Trip Report Great family trip at Coz Iberostar -- similar kid friendly resorts?

[wateraddiction]

We really enjoyed Iberostar with our 9/11 yos who loved the kids club and we all thought the food quality was excellent so thanks to everyone who steered us to IB. We dove while kids were at Star Camp and we paid workers to cover the hours when kids club was closed. The most economical way to do that was to dive afternoons and pay for 1 hr of babysitting but Dressel's afternoon dives timed out at 45-50 min. It wasn't terrible for us since my husband just got certified and he was sometimes doing safety stops with 600 psi but we may shift shops as his air consumption improves. Black Friday deal was $3150/week before dive costs and AI made everything so effortless without me needing to cook/clean at all.

Kids are getting certified in Dec in Bonaire (staying at Sand Dollar) but I suspect they may only want to dive once/day so I'm going to keep looking at resorts for future trips. For those of you with kids, do you have other resort suggestions -- Coz drift diving might be hard for the kids (and my husband wasn't thrilled with the strong currents which impacted his air consumption) but returning to IB is definitely an option. Roatan Mayan Princess is AI and has a kids club but it's much more expensive (6k-7k/week with 10 tanks). Plaza and Divi in Bonaire are AI and similarly priced to IB Cozumel (mid 3k range/week) --- has anyone stayed at either and can compare them to IB?

 

[Brad J]

We checkin this Friday for first time in Cozumel and Iberostar. Interested to hear more about your diving experience with Dressel's as we're considering Aldora or other offsite operators. The short dive times really drive me crazy.

Also your food experience. Sounds like it was a nice trip!

 

[wateraddiction]

Dressel is a big operation with up to 4 boats staging each morning and afternoon. Their 2 big boats had 16 divers with up to 8 divers per DM on their busiest days. We usually had 5-10 min to grab drinks and fruit from the beach snack bar during the SI which was nice. But this also slowed us down at times with 4 boats docking and loading new tanks and divers, etc.

Since my husband has under 20 dives, we were often with new divers or people who appeared to not have been in the water for awhile. One poor single got sent up early with their struggling assigned buddy at 35 min and the rest of went up with the DM at 45-50.

They grouped nitrox divers together and they usually had longer bottom times since they were dropped off first and picked up last. The benefit to such a huge operation is they're pretty flexible but you need to communicate what you need to the woman organizing the board. We realized they were putting us on the latest boats which meant we were getting back 30 min after kids club closed. I told her and she switched us at the last min to a boat leaving earlier and we got back in time. But the next day we were on a later boat again so you have to tell them what you need each time. Morning dives seemed closer to 60 min.

I found it pretty chaotic & I would have loved to dive with Aldora but the convenience/flexibility of Dressel won out this time (pier fee was also a deterrent for us). But there were plenty of experienced repeat divers who were enthused about Dressel.

 

[Brad J]

Great, very helpful.

Which of the food options did you really like?

 

[wateraddiction]

The buffet was the best option for us and we were all happy with the food as there was a wide array of fresh fruit and veggies and there were always Mexican offerings at every meal. I was eating chilaquiles with 2 over easy eggs topped with fresh pico de gallo and guac in the mornings with a big plate of fruit, a hot churro or donut, agua fresca and green juices. If you ordered coffee from the lobby bar it was from an espresso machine and very good (i'd ask for 2 cortados or sometimes a cappuccino). There are also 2 self-serve coffee machines in the buffet that made drinkable cortados, capp, and a sweetened vanilla cappuccino (better than what those machines in a 7/11 make). Don't use the machine that only makes coffee in the buffet area -- I thought that was undrinkable. The coffee they serve in carafes is OK and they offer hot milk for cafe con leche. One morning there was an empanada stand at breakfast and while my kids said they weren't as good as our fav empanada place at home, they ate them all. I was skeptical of "Spanish night" until I saw a stand with prosciutto and melon and the spicy patatas bravas were great. I didn't actually expect to enjoy AI tapas at this price range.

