.... I plan to dive as much as possible an am unsure who could potentially provide the best experience. In your opinions who has the better dive operation
MLR is positioned (marketed) as a day-spa resort for Cruise Ship passengers. An established outside day-dive op is on station to provide dive services. Some days, no one dives, but the service is still available. Quite often, the place which was built in the last 10 years, is all but empty.
RHR is one of the first dive resorts ever on Roatan. Their boats are very small at the in-house dive services operation. Guests arrive to dive. Very few guests, even when it is "full" which it is, often.
The websites:
RHR:
Roatan Diving, Honduras Roatan Diving, Honduras Scuba Diving, PADI Scuba Courses, Shark Dive, Scuba Diving, Night Dive, Night Diving, Reef House, Reef House Resort, Reefhouseresort, Reef Dive Sites, Scuba Vacations, Dive Vacations, Roatan Dive Resort My pix of the place are at
Reef House Resort Roatan Photos by Doc_Adelman | Photobucket
MLR unfortunately shares it's name with another similarly named Roatan property. I did find this
Media Luna Resort and Spa - Roatan Hotels - Sunwing Vacations I have never stayed there although I have hunted rabbits on the land years ago and been diving their zone extensively. The little lagoon out front was okay for a night shore dive, not a big draw, though.
RHR is down about Oak Ridge/Calabash Bight area, MLR is just to the right of Second Bight or so. I'm bad at place names, but close enough for this discussion. RHR has an excellent shore dive opportunity but it must be tempered with the understanding of it's physical shoreline vs. the compass point- the wind and wave can shut down any attempt at a shore dive. The concrete protected "swimming area" is great for shallow night dives and Octopus, etc. The area outside that breakwall is great for this, but again, wind and wave are the bugaboo locally. On certain nights (if the waves cooperate) they will do a boat night dive. Kind of a conundrum for me- if the seas are that calm, I'd rather do the shore dive, but guests like the idea of using a boat for simple the adventure or ?
"Dive sites"? It is highly subjective in a couple of ways. Very few posters here have ever extensively dived both of the locations that pertain to each specific resort. MLR will have better boats and is in a physical location (1/2 way down island) to give you more of the known sites. More u/w architectural variety of shapes.
If the (faster & more stable) MLR boats have sufficient qualified divers to take you, they have access to some of the more interesting architectural variety including the over-rated Mary's Place and the more interesting 2 shallow placed wrecks. The wall structure near MLR is something I prefer simply because of it's unique nature in the Caribbean.
The diving near RHR is also a big known draw (for those who know), and they do have immediate access to Calvin's Crack which I find way more enchanting than Mary's Place. They will also take better divers to a small horizontal overhead environment which unfortunately shares the same name with a North side site: Hole in the Wall.
RHR is located considerably further East. They claim that this remoteness means less divers thus better reefs. Not exactly the case. The reefs are indeed less siltated (thus "better") because: 1) there is less local development of land, and 2) the water exchange caused by increased wind and wave is much greater in this zone.
DMs? RHR has a long term staff that always gets good reviews. They are accustomed to getting real-deal divers, 99% of the guests dive. MLR has an outside service that uses a standard cadre of rotating, yet experienced DMs. The MLR DMs are used-to a more casual diver and very few of the 100+ (max) guests really dive.
I really do not know for certain the actual current dive-op schedule of either. (MLR might be very fluid- that's why they encourage you to reserve dive ops in advance) As you do bring up "Surface Intervals", this is an issue. MLR was offering two 1-tank daily trips.
RHR, being presented as a "dive resort", does it differently, usually three different departures, 1 tank each. The boats are too small to do 2-tank trips. You can do the three a day with no problem.
When you go to the West, you will also see a standard of three trips offered daily. Contrary to the protestations of the large fan-base, most do not participate in a regular schedule of 3/day- after doing dive #1, making the #2 is quite a hustle. Most hard-core divers on West End/Bay knock out a maximum of 2/day, doing #1 and #3. Your plan is a good one, go diving as much as you can take- before heading West to connect with your fellow travelers later.
Your end of week visit to West Bay will be miles apart from either South side option in many, many ways.