Occidental Grand Cozumel Trip Report

[Scoober]

Hi All,
I just returned from a 10-day all-inclusive trip to the Occ Grand Coz with my wife and 3-year-old girl. All in all a great trip! Here are some observations:
We rented a car, as it was only $18/day through Avis, via Expedia. I used to live in Coz, working as a diver for a bit, so we wanted to get out and about a bit. Otro lado, Sunday night fiesta in San Miguel, my friend's restaurant, etc. With the toddler, having a car proved valuable several times.
The property is quite nice, and generally well maintained. That being said (typed), at one point the same empty yogurt cup sat just off of a main path for 3 of 4 days, and a small empty creamer cup for another 3 or 4 days. Seemed like no-one wanted "jurisdiction" and these things just sat there. I left them there out of curiosity re how long it would take for the staff to deal with them. Inexplicable, especially in light of the fact that the grounds are otherwise pretty immaculate.
In any event, check-in was nice, with glasses of welcome bubbly (which was by far the best wine of the week) with re-fills. Nice staffers at check-in. Just after check-in we ran into the sharks. Pleasant sharks, but...This was our first all-inclusive, so we did not know what was up when we were informed by a nice fellow that he would be our concierge, and we needed to check back with him after completing check-in. Obviously, it turns our that we were dealing with the timeshare folks. A bit misleading, but no big deal. Once they knew that we were not interested, they left us alone the rest of the trip.
The rooms are pretty nice, and more than comfy enough. We were in Building 17, top floor, and we loved it. A bit closer to the pools and beach than to the main buildings. They hooked us up with a pack n play for Sofi, although she started sleeping with us in the big bed (king) after the first couple of days (yep, still dealing with that issue now that we are back home--oi...). You get a bath AND a power shower. And a mini fridge. Weird that they stock water very day, but beer only every other day. Every day, the towels were oragamied into cool critters that Sofi loved. We were definitely happy with our digs.
Sofi was a bit too young for the Kids Club and related activities without adult supervision, and we knew this coming in. She is nearly 3, and Kids Club starts at 4. So, through the resort we were able to arrange for Sonia to come in every morning and hang out with Sofi on a hourly basis ($10/hr) while we were diving. Worked out extremely well! Otherwise, Sofi was a little star among the staff and many of the guests. All was great on this score.

The food. Blah. Not so very good. I mean, generally no t hideous, but not so good. Actually, the first couple of days, I zoned in on some slow-cooked stuff like pork tinga that was pretty doggone good, but we saw no more of this after the first 2 days. Also, alot of stuff on the menu (such as mole, which I love) that never materialized. In any event, they were running the buffet and 2 "specialty restaurants" (the Sonora Mexican Grill and Olivos Med). The breakfast was always up in the main buildings, and was always fine. Omeletes to order, French Toast, juices, cereal. Always just fine. And here is a great tip. We were diving daily, so we took to slapping a fresh omelette on a baguette, grabbing some melon, juice and coffee, and schlepping down to the Beach Club next to the dive shop and pulling up a table. Enjoying breakfast on the beach while watching the dive shop attempt to gel.
Lunches were always at the Beach Club. Great place, which helped make up for the lame food. Roasted meats, overcooked and without much seasoning and flavor. All of the chicken tasted the same, regardless of what it was called. The salsas were Ok, and the habanero-based verde was some of the hottest restaurant salsas I have had. Go for it! But lightly...And AFTER diving. While the lunch food was generally lame, we could always find something to lunch on.
Dinners buffets were usually in the main building, but at the Beach Club on Thursdays. If dinners were always at the Beach Club, the lame food would have not been as much of an issue. Like the lunches, meats over-cooked and otherwise pretty duh stuff. "Oriental night" was downright silly! Again, you can always find something short of foul, but that's not saying much. Each guest is "entitled" to 3 dinners per week in the "specialty" a la carte restaurants. Reservations. Collared shirts. Closed-toed shoes. We were offered 6 such dinners, and used 2. First was the Sonoran Mexican Grill, which you would think they would absolutely nail. Downright foul. The second was the Olivo Mediterranean gig, which was a bit better because of the sauces (they seemed to have a decent saucier), but was absurd with the pompous attitudes and the white gloves. Gimme a break. Oh, they also had a decent cheese platter, but unlike in the Med, they served it up front rather than after dinner. I would say leave the formal attire at home and skip the "specialty" restaurants.
Another thing re the food: My wife eventually took to eating alot of salad stuff and ended up getting very ill on the morning of our departure. Had to have a doctor from town make a house call, which only cost $60, plus cost of meds. 2 jabs in the butt, and oral meds as well. Barely made it home. I stuck with fully cooked foods and had no problems. One regret: I failed to take fotos of my wife getting the jabbs in the butt--for posterior posterity!
I know this is alot on food. My wife is a private chef, and we are sort of foodies. All in all, the food is do-able. You can always find something and make it work. And the silver lining: you don't have to worry about gaining weight!
The 3 bars are fine. One Lobby Bar, one at the pool and one at the Beach Club. Mixed drinks are typically made with bargain booze and are a bit weak. However, with a little selection--and tipping!--you can get Absolut and such. And after dinner I usually switched to Jameison rocks, which can't be watered down. Another good one is the Tequila Liqueur neat as a digestive. Beach service can be pretty nice. We tipped a bit for this service and were well taken care of.

