couldn't just be upfront about it.
Diving: I mostly enjoyed the diving experience but there are a few things I had reservations about. There were a lot of dangling consoles and octos in my group and as far as I could tell the divemaster never said anything about it. I was reluctant to speak up about this since I was a newbie member in a group of people who'd dived together before, as well as one of the least experienced divers in the group. Securing dangling gear was drummed into my head from the first day of my OW course though and I'd never before seen a DM who didn't try to keep people from dragging their consoles on the reef. I did get my dive buddy to secure her console, but in hindsight I kind of wish I'd said something to others.
Another practice that concerned me was the feeding of Moray Eels. Since lionfish have become invasive the DM would try to spear them whenever he saw them. Several times though he then fed the dead lionfish to a Moray. The logic behind this is that it'll hopefully teach the Morays to go after live lionfish, but the consensus on Scubaboard seems to be that it's a terrible practice which'll simply teach the eels to associate divers with food.
The last thing I noticed was that nobody ever checked my logbook or c-card. There was a form you filled out at the beginning where you had to put down your certification information along with a theoretical requirement to do a checkout dive if you hadn't dived in over a year, but that rule certainly wasn't enforced.
On the positive side our divemaster (Nelson) and boat captain (Pedro) that we had seemed to work really hard to make sure everyone had a good time. They kept a written record of everyone who was on the boat, and always checked to make sure we had everyone on board before leaving a dive site. There was a fair amount of chop at our dive sites, and they did a fantastic job of making sure everyone got back on the boat safely since that could be a bit tricky.
There were three boat dives per day and the boats left at 9 AM, 11 AM and 2:30 PM. All of the sites we went to were within ten or fifteen minutes of the resort, so we came back to the dock after each dive. As I mentioned earlier the water was kind of rough, and Dramamine ended up saving this trip for me. I didn't take anything before my first boat dive and nearly threw up from sea sickness. After that I always took sea sickness meds and it made all the difference for me. All of our dives sites were interesting and had a maximum depth between 60 and 70 feet. The highlight of our trip was the dive at Mary's Place which is apparently one of Roatan's most famous sites.
Rental Gear: I brought my own wetsuit so I can't comment on that, but I did rent a BCD and regulator. The BCD was typical for a rental, but I had an incident with the reg that left (pardon the pun) a really bad taste in my mouth. When I tested it out on the surface and the first day's shore dive it seemed ok. The pull on it was a little difficult, but this was my first dive in about three years and I wrote it off to my own unfamiliarity. During the first boat dive it got increasingly difficult to breathe through it as we went deeper and when we hit 70 feet it became seriously uncomfortable. I came close to grabbing my buddy's octo, but as we ascended it got somewhat easier to breathe. On the surface after that dive I realized that my pressure gauge would drop whenever I took a breath through my reg (lesson learned, ALWAYS check your pressure gauge when testing the reg) which probably indicated a bad first stage. I replaced the reg and everything was fine after that. Hopefully that incident was a fluke and not a symptom of more serious equipment maintenance issues.
Looking back through my review it might come off as a little negative, but I don't mean for it to sound that way. I had a wonderful time during my trip to FI and I certainly think we got a good value for what we paid. Except for the front desk the staff at the resort was very hard working and helpful, and I greatly enjoyed the diving that I got to do. My one caveat is that FI would be a better destination if you're planning a longer trip since the per-day cost is low but airfare to Roatan is quite steep. I would not recommend FI for someone who's traveling with a non-diver, but as someone who was going primarily to dive I was happy with the place. Feel free to ask questions, and I hope this review is useful for people who're planning future trips.
I came as part of a group of roughly two dozen people and there was a bus as well as a truck for luggage waiting to pick us up at the airport. Once we got there the front desk staff was less than impressive though. They knew when our group would be coming, but it took them over an hour to give us our keys so we could get to our rooms. Most of us grabbed lunch in the meantime, but it was a bad sign of things to come with the front desk staff.