The only restaurant we tried was the Asian place where I ate mostly sushi rolls and while there wasn't a huge range, we noticed that the sushi rice was perfectly cooked and seasoned (sushi rolls were also avail at buffet on "International Night"). Like there's an impressive attention to detail and whoever is running the kitchens know what they're doing and trying to get staff to execute. I think as long as you don't go into this resort looking for steak or expensive seafood, you'll be happy (although the ceviche and poke were good ). The food/drink was much better at Hotel Xcaret but we paid $1100/night so that's to be expected. But Iberostar was so much better than the cafeteria quality food we experienced at Hilton Rose Hall Jamaica where my husband didn't want to return for a free trip (Hilton points) because he couldn't bear the thought of eating that food for a week.

 

[NDL_Diver]

As your husband dives more his air consumption will improve with his buoyancy. Being able to just float (no kick) is the key to drift diving. In fact you should use less air drift diving since you should be no doing much work. Use formations to stop (go behind and just hover (again neutral boyant)). Learn to be in the back of the group so you can stop when DM stops vs getting in front of them. Don't worry about seeing everything the DM points out.

New divers kick alot. They dive heads up. Kicking makes them go up since they are not flat (parallel) with surface. To compensate, they are negatively boyant so they can stay at a fixed depth by kicking. They tend to kickup sand when close to the bottem (the downward thrust component of their kicking). They often have their tank too low because they don't want to hit their head on the 1st stage. This often ruins your trim (the tendency for you feet to drop or head to drop or roll when not kicking. It is something that more experienced divers figure out (the difference between buoyancy and trim) and how to maximize kicking thrust by being parallel to surface so 100% of kick goes to forward motion and reduces water drag resistance.

I don't kick much while drift diving. I only try to kick to move perpendicular to the current. I have great buoyancy (over 700 dives) and I am often inverted (head down drifting) looking at things under the reef. I can cross my feet and just float in any orientation.

Anyway, as he gets more dives under his belt he should relax.

 

[ggunn]

The food/drink was much better at Hotel Xcaret but we paid $1100/night so that's to be expected.

Eleven hundred DOLLARS per night? Yeesh, that's too rich for my blood. Where I stay on Cozumel I pay less than that per week.

 

[Shawn C]

Eleven hundred DOLLARS per night? Yeesh, that's too rich for my blood. Where I stay on Cozumel I pay less than that per week.

It's a spectacular resort and it also includes park admissions for the whole family to the constellation of Xcaret resorts. You can find it for a lot less than $1100 / night (off peak season) but yeah, it's still pricey.

 

[Charred]

You can stay at Iberostar and dive with any operation that will pick you up there. Best of both worlds

 

[Shawn C]

We've been bringing our now teen daughter to the island since she was 3 years old. We've stayed at 7 or 8 of the AIs on the island now. If our daughter was in charge, we'd stay at the Iberostar every time. They have, by far, the best activities and staff for kids out of all the AIs we've tried (and we've tried all the 4 stars and up available). The beach is great (at least to the waterline) and the food was good enough (although we had several dinners at Alberto's beach shack just up the beach). Five minute boat rides to the reefs were also great. That resort is a loooooong ways from town and if you don't have a car, those taxi fares add up in a hurry.

Her parents prefer Explorean or Fiesta Americana (better food, nicer accommodations, unbeatable views (at FA - none at Explorean). The nice thing at Explorean is that they have an included excursion every day and some of them are well worth doing. The downside to Explorean is no TVs in the room for the kids and no room service. Kids would be happier at FA, parents at Explorean. Now that those resorts have access to their pier and ocean side facilities again (long story) they are back at the top of our list. Almost every dive op will pick you up at the resort pier (and there's a lot better options out there than Dressel or whatever the in house dive op is now at FA). We love Sharkey's but wouldn't hesitate to recommend Tres Pelicanos or Dive with Martin. If you need to rent gear, it's hard to beat free with Sharkey's or DWM!

Your husband's gas use will definitely improve with time, experience, and learning to let the current do most of the work (and relaxing is also big one). But his use will almost certainly never be as good as yours. Men burn more gas than women as a rule. If you have a significant disparity and you are leaving a lot of gas in your tank, he could always request a larger tank (100 CF or 120's are available through many dive ops. At least one shop offers 117's). My wife has gills so when I'm at 500psi, she's at least double that. But she gets cold faster than I do so we're both ready for the SI at about the same time