The dive operation. Dive Palancar is on-site, although other shops were doing pick-ups for no charge from the resort. We went with a package with DP< and it worked out Ok, although I do have a few issues. First, the shop jocks were pretty clueless about organizing boats and groups. Different boats and guides all of the time, and a game of musical divers where you were with different divers most days. This lead to situations where some divers who wanted to dive certain sites were paired with divers who had just dove those sites the previous day, and vice versa. Also, various experience levels on the same boat, unnecessarily. If you wanted to dive with divers of similar experience, or if you wanted to dive "special trip" sites (such as Maracaibo and Punta Sur), you pretty much had to organize the minimum 6 divers yourself. No sign up board. No information about how the sign-up process works (sign up each day for the following day, but no sign up board). Also, short dives, usually 40 minutes, due to the fact that they run 4 trips per day minimum, and so the boats and guides keep a busy schedule. I am used to 1 hour dives, and I was coming up with heaps of air.
As for the dive guides: as always, it depends on who you get. We had one who took us to Maracaibo, and missed the drop. Missed the dive site completely. And we still had to pay the surcharge. I have guided many dives myself, and I understand that this can happen. I would have been happy to pay for a dive, but having to pay the surcharge was not right. Anyway, after missing the drop, we get back to the dock and the guide starts openly asking for tips--"something for the captain". This was lame. I intended to tip, but when he openly hit us up after missing the dive...And saying it was "for the captain". Then I told him that we don't bring cash to the boat, and we would tip at week's end, he wanted to argue about this mot being the best approach to tipping--only for the captain, remember. We ended up tipping, but a bit less. Our second guide was fine, with good briefings and good drops. But he was really a dive supervisor more than a guide, hovering above everyone and not finding and showing anything. Lobo was our third guide, and he was truly excellent. The briefings were great, and appropriately tailored based on the divers in the group. Always went the extra mile to find the correct drop point (even if he had to jump in first), and always finding cool stuff and pointing it out. Good diver. Again, I have done alot of guiding in many parts of the world, and I highly recommend Lobo--The Wolf!
The diving itself: Coz still has some of the most amazing coral formations, some the size of office buildings! Sure, the wildlife is not overly-abundant, and is next to nothing compared to Asia Pacific. But is is still great diving. Just as when I was working in Coz years ago, Devil's Throat and Cathedral at Punta Sur are still amazing by any standard (my favs). And the wall looked healthy near Maracaibo, although again, we missed the drop. Palancar Caves was still awesome! One disappointment was Santa Rosa. Used to be one of my favs, but it is now frosted with sand. And some of my old favs farther north, such as Tunich, are apparently not even worth diving now. The viz was down, by Coz standards--70 feet maybe?
Phew. Lots of info. Maybe too much, but only cuz I care! Several criticisms, and I would not want to give an overall negative impression. We had a great trip and would do it all over again! Probably will , but may consider outsourcing the dive op thing (and hiring The Wolf privately?). Great resort with a relatively great beach, just workable food, Ok dive op and heaps of great diving right in our own North American neighborhood!
Adios

 

[Mossman]

The property is quite nice, and generally well maintained. That being said (typed), at one point the same empty yogurt cup sat just off of a main path for 3 of 4 days, and a small empty creamer cup for another 3 or 4 days. Seemed like no-one wanted "jurisdiction" and these things just sat there. I left them there out of curiosity re how long it would take for the staff to deal with them. Inexplicable, especially in light of the fact that the grounds are otherwise pretty immaculate.

First was the Sonoran Mexican Grill, which you would think they would absolutely nail. Downright foul.

Nice report. I had the same experience with little things not being picked up. I was on the ground floor and apparently stuff kept falling from the balconies above. An empty pack of cigarettes sat next to my little patio for 4 days before someone removed. And the black underwear was there for 2 days.

Have to disagree about Sonora, though. I ate there twice, thoroughly enjoying my meal both times. My second meal there consisted of a most excellent corn soup, followed by "veggie salad tacos" which turned out to be nopalitos in hard taco shells, nothing special, and then the filete arriero (which I had both times), a perfectly cooked huge tenderloin, tender as only quality aged beef can be, and not a speck of fat or gristle on it.

 

[cicopo]

Thanks for the trip report. I'd say you feel the same way my wife & I do about the food & level of service offered. The resort itself is nice but I don't think it lives up to it's name.

 

[drrich2]

Thanks for your report. Good to know. I hope to spend a week in Cozumel someday, and I prefer to enter things with reasonable, neutral expectations; neither pessimistic nor optimistic. Your reports seems balanced.

Richard.

 

[cvchief]

And the black underwear was there for 2 days.

Maybe they were holding out hope you could get a return engagement?

