Our stay in January 04 - Deserves four stars, minor quibbles

[lucysgoose]

This is a bit out of date, perhaps, but I was asked by the Webmaster to insert it.

Overall: The Iberostar Cozumel deserves its four-star rating. If you are a diver, it is an ideal base. If you go south simply to relax in the sun, it is highly recommended. The only thing I didn't like was the lunch restaurant, and the remote location. Everything else was top-notch.
We stayed for a week at Iberostar Cozumel in January 04. The hotel is very well-managed, the service efficient and often friendly, and the property and rooms well-maintained and immaculate.

The Pool: A generic large Caribbean resort pool with swim-up bar. Very clean, and a well-designed layout that allows for lots of lounge chairs with a choice of shade and sun, and you don't feel crowded. The usual staff-inspired pool hi-jinks go on, including the free scuba lesson and kid's games, but are not intrusive if you aren't interested. The lunch restaurant and another walk-up bar are also right by the pool.

The Beach: Fine white sand with lots of interesting small shells and coral fragments to collect. No large resorts for some distance in either direction, which makes for a pleasant stroll. The water slopes off to a pleasantly swim-able waist-to-chest deep, but almost no one seemed to be interested in swimming. It is a little rocky at the water's edge and most people go in off the pier if they do want to swim.  near the shore there is modest undersea life (fish, the occasional starfish, some seaweed) to entertain a snorkeler, but nothing like a reef is accessible from shore. Mild rashes from invisible strands of floating, stinging sea life are a problem at some times. Small catamarans and sailboards are available for rent, but there is nothing much to see from offshore, and wind, at least while we were there, was unreliable for that purpose. There are ample, well-shaded beach chairs and it is not hard to find a semi-private spot to veg-out and read.

The Rooms: Clean and medium-sized, by resort standards, and no one in our party of 11 complained of a sewer or damp smell, as reported by other reviewers, although I did hear that some brought candles, which reportedly solve the problem if it is encountered. The rooms are in two-story two-room "huts," with room on the upper and ground floor. Ours was an upper. They are arranged with nice views of the landscaping from a porch with a hammock (but no lounge chairs, which I thought a surprising oversight). The upper story has an authentic thatched roof which we found fascinating -they ought to have a little brochure in the rooms about them. In contrast to other reviewers, we thought the safe large enough for a camera, even a videocam (although just), and the safe had a very clever set-your-own-combination electronic lock which seemed to me a much more efficient system than a key. The narrow curved stairways to the second floor, although they are soundly built, have low-ish handrails that might be unnerving to some.

Main dining room: On the Poor-to-Excellent scale we found the food good-to-very good in the main dining room, with enough variety to keep you interested for a week's stay. I suspect I would have got a little monotonous during a second week, but that is true of almost any such resort. The dessert bar, neglected at some resorts, is better than average, and includes a number of Mexican confections that are worth your attention. The tables are a bit crowded together and awkward to manoeuvre through, and the room is noisy at main meal times.

Lunch restaurant by the pool: The food at the lunch restaurant by the pool was disappointing, the number of tables inadequate, and the noise and crowding even worse. It was the one unpleasant part of our visit.

Specialty restaurants: In addition to the main dining room, you have the option to reserve in advance for dinner at a separate Mexican restaurant, or at a steakhouse.  We aren't into Mexican food, so we skipped the first, but we peeked inside during the off-hours and the decor looked inviting.  The Steakhouse is the lunch restaurant by the pool, converted for evening use, with tablecloths, and table service with menu.  It sounds tacky, considering what I just said about the Lunch facility, but in fact it works very well.  First, its location by the pool is quiet in the evening, and the trees and shrubbery, bathed in bluish pool light, look very tropical and atmospheric.  The night we were there, and other nights when we strolled by, the number of patrons was small, which also helped. The food (chicken and seafood dishes, as well as steak) is prepared by a much better team of chefs.   

Drinks: While on a previous trip to the Mayan Riviera we found the Mexican wine to be quite good, the only brand available at the Iberostar was dismal, both red and white. Some have complained in other reviews that the drinks were watered, but we found that the drinks tended to be of unpredictable strength from weak and too sweet to single-dose-deadly.

TIP: They sometimes set up an exotic coffee stand next to the entrance to the dining room in the main lobby. They were a nice change from bar drinks, and were genrally very good. 

Children's activities: There are some pool activities for children, and a supervised play area where young children can be left while the parents relax. The handful of children so deposited seemed to be happy, and the woman running things looked enthusiastic. The evening entertainment in the auditorium is preceded, from 8 -9 PM by a kid's hour that has them dancing and singing and what-not, led by a cheerleader type. I seemed popular and attracted about 8 - 10 children per night.

Entertainment: The evening entertainment in the auditorium, which ran from 9 to 11, looked to me in passing to be pretty dismal and amateurish, as in fact seems to be the case even in really expensive resorts in the region. The Mexicans don't seem to be clear on the concept in this regard. There is also a night club on the premises, happily distant from the accommodation. Those in our party who went gave it very mixed reviews and for the most part found it just passable and often not terribly lively.

Diving: Diving is the main attraction of Cozumel, and it was the reason we went. The hotel has its own full-service dive shop, pier and dive boat, and many other dive boat operators come and go all day picking up groups of divers. The extent and variety of reefs nearby is amazing. You can't beat this resort as a base for diving. Formore on this, see my comments in the Vacation Advice forum.

Location: My only reservation about the Iberostar (other than the lunch facility) is that, if you are not a diver and like to go off-property when you stay at such resorts, the Iberostar is not very well located. It is inconveniently far to town, and there are not that many things to see on the island of Cozumel itself. For more, see my comments on Cozumel in the Vacation Advice Forum.

Wildlife: I saw one mosquito. The resort grounds are spray-bombed once a week, and anyway the mosquitoes don't come out until the rainy season, according to the locals. Wildlife on the grounds includes some tame flamingos, a couple of peacocks, several iguanas (who will climb the trees past your balcony to sun themselves on your hut roof), a variety of geckos (lizards of the small, scuttle-rapidly-in-the-bushes variety) and many small, colourful birds. There was a 10-inch gecko in our room on the wall near the ceiling when we first arrived, but he didn't like the noise and lights, evidently, and (somewhat to our disappointment) he slipped out and didn't come back.

Tip: The walk-up bar in the lunch/Steakhouse restaurant building by the pool stays open in the evening. We found it a pleasant respite after dark to go there for a latte and sit by the pool, which is lit-up and beautiful, and there is rarely anyone around except the diners in the steakhouse.

To repeat my overall impression, with the minor exception of the remote location and poor lunch facility, Iberostar Cozumel is a well-run and very worthwhile vacation choice, especially if you are a diver or a laze in the sun type.

[StarFriend]

I loved the nightly shows.  The people were soooo entertaining and fun!  What is the name of the Star Friend that had sunglasses on during the day but regular glasses at night?