Cruise dive trip, or book my own ?

[osb]

Looking for advice on the following:

I'll be on a 12 day cruise (Celebrity line) to Panama, departing Thanksgiving day.
The two ports where I'll have a chance to dive are Cayman and Coz.

I will be alone (no dive buddy coming along)... should I book thru the cruise line, or make my own arrangements. In either case, does anyone have any specific advice on operators to choose, or ones to avoid ?

btw - have my own gear.

many thanks
OSB

 

[diveborg]

My advice is to make your own arrangements. It doesn't matter if you have a buddy or not.

In Cozumel I went with Blue XT Sea. Excellent operation. I recommend them, but trying to make last minute reservations will be hard with them because Christi might already be booked up. She has a 6 pack boat and is quite popular. Dive with Martin and Eagleraydiver are also mentioned as being good operators for cruisers.

In Grand Cayman, I went with www.neptunesdivers.com and recommend them. www.divecayman.ky has a list of 33 dive operators with links to their individual websites. Again, it will probably be difficult to make last minute reservations.

Good luck,
Bruce

 

[NW_DiverDude]

I too will be diving while cruising just after Thanksgiving but on a different ship. Since I have done numerous dives on past cruises, I fully agree with diveborg's comment about arranging your own since you can save quite a bit of money and make sure you are diving with an operator that is matched to your expectations. The issue you have is you are very short on time now.

It's funny that diveborg mentioned Christie at "Blue XT Sea" in Cozumel because that is who I wanted to dive with during my stop in Cozumel but she told me just yesterday that she is completely booked for December. Sign of a really good operation.

I will end up diving with EagleRay Divers - also noted by diveborg - as they are more flexible with cruise ship diver schedules than most other operations.


NW_DiverDude

 

[nkw5]

Book your own. Do a little research and save a lot of money. The timeframes never were a problem for me, and neither was being the only diver.

If you really want to save money (other than hauling your own gear, which I estimate saved me $20/dive), consider shore diving. Both Cozumel and G. Cayman have great shore dives.