Scubafanatic, sorry you had such a bad experience. We have been on both the Solmar and the RDM and have had great experiences on both. Never had dive time limits beyond what is normal on a liveaboard that is trying to stay on schedule or depth limits (other than your MOD). I don't remember ever having to go too deep to see stuff though. I guess we lucked out with the weather because we stayed at Roca Partida for 3 days where we saw so many sharks, including whale sharks. I am curious, was the divemaster one of their regulars or was he a sub? Our guides always stayed with us and we stayed with them as we were instructed to do. They let us spread out and do our own thing, but we always stayed in eye contact with the guides. If someone wandered off they would usually get blown off the rock and we would wave goodbye to him and his buddy as they disappeared out in the blue!
The deck can get a little crowded but they do a pretty good job splitting the group so that only half the divers are on deck at one time. When the divers follow the format it works well. The way you put on your tank is much easier on the back for me so I liked the set up. We had a girl on our trip that never had to touch her gear. They would always take her kit down to the panga so she didn't have to lift anything so they do accommodate special needs. The crew was always there to help when needed. I think the only negative to me was the diver to guide ratio was higher on the RDM.
