Iberostar Dressel or Aldora etc..

[scubawife]

The thing about resort & dive shop trip reports/reviews is that unless you know something about the person's previous travels, tastes, dive experience, etc., and it's similar to your own, you should take it all with a grain of salt.

If all you do for diver trips is one a year and it's always an AI resort/on-site dive shop package deal then any resort/dive combo you get that way will seem good. The beauty of a dive trip to Cozumel is that you aren't limited to using the onsite shops. There's a shop in Cozumel to suit just about every diver's "must have" list.

A lot of divers that stay at the AIs on the south end of the island book with one shop for their morning dives and then use the on-site for afternoon or night dives a few times during their stay. You just have to decide which days you want to do that so you take your gear off the boat in the morning as many dive ops will rinse and store it for you as part of their service.

 

[Montana Diver]

+1 for Aldora!

They were very accomodating for me since I came over from Playa. This spring the weather was iffy, so they opted for the big boat for my dives. Had a great time, dived nearly to computer limits, saw some neat rare things. I will use them again next year.
Good dives, great staff.

 

[stano]

Well I got back from the island today and managed 8 dives. I did dive 6 times (3 x 2 tanks) with Aldora and was very happy with the service and the quality of the dive masters. I dove with Edgar and Raul. They were very confident and seemed very knowledgeable. Our dives were all dive the tank and I did most dives at 1:10 to 1:20 minutes which was pretty nice. We did our surface interval at Mr. Sanchos which was nice, the food was decent and prices were fair, at least I thought so. We actually went there with the family on an off day and spent the day at there beach. 50$ for all you can eat and drink, pretty good, you can also just buy off the menu.

I also dove two dives with Dressel. The Dressel dives were an intro to scuba for my daughter and my niece. The dive master was Sophie and she was excellent with the girls. They came away with a very good experience and now my daughter wants to get certified. This ended up being basically a private dive which was great.

On the Aldora boats the people were very friendly, the diving was challenging and we did not see other divers during our dives except a brief moment on one morning dive. I also noticed that there boats are very fast with twin 115hp outboards, we passed all kinds of boats. I dove Columbia Deep, Santa Rosa and Devils throat to mention a few, all of which were fantastic.

I looked at the boards at the Dressel dive shop and they were usually going out with about 7-10 people per divemaster. Dressel does not seem to have any shortage of divers thats for sure. They were putting out three boats everyday that I was there. Every boat had like 15-20 divers on it (in two groups mind you). I talked to lots of divers there and they seemed quite happy with Dressel as well.

So at this point I would say based on my experiences with both I was very happy with Aldora and did not see any real huge issues with Dressel. Once Aldora had my gear then when I got on the boat it was all setup, the Dressel divers have to carry their equipment from their rooms or from the dive shop which is not a real big deal but still a bit of a pita.

Thats what I have for now. Any questions I would be happy to fill in any blanks.

Stano

 

[Colin Gray]

Stano

Glad to hear you had a good time at Iberostar and diving. Am looking forward to being there in 13 days. Is the main buffet up and running??

Colin

 

[jchance]

Couldn't agree more. Glad you decided to go with Aldora as was my suggestion last month. Sorry about the swim through incident but glad you got to come with us that last day. You missed a great set of dives the next day. We did Palancar Bricks to Columbia Shallows for 84 minutes and then did the entire length of Columbia Shallows for 111 minutes! Great dives and Raul was super.

BTW--my partners loved seeing the photo I sent them.

 

[vanessar]

I loved Aldora best in Coz.

vanessar

 

[njcfm]

+1 for Aldora.. great DMs, great equipment, great dive shop!