Stay at El Cid: 2/2004. Where to start. Two words: FAlSE ADVERTISEMENT.
SALES: How about our entrance into this "so-called resort". After a six hour trip, we were ready to relax. Not at El Cid they want your money and they want it the minute you get there. We had not even gotten our luggage placed in the lobby, when we were engulfed by a "timesharing" saleswoman. She told us that we could not check in yet because our room wasn't ready but that she would be happy to have the bellman take our luggage up to our room and leave it in the closet while we waited for our room to be cleaned. In the meantime, she wanted us to talk to her about a timeshare. We lied and told her we had a dive trip that we had to get to. Instead, we followed the bellman up to our room, and low and behold our room was ready. What a ploy, telling us our room wasn't ready, so they could try to get a sale. We felt bad for the elderly couples that had succumbed to this tasteless sales tactic who had gotten there just prior to us. FOOD: don't get the meal plan here. We found out they have separate, and horrible menu for the meal plan folks. You have to eat off the limited one page menu for both lunch and dinner, and believe me you can get better tacos at taco bell. You are better off paying for your meals on your own, at least you will get a more varied and longer menu. They advertise they have two restaurants.
Not so. You will be eating at the Chopa for every meal. The other so called restaurant, the El Galeon, is an indoor dining facility that you only eat in if the weather is horrible and you can't eat at the outdoor chopa. However, we would recommend eating, if not staying, at a different resort. Coral reef restauarant at Casa Del Mar is where we ended up eating our meals just north of el cid. DRINKS: If you opt for the meal plan, they tell you alcoholic beverages are included. Contrar mo frare. Don't expect to drink Dos Equis, Corona, or Tecate, or even Negra Modelo. Oh, no. You will be drinking out of a gallon bottle of el cheapo beer that was probably opened a day or two before. Not too mention, everytime we entered the chopa, the cooks were drinking this beer while they were cooking. EXERCISE ROOM: Don't expect to buff up or tone here, our hotel bathroom was the size of the gym. I got more exercise walking up and down the stairs to my 7th floor room, as one elevator was broken and the other one didn't work on two floors. ICE: HEILO. Don't expect to find it on any of the floors of the hotel. They were out on every floor every day. We ended up having to buy a cooler and filling it with ice purchased from the grocery store. DIVE shop: THey are not affiliated with Del Mar Aquatics as sometimes advertised.
They are with Aqua World. Don't dive with Aqua World. They could never get 6 people to sign up for dives to take a boat out. So they would cancel. What sucked is that we bought a dive package with Aqua World before we found out how bad it is. Not too mention, that we were the only two guests staying at El Cid that dove with the onsite dive shop Aqua World. Everyone else 20+ other divers dove with Del Mar Aquatics (up the road from El Cid) or a different dive company. That should speak volumes. If you are going to Cozumel to dive, and want a good dive resort with a reputable dive shop, stay at Scuba Club Cozumel.
Rooms: The rooms were clean, and we had good maid service. This was the only positive of the resort. If you stay here, we would recommend that you dive and eat elsewhere. Do not get the meal plan. Also, do not fall for the ploy that the room is not ready. It is. When we checked out, they were already in our room cleaning it within three minutes. I am serious, we checked. If you are interested in a time share, then maybe you will find this environment pleasing, I found it rather offensive and they took advantage of and took vacation time away from a lot of individuals. They will most certainly point out to you that they are a gold crown resort, they are not. There other resorts may be, but not La Ceiba.

I escorted a group of 7 first-time tropical water divers and 2 non-divers to Cozumel at the end of November 2003. We stayed at El Cid La Ceiba and dove with DelMar Aquatics on a one-week dive package arranged through Poseidon Venture in California. We enjoyed our stay immensely.Although we all arrived and left on different days, everything worked out exactly as arranged. Our rooms were ready and clean, spacious and comfortable, with a wonderful view of the ocean across to the mainland and the incoming and departing cruise ships. Quite a sight. The grounds at La Ceiba are well kept and safe, with the dive lockers and rinse tanks at the dock a real asset. The staff is friendly and accommodating, and the buffet breakfast (included in the room rate) fresh and plentiful. And the rates are very reasonable.DelMar Aquatics picked us up at the hotel dock on time (morning or afternoon), supplied a spacious and fast dive boat, a helpful boat crew, who switched tanks faster than you could say "gracias," and a very knowledgable and expert dive master, who consulted with me us on the dives we wanted to do and showed us the best of Cozumel diving, including pleasant surface intervals on quiet beaches. DelMar also allowed anyone who had to miss a dive to make it up on another day.So, we have absolutely no complaints. As a dive master who organizes and escorts two or three dive trips a year to various places, I would not hesitate to stay at El Cid La Ceiba and dive with DelMar Aquatics again any time.

The fact that this is rated a gold crown resort is a JOKE. The is a 2 star hotel that El Cid took over. It got this Gold Crown rating because other El Cids are Gold Crown and they plan to build a new resort on the Mayan Rivera across the way. But don't be fooled. You could stay in a $25/night place and get the same thing you get here. Sure you get free breakfast but the variety is lacking and it gets old after the second or third day.First of all, you're lucky if you get the room you were promised. We met a group of four that reserved a 1 bedroom but were stuffed into a studio unit.The rooms are not maintained well and most everything did not work. We had to call maintenance on a daily basis for things such as the A/C not working properly, lamp bulbs needing to be replaced, resetting the circuit because it blew every time we used the microwave, etc. The beds are hard as most are in Mexico but worse yet, in order to close doors, you have to slam them and the walls are thin. You won't get a good night's sleep at La Ceiba. And when you ask to change rooms, they admit they put you into a noisy room on purpose.It's also interesting that if you are a timeshare owner with "VIP" (that's B.S. what a rip off), you can't get an automatic upgrade, however if you are willing to pay extra, they suddenly seem to have the rooms available.Speaking of timeshares, they try to sell hard at this resort but don't get suckered, it's not worth it to stay in place like this. P.S. The concierge is especially part of this scheme. Don't purchase tickets from them, they take a 20% service charge and you'll find you can get stuff cheaper if you go directly to the site. Don't feel like you need to go to a timeshare talk to get discounts. Their "discounts" are normal price. They just mark everything up 50% then tell you that you get a 50% discount if you go to a talk. That's B.S.The worst is that when anything goes wrong, no one there gives a ****and you're stuck. They'll tell you that they will take care of it but after hearing that 3 days in a row, you realize they'll keep on tell you that until you leave.I definitely plan to go back to cozumel but I will not stay at La Ceiba again. Do yourself a favor, research places and find a better place to stay. La Ceiba was not relaxing and the service was horrible.