Rooms: The room that I had was about what I expected for the price I paid although the bathroom was a little on the gross side. The housekeeping staff clearly worked hard to keep things clean, but at a minimum the shower needed to be re-caulked. The room had a newish looking flat-screen TV, and I think that the resort would have been better off without the TVs and putting the money into bathroom renovations instead. The shower didn't have a shower head, and it took a couple of requests to the front desk to get one installed. There was a safe which I was careful to always use since my dive buddy had her phone stolen from the room during our second day there.
One quirk that seemed to affect the entire resort was that for at least a couple of hours every afternoon there wouldn't be any water. We could never get an explanation for why this happened, but our best guess is that because of their limited water pressure the rooms would lose water while they were doing laundry. This in itself wouldn't bother me, but it was annoying that they couldn't just be upfront about it.
Diving: I mostly enjoyed the diving experience but there are a few things I had reservations about. There were a lot of dangling consoles and octos in my group and as far as I could tell the divemaster never said anything about it. I was reluctant to speak up about this since I was a newbie member in a group of people who'd dived together before, as well as one of the least experienced divers in the group. Securing dangling gear was drummed into my head from the first day of my OW course though and I'd never before seen a DM who didn't try to keep people from dragging their consoles on the reef. I did get my dive buddy to secure her console, but in hindsight I kind of wish I'd said something to others.
Another practice that concerned me was the feeding of Moray Eels. Since lionfish have become invasive the DM would try to spear them whenever he saw them. Several times though he then fed the dead lionfish to a Moray. The logic behind this is that it'll hopefully teach the Morays to go after live lionfish, but the consensus on Scubaboard seems to be that it's a terrible practice which'll simply teach the eels to associate divers with food.
The last thing I noticed was that nobody ever checked my logbook or c-card. There was a form you filled out at the beginning where you had to put down your certification information along with a theoretical requirement to do a checkout dive if you hadn't dived in over a year, but that rule certainly wasn't enforced.
On the positive side our divemaster (Nelson) and boat captain (Pedro) that we had seemed to work really hard to make sure everyone had a good time. They kept a written record of everyone who was on the boat, and always checked to make sure we had everyone on board before leaving a dive site. There was a fair amount of chop at our dive sites, and they did a fantastic job of making sure everyone got back on the boat safely since that could be a bit tricky.
There were three boat dives per day and the boats left at 9 AM, 11 AM and 2:30 PM. All of the sites we went to were within ten or fifteen minutes of the resort, so we came back to the dock after each dive. As I mentioned earlier the water was kind of rough, and Dramamine ended up saving this trip for me. I didn't take anything before my first boat dive and nearly threw up from sea sickness. After that I always took sea sickness meds and it made all the difference for me. All of our dives sites were interesting and had a maximum depth between 60 and 70 feet. The highlight of our trip was the dive at Mary's Place which is apparently one of Roatan's most famous sites.
Rental Gear: I brought my own wetsuit so I can't comment on that, but I did rent a BCD and regulator. The BCD was typical for a rental, but I had an incident with the reg that left (pardon the pun) a really bad taste in my mouth. When I tested it out on the surface and the first day's shore dive it seemed ok. The pull on it was a little difficult, but this was my first dive in about three years and I wrote it off to my own unfamiliarity. During the first boat dive it got increasingly difficult to breathe through it as we went deeper and when we hit 70 feet it became seriously uncomfortable. I came close to grabbing my buddy's octo, but as we ascended it got somewhat easier to breathe. On the surface after that dive I realized that my pressure gauge would drop whenever I took a breath through my reg (lesson learned, ALWAYS check your pressure gauge when testing the reg) which probably indicated a bad first stage. I replaced the reg and everything was fine after that. Hopefully that incident was a fluke and not a symptom of more serious equipment maintenance issues.
Looking back through my review it might come off as a little negative, but I don't mean for it to sound that way. I had a wonderful time during my trip to FI and I certainly think we got a good value for what we paid. Except for the front desk the staff at the resort was very hard working and helpful, and I greatly enjoyed the diving that I got to do. My one caveat is that FI would be a better destination if you're planning a longer trip since the per-day cost is low but airfare to Roatan is quite steep. I would not recommend FI for someone who's traveling with a non-diver, but as someone who was going primarily to dive I was happy with the place. Feel free to ask questions, and I hope this review is useful for people who're planning future trips.