 

[dark rider]

Great report Scoober! We just got back from Coz (July 6th - 12th), and stayed at the Occidental Grand and dove with Dive Palancar as well. First off, the trip was wonderful, and we'll certainly be going back! The Mrs. and I traveled with another couple sans kids, and this was our first foreign trip without the kids! All ...

When reviewing/booking, we looked at a number of locations, including Hotel Cozumel and Iberostar. The location of the Occidental was appealing to us being so close to the southern dive sites, and the fact that it was AI, had on-sight dive ops that were well reviewed, and had top shelf liquor put us over the top! The grounds were pretty much immaculate. The only instance of real trash we saw was the stacking of cups by the quiet pool in the evenings after the bar there had closed. One evening, they must have reached five feet high! They were always gone before the next morning though. The only thing that remained for days was a golf cart broken down outside of our building (13). With the exception of the gauntlet of timeshare salesman off the two lobby areas, I have to say that the staff was amazing!They were always working, very polite, and went out of their way to make you happy.

The food was hit or miss at the buffets, but we had genuinely good experiences at both the Mediterranean restaurant and Senora. The main problem at the buffets, as usually is the case, is that the food was too bland in order to try and suit everyone. After the first couple of days, we figured out the trick to enjoying the buffets. You just need to get very small portions of everything and sample before you commit to an actual plate! After doing this, I always found a couple of things I liked, as the selection was quite extensive! I do wish there would have been more authentic Mexican dishes though. The only other things I'd note about the resort is that they did a wonderful job screening vendors to come in from the outside several times while we were there! We were leery at first, based on the timeshare sales people, but selection and prices were among the best we saw (including outside the resort, and our trip to Tulum). Nightly entertainment was also fun.. sometimes hokey, but fun nonetheless. The fire dancers they got were among the best I've seen! La Mision (discoteca) was also an interesting place to hang out later in the evenings and dance, shoot pool, and people watch.

Neither of the ladies were divers, so we were interested in the other amenities as well, and they took advantage of the sea kayaks, windsurfing lesson, and snorkeling (boat trips extra, otherwise included). Our package included 4 days of 2 tank morning dives with Dive Palancar and we ended up adding 1 night dive. The dive shop itself is small, but clean. We used our own gear, but their rentals appeared to be only a couple of years old and fairly well cared for. The staff was very friendly, but laid back was definitely the vibe I got. However, they did legitimately check our certs the first day when we checked in, and gave us a 2 minute run down of their operations. We went ahead and signed up for all of our dives at once and got lockers (individual oversized cages) to store our gear for the week. The next morning we showed up about 15 mins early for a 9am departure. After retrieving our gear and getting our boat assignment, we made our way to the dock. We were greeted by the DM and crew who helped us aboard, and offered us water while we waited for the rest of the group. Note, the boats are large, well equipped, maintained and easily accessible (large platforms with nice stairs). Also, being such close proximity to the southern dive sites proved advantageous as we were often one of the first groups at each morning site, which was great for the deep dives! Because the boats were big, I worried about group sizes initially, but our groups never were over 6-7 people max per DM, and two of the days, only one DM was needed for 7 total divers! For DM's, we had Luis, Lobo, and William. Lobo was the best of the 3 and was who we requested after our second day, and also who we used for our night dive. We didn't dive Maricaibo, but did Punta Sur and no mention of surcharge was made or expected. We also dove Palancar Caves, Palancar Gardens, Delila, Santa Rosa Wall, Columbia Reef, Paso de Cedral, and San Francisco wall. Dive times ranged from :45 to 1:05, and we voted on dive sites every morning before leaving the dock. They also let us vote whether we returned to dock for SIT between dives. Travel times were typically :10-:30 mins depending on where we were going, and the only DM not to brief the plan was William. We took care of that by asking questions, and he was more than willing to give us answers, but I got the impression his English wasn't as good as the others. The boat crew was typically a captain and two other assistants that helped with gear, etc. Zero issues to speak of with the boat or crew, and they were literally on us within 2 minutes of surfacing (DM launched safety sausage just prior to ascending to safety stop). They would also gladly assemble/break down your gear for you, but asked before doing so. Personally, I like to set-up my gear, but liked the break-down service. They also offered to carry gear back and clean and store it (valet for tips). I didn't take advantage of this, but was impressed with how thorough they were, as the routine pretty much mimicked my own.

This was my first time in Coz, and all in all, I was pleasantly impressed by the hotel and the dive ops. Not perfect, but well run, and an excellent value overall. If you're looking for an AI, and looking for convenience, it's hard not to recommend this combo!

 

[diveprof]

I was in Coz a week ago. Not hearing great things from any diver on our boat about the AIs. Seems business is down, so food quality is suffering. Have to disagree about your report on Punta Tunich (of course any site can be very different one day to the next). We had an awesome dive with free swimming green morays, 3 turtles, mega lobster, etc. My fav though is Columbia Deep/Pinnacles and a particular section of Palancar Bricks...

 

[gailieb]

Quick question re: Occidental Grand Cozumel and Dive Palancar - is there a spot (other than the room) to store / lock up your dive gear. Not wanting to drag back and forth and up and down the stairs every day !