I dived with Dive Paradise for six days at the end of July, 2017. I am an experienced diver (100+ dives), but I rarely take large group boat trips; my review is colored by my experience.
First, the positive:
Dive Paradise runs a large operation, fielding multiple boats with multiple pick-ups every morning and every afternoon. Given all the logistics involved, I was impressed by their overall efficiency. Each boat has a manifest and the crew will make sure you get on the right one. On board, things are generally pretty organized, and there enough crew to help with the unforeseen. Support is "full service". They will help with your first stage, open your air when you gear up, replace a torn O-ring faster than you can say Bob's your uncle, and if you have trouble climbing a ladder with all your gear on, they will let you doff your BCD in the water and hoist it for you. We were served fresh fruit, cookies, and sodas in between dives on the morning 2-tank trips.
The dive masters consistently enforce safety stops, which is probably a good thing.
The dives themselves, alas, disappointed.
We did a three-dive per day package. Don't. While the crew is willing to venture further South in the morning, where the most spectacular reefs are found, in the afternoon they will almost invariably take you to Paradise Reef, just South of the cruise ships. You'll get bored with this pretty fast.
There is no consistency in procedure among dive masters, and unless you make special arrangements, you will likely get a different dive master every day. Some problems I have with the dive masters:
* They rush you through the dive, sometimes doing things that are not safe: on one dive we hit the water, met up with half of our group on the surface, only to discover that our dive master was already submerged. We sometimes were given less than a 30-minute surface interval, because, it seemed, the dive masters were in a hurry to get back.
* In theory they begin ascent when you hit 1000 PSI. But on only two dives did the dive masters enquire about my air status during the dive. I ended most dives with well over 1000 PSI in my tank. Divers with Nitrox will likely be diving with air divers.
* In the morning they will make a show of asking you where you want to go, but more often than not they will ignore the boat's decision and just tell you where you are going. As a result, out of 15 dives, we had only two among the more scenic Southern reefs. The dives themselves were confusing: often they would describe one profile, then dive a different one.
* On only 3 of our 15 dives did the dive master do a roll call after we were back on the boat.
* They don't seem to care much about protecting the reef. On almost all of our dives, there were divers - not all novice - who did the "egg beater" with their fins on corals and sponges, or grabbed on to sponges to stop themselves from being carried on in the current. The dive masters didn't say or do anything. Witnessing this made me wonder whether the reefs of Cozumel may eventually become victims of their own popularity.
Of all of the above, the most frustrating for us was not being able to see most of the dive sites further South. read more