Crystal River/Epcot DiveQuest Trip Report

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MtnDiver

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Location
Colorado Springs, CO
# of dives
0 - 24
Day 1 - Crystal River, FL

After staying overnight at the Crystal River Resort (http://www.crystalriverresort.com), we met up at the Crystal Lodge Dive Center (http://www.manatee-central.com) located on the resort property for our 8am briefing before the boat ride out into King's Bay. The briefing consists of fitting for a wetsuit, mask, fins, and snorkel if you didn't bring yours, then watching a 10 minute video on the do's and don'ts of Manatee interaction.

The weather was perfect, temp in the upper 60's, and calm winds. Four other guests and my wife and I boarded a pontoon boat with our guide for the trip, Captain Andy. The river was smooth as glass and you could see Manatees surfacing for air all along the shores on the way out to the "Big Bay". Captain Andy was an excellent guide and on the trip out he gave us specific instructions on what to do and not do as well as some insider tips on luring the Manatees over to us. I have to say, it all worked perfectly, just like he told us.

Once we got to the "Big Bay", Captain Andy carefully (and quietly) lowered the anchor, and got us in the water. We were anchored only 10 feet away from one of the bouys marking the Manatee Santuary area and there was a Manatee outside the sanctuary only a few feet from our boat.

Over the next hour and 45 minutes, we saw over a dozen different Manatees, including two juveniles and one very small (by Manatee standards) baby. The baby was still nursing on mom and after she had checked us out, we heard her communicate through squeaks to the baby, who replied to her and promptly came over to play with us. At this point, mom left and the baby stayed with us to play for awhile. After about 15 minutes, mom came back and she and the baby swam off into the sanctuary.

The neat part about this experience for me and my wife was that the Manatees are free to come and go as they please. It is their choice to come up and interact with you and they are more than willing to if you are quiet and swim slowly and and calmly.

I have to say, though, that there was one rather disturbing occurance that happend near the end of our time in the water. A pontoon boat from a dive shop from Orlando (I'm not sure I should name names here, so I'll wait for permission, or you can PM me) came in noisily into the big bay and pulled up next to our boat and let the anchor chain rattle against the hull while dropping anchor. That pretty much scared off all of the Manatees near our boat. They then proceeded to don tanks and go in and swim all around the big bay on the bottom which pretty much scared all of the rest of the Manatees from the area. You would think that people would have a little more respect for the animals. It is a very well known fact that the noise from scuba and the bubbles associated with it scare Manatees. Besides, the bay was only about 15 feet deep at the deepest part, there isn't anything interesting that you can't see with a snorkel, and the visibility wasn't that great. Seems like they could have found a better place to SCUBA dive than in the middle of the bay where the Manatees were. I thought it was pretty callous and rude of them to just motor into the middle of our area where we were playing with the Manatees and scare them off like that. Not a very responsible operator in my opinion and I know that I will never use that operator and in fact will steer everybody I can away from them.

That being said, though, I have nothing but praise for the Crystal Lodge Dive Center, and especially Captain Andy. He made the experience very enjoyable for us and was a very friendly and personable guide. Captain Andy has his own website at http://www.captainandy.com where you can see pictures and read stories from past clients about his Manatee tours. All in all, it was a very enjoyable trip, especially considering the $15 cost.

I've posted a few photos in my gallery here
 
Day 2 - Epcot DiveQuest

We booked our dives for the 5:30pm session on Thursday January 6, 2005. We made our reservations about 3 weeks in advance and had no problem getting our requested time. There were 3 other couples signed up for the same session making a total of 8 people for our session. We all met up at the Guest Relations window outside the park at 5:15pm and were greeted by 3 divemasters from the DiveQuest program. They checked our cert. cards, and took down our wetsuit and booty sizes, then we were escorted in through the employee's entrance into the "behind the scenes" part of Epcot. They took us by the filtration systems for the aquarium and explained how they worked. Then we went in the back entrance to the Living Seas building, and were told about the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund and how the proceeds from our dives was going to help fund research.

We were then taken to a lounge room and given waivers to sign and watched a short DVD presentation on what was going to occur during our dives.

At this point, we were led downstairs to the locker rooms and there were bags waiting with our names on them with our wetsuits and booties. We were issued keys to the lockers and told to change and meet back outside the locker rooms. After everybody was suited up, we were led through the public part of the Living Seas exhibit out to the observation deck. From there, they opened up the door in the center of the room and we climbed the spiral staircase to the topside of the observation room. This is where our tanks, BC's, fins, and masks were waiting and we were briefed on the dive.

They have a really nice dive platform above the observation room with a grate where you can stand in waist deep water and don your BC/tank off a shelf that is right at the perfect height to just back into and snap up. After donning our equipment it was time to take the big step off the platform and swim out to a bouy in the center of the tank. After the equipment check at the surface, we all submerged and went to the bottom of the bouy line to assemble before swimming off as a group on a tour of the tank. During the tour as a group, we were videotaped individually going through a swim-through in the artificial coral reef and going into the dive bell at the bottom of the tank. After the dive bell, we were released to swim around the tank on our own as buddy pairs.

During the free part of our dive, my wife and I had a lot of fun interacting with the little kids on the other side of the glass and posing for pictures for their parents. Several of the little kids were just so enthusiastic when we would swim into view and the kids would run over to the glass and press their faces against it. It was very cute. I even had one little girl who had been watching us, start to walk off with her parents to leave and suddenly she came running back over to the glass to wave "bye-bye" to us. Very cute!

As I said in another post, the new Sand Tiger Sharks are rather intimidating for the folks like me who have never swam with sharks before. At 8 feet long and about 250 pounds, they pretty much swim wherever they want to. We were instructed that if they swim towards you, just move to the side and they will swim past. My only close encounter with one was when he snuck up on us while we were between the wall and the fake coral reef. Couldn't move to the right, coral reef. Couldn't move left, wall. Decided to dump air from my BC and sink down and the shark swam straight over top of me about a foot and a half above my head. Got a good, up-close-and-personal view of all those toofies!

During the briefing, the divemaster said that it would be a 40 minute dive. At the 40 minute mark, everybody in our group still had plenty of air and since we were the last group of the day, they let us stay down longer. Actual bottom time ended up at 52 minutes and we all surfaced with between 500-700 PSI in the tank (AL 80's).

After we removed our tanks, BCs, masks, and fins, we dried off with towels that were provided and made our way back down the spiral staircase into the public area of the exhibit again. We then made our way back to the backstage door to the locker rooms through the middle of the spectators dripping salt water the entire way from our still wet suits and booties.

Showered, and changed back into street clothes, then back to the lounge room to watch the DVD made from the videos of us diving. Then, of course, we were offered the opportunity to purchase the DVDs (we did) for $35 of which all proceeds also goes to the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund. Also waiting for us in the lounge was a packet of things including a certificate of completion, DiveQuest sticker, Mickey Sticker, DWCF button, and limited edition DiveQuest T-Shirt. We also got a neat dive log entry page with a very nice DiveQuest stamp on it. There were also complimentary cold and warm beverages available while we watched the DVD.

After the DVD was finished, and we had any questions answered, we were escorted out around the side of the building and let loose into the park. However, since it was about 7:20pm and the park officially closed at 7pm that day, there wasn't much to do. It was still open for those who were staying at a Disney hotel (which we weren't), but you had to get a special wristband to do any of the attractions. We opted to just leave as we had already spent the entire day at Epcot.

All in all, I thought is was a very fun experience and worth the money, considering that the proceeds go to help fund wildlife conservation. I would definately do it again, in fact, we are thinking about a repeat same time next year.
 
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