ch0ppersrule
Contributor
Hello everyone,
Just made it back from our dive vacation on Cozumel. Great time, again. Last year we dove with Dive Palancar and they were really good. I even recommended them to everyone. Well, this year we split up our diving and dove with Palancar and ScubaTony. The difference was DAY and NIGHT. Palancar really went down hill this year. I don't know what happened to them, but it was terrible. We got 1 dive briefing out of 6 dives with them, our DM held us up in a swim through for over 5 minutes (didn't bother me until I found out why) because he saw another group of divers and thought they were looking at something neat so he stopped us and waited for them to move then he looked and realized they were regrouping so when they ascended he brought everyone (8 people) through and told us to ascend and do our 3 minute safety stop. That was only part of the problem- as soon as I got to 19ft and my mosquito started my 3 minute stop he signaled for everyone to surface, I shook my head no and gave him my 3 minute sign then he shook his head no and gave me the okay and to ascend. Well, I stayed my 3 minutes at 15ft then surfaced and he told me I would have been okay to surface before. Our bottom times were limited by where we went to (the farther away the less time we got). Well, we booked 5 dives with ScubaTony before we left on vacation and got really spoiled diving with him!!!! We had a group of 6 (max he will take out) and he made sure everybody did a buddy check, he got in the water first to make sure we were at the right location, and he actually checked our air at different times throughout the dives to make sure everyone was doing good. He pointed out different things (didn't use a noisemaker - which I myself use) and every buddy team got to stay down for there max amount of time. He would shoot his signal marker up and let the buddy teams hold the line while doing a safety stop and then make sure the boat picked them up while the rest of the divers were still sucking air. Each buddy team did really good and we had AWESOME dives. He picked us up at our resort (occidental grand) and took us where ever we wanted (unlike Dive Palancar who will only go as far north as Yucab). We got to dive The Wreck of the Felipe Xicitencatl and got to penetrate it. Very Cool. We did a night dive which was awesome also. Lots of octopus and crabs, lobsters, eels out swimming around, splendid toadfish, shrimp, yellow stingray and even a slipper lobster. Tony even copied our digital pictures onto a disc for us since it was full and our laptop crapped out on our first day (we only brought the computer to download pictures). He really went above and beyond for us and we really really really appreciated everything he did for us. We highly recommend ScubaTony to anyone going to Coz to dive. Oh yeah- he even calculated our surface intervals and we stopped at little beach bars waiting to get back into the water. Tony fit in with the group as if he were part of our family. Really great guy and we will only dive with him on our return trips. He even e-mailed us thanking us for diving with him and told us about more great places he wants to take us diving (places I haven't been to yet).
Melissa
Just made it back from our dive vacation on Cozumel. Great time, again. Last year we dove with Dive Palancar and they were really good. I even recommended them to everyone. Well, this year we split up our diving and dove with Palancar and ScubaTony. The difference was DAY and NIGHT. Palancar really went down hill this year. I don't know what happened to them, but it was terrible. We got 1 dive briefing out of 6 dives with them, our DM held us up in a swim through for over 5 minutes (didn't bother me until I found out why) because he saw another group of divers and thought they were looking at something neat so he stopped us and waited for them to move then he looked and realized they were regrouping so when they ascended he brought everyone (8 people) through and told us to ascend and do our 3 minute safety stop. That was only part of the problem- as soon as I got to 19ft and my mosquito started my 3 minute stop he signaled for everyone to surface, I shook my head no and gave him my 3 minute sign then he shook his head no and gave me the okay and to ascend. Well, I stayed my 3 minutes at 15ft then surfaced and he told me I would have been okay to surface before. Our bottom times were limited by where we went to (the farther away the less time we got). Well, we booked 5 dives with ScubaTony before we left on vacation and got really spoiled diving with him!!!! We had a group of 6 (max he will take out) and he made sure everybody did a buddy check, he got in the water first to make sure we were at the right location, and he actually checked our air at different times throughout the dives to make sure everyone was doing good. He pointed out different things (didn't use a noisemaker - which I myself use) and every buddy team got to stay down for there max amount of time. He would shoot his signal marker up and let the buddy teams hold the line while doing a safety stop and then make sure the boat picked them up while the rest of the divers were still sucking air. Each buddy team did really good and we had AWESOME dives. He picked us up at our resort (occidental grand) and took us where ever we wanted (unlike Dive Palancar who will only go as far north as Yucab). We got to dive The Wreck of the Felipe Xicitencatl and got to penetrate it. Very Cool. We did a night dive which was awesome also. Lots of octopus and crabs, lobsters, eels out swimming around, splendid toadfish, shrimp, yellow stingray and even a slipper lobster. Tony even copied our digital pictures onto a disc for us since it was full and our laptop crapped out on our first day (we only brought the computer to download pictures). He really went above and beyond for us and we really really really appreciated everything he did for us. We highly recommend ScubaTony to anyone going to Coz to dive. Oh yeah- he even calculated our surface intervals and we stopped at little beach bars waiting to get back into the water. Tony fit in with the group as if he were part of our family. Really great guy and we will only dive with him on our return trips. He even e-mailed us thanking us for diving with him and told us about more great places he wants to take us diving (places I haven't been to yet).
Melissa
