Okay, I live in St. Croix and I truly understand the mentality of West Indian "service", its beyond island time. But Anchorage Dive Center was an extremely frustrating place to stay. We should have realized it at the beginning of our travel plans. We wanted to stay five days in Roseau and then four in Calibishie. My fiance loves to dive and so we chose Anchorage dive as an obvious choice. The hotel website reservations and subsequently thier email address do not work! We had to call direct to make reservation and that was not too bad until we tried to confirm the airport shuttle--that we still believe only exists on the website. The front desk staff was incredibly unhelpful or unknowledgeable.
So we arrived in Dominica and received the ground level room near the pool. We had been quoted originally 90 dollars a night. With its near Spartan accomodations, old blankets and hard as a rock beds we quickly fought that price. The room should have been 40 US hands down regardless of the closeness to the Caribbean water, we had it brought down to 50 US a night. The worst was we both got some nasty contaminated food induced bug from Perkys Pizza downtown and of course the hotel ran out of water the day we were both hurting. It took them several hours to get it back on and when we asked at the front desk what was going on we got absolutly nothing, not a nod or a confirmation that we had just spoken to the woman.
The restaurant was okay, I loved the homemade pumpkin soup, but the service was again...beyond island time. Breakfast was much better, loved the fresh made bread. Finding the waitstaff if anything should be wrong was like finding a needle in the haystack!
My fiance really enjoyed the diving, their were only two other people and the dive master-- he likes the smaller group. We both were absolutly thrilled by the Anchorage Dive Whale Watching trip. We saw a bunch of Sperm Whales.. Just amazing. they have this really cool whale skeleton hanging in thier downstairs bar area. But you don't have to stay at Anchorage in order to go on the whale watching trip, truth be told.
I don't like sounding like my fiance and I were so pessimistic about service and what not because we really do understand that the West indian mentality usually lacks in customer service. Thats not being mean, its really true. All the Dominican we met were soooo nice and would go out of thier way to make you feel welcome...except the staff at this hotel. Well not all the staff. The dive masters and Leronne behind the bar were wonderful!
Next time we go to Dominica we're not going to bother with Anchorage, we will just stay in Calabishie.

The staff at hotel Anchorage really should look up the word "service" in the dictionary. I stayed in this hotel for 5 nights and had numerous bad experiences with people working in the restaurant and especially at the front desk. Employees can look at you as if you are a pain, as if you are disturbing them. That is, when they can muster the politeness to even look at you when you adress them.

To give an example. My bill (401 dollars) I paid in euros. So, I will lose some money right? Well, I did, but I actually lost 91 dollars in this transaction. After 4 different debates with different staffmembers at the front desk and ultimately with the manager, who finally called the bank for the exchange rate, I got 67 dollars back. I was really on the verge of reporting this scam to the local police. When I paid for an extra night (yes, stupid) I had to ask 3 times during the day to get my receipt. The woman had "no time".

I travelled in about 70 countries and cannot recall to have had such a bad service in this hotel, and alas, generally speaking on the island too. Dominicans are genereally speaking really friendly people, but with offering service they really have a hard time. I even heard about a Dominican waitress who was fired after one day because she refused to serve Dominican customers...

Everything was a disappointment. The food, the rooms, and the diving. There were a FEW friendly employees, while most would look away when you walked up to them.
The food was repititious, uninspired, and boring. The selection was poor, and the servings were small. I've seen better selections at soup kitchens in Baltimore. This is the first "all-inclusive" that I actually lost weight from. ("all-inclusive" did not include beverages, except for coffee and juice with breakfast, and water.....but not bottled water, or coffe with lunch or dinner)
The rooms were modest, to say the least. They were not well cared for. The showers went from literally no pressure, to sand blast pressure. You could not move the shower heads at all for direction. There were safety hazards, and unsightly things about. With a few hours of extra work, the place would have been much more attractive. It seemed to me that the owners were trying to milk as much money out of the resort, while putting the absolute minimum back in. My greatest impression was that the hotel was a 1 star hotel charging a 4 star price.
The diving was mediocre. We were forced to dive off of catamarrans which were set up for snorkelers, NOT DIVERS. Some of the dive crew were fantastic, most were just there.
We've been diving for years, and have been to many all-inclusive resorts, and this place was a total disappointment.

If all you're really interested in is diving, this is the place; otherwise, might consider another place. The hotel was adequate, staff was superb and hospitable, facility was OK. Service was usually slow, but they got around to whatever we asked for. My biggest complaint is that I did not get one single wakeup call I requested and almost missed one dive trip. Not much else to do in Dominica, and getting from the airport to Roseau is an hour+ on winding narrow roads. We got stranded for 2 extra days due to flights cancelled due to weather, and American Airlines did not provide good service here. Be careful if you have close connections in San Juan going out, because our flight left Dominica an hour late and we barely made the flight ot of San Juan. There also seemed to be a lot of uncertainty due to frequent rains.
We had a group of 16 for a week of diving. The dive staff was OUTSTANDING and very accommodating, and the divemasters did a great job of leading the dives. Dive sites were quite good. We did the whale tour and found 2 along with numerous pink-bellied dolphins. Nice reefs w/color and lots of critters, but no big fish.
Recommend the canoe trip up the Indian River in Portsmouth.