Any diving near Disney World?

[Shinsen]

Coming to Orlando in late September for a business convention in the Magic Kingdom. Any place nearby to maybe do a quick morning dive while I'm there?
I saw where you can dive in the aquarium at Disney World but I don't think that's what I'm looking for.

 

[Sik_Z33]

There's a bunch great dive spots in the fresh water springs all over central and north Florida, look up places Ginnie springs. I've never been diving there but I've been tubing and snorkeling and the water is really clear.

http://underwaterflorida.homestead.com/ginnie.html

 

[MissCassidy]

You can even dive at Disney, at least at Epcot.

 

[LynnB]

If you wanted to do an ocean dive it would take you about 2 and a half hours to get to jupiter which has good diving...
Never did the springs before but guess that would be closer if you just want to do that kind of dive.... they are cold..

 

[Melonie]

My husband and I did the Epcot dive in February and it was a blast! Some of our friends who were brand new divers wanted to do it and I was reluctant at first because I thought it would be really lame... But I read some reviews on TripAdvisor and people seemed to love it, so we did it and had a great time. The cool thing is that you can see so much sealife all at once and interacting with the kids on the other side of the glass is fun. They also let you into Epcot for the rest of the evening without getting a separate ticket, so you can check out the rest of the park too.

I have also been to Jupiter a few times and done a couple of the springs in the Gainesville area, which are great too!

 

[Glock Diver]

Shinsen- any reason you didn't want to dive the aquarium at Epcot? It's a pretty cool dive, definitely unique.

Also expensive (I paid $150 for the 1-tank dive, with my AAA discount), but you do get a behind-the-scenes tour and a T-shirt.

 

[mike_s]

It's gone up to $175 this year. but you can still get discounts with AAA and just saying you're a PADI or NAUI member. Season ticket holders get a discount also.

 

[cruisediver69]

Look at the local dive shops in Orlando. I signed up about a month and a half ago for the Epcot dive scheduled at the end of this week. The price was right around $100. Apparently groups can get a nice discount and some of the dive shops pass a lot of the discount down to the divers in the group.

 

[jgoodstein]

I think seaworld has dives as well if I recall

 

[PatW]

Well, you can dive West Palm or Jupiter. I like Pampano better because the soft corals are better but for that you pretty much have to stay overnight. Better yet, for a 5 hour drive, you can bet down to Key Largo.

The Florida springs are pretty restricted in size. Also the temp is 72 degrees which is cold for some people.