Oh OK, now I get it

[Sask]

I have done several cruises over the years but never dove on them. This year another couple that came on this particular cruise, the guy was a diver. So my wife would be busy snorkelling with her buddy I could dive a couple of times with mine.


Having read many posts about cruise ship excursions and "cruise ship divers" I thought I don't really get it. I am a diver who dives relatively well and now I am going on a cruise. I should be with a whole bunch of people kinda like me.


Ok now I get it. Our first snorkelling excursion was cancelled in Cozumel so we booked a dive. That brought our diving to three ports.


Out of the six dives that had anywhere from 14-18 dare I say divers about 4-6 could actually dive. It is obviously way to easy to get certified. One of the other guys who could dive called it mosh pit diving and it truly was. I also now get why the operators take these groups to less than stellar locations. I appreciate that we did that.


I tried very hard to stay behind the pit but sometimes they would just sneak up on you, once while looking in a hole for apparently too long I was sandwiched from above and below at the same time. I guess they wanted to see what I was looking at......


One guy right from the start said don't worry if you see me breathing off my wife's tank, I'm an air hog so I suck mine to 300 then share hers till we need to go up. I have some nice video of them.


I don't pretend to be the worlds best diver but I can take care of myself, have decent buoyancy and I don't kick people or coral.


Long story but I have learned my lesson, if I ever dive from a cruise ship again it will not be through the ship.

 

[claymore]

Welcome to the world of cruise diving. I try to book my own but sometimes it just does not work out, cruise itinerary changes, logistics do not work out or it is just more hassle than it is worth. I tend to be same ocean when I do those dives. Stay with the group but do my own thing as a DM I will sort of watch for issues but I am not getting paid to baby sit new/vacatin divers, when I an working a class I am all over it.

 

[sparky923]

I cruise ship dive every year, just not through the ship's excursions. I've only been on one through the boat, and it was like Wal-Mart under the sea. There were 20+ divers on the dive boat, and even though we broke up into 4 groups and went in different directions from the boat, we were all over each other. It was a 150 dollar 2 tank dive in Belize and I haven't booked with a cruise ship dive excursion since.

 

[KathyV]

I have never done a cruise-ship dive excursion but I've been (un)lucky enough to have had the experience anyway! We were staying in Nassau and had booked a hotel/dive package with a local dive operator that we had used before - and liked very much.

We were booked for 4 dives per day (we were younger then!) and everything was going well until one morning when we were shuttled to the dock only to find ourselves squeezed onto a cattle boat packed with cruise ship divers!

I don't blame the dive operator because serving the cruise passengers provided a lot of revenue for him; but I really wish that he had kept his regular customers, that had booked a week-long dive package, separate from the cruisers. There were so many of them and some of them were very inexperienced or poorly trained (or both!) They would bunch up and run you over you under water and I saw some of them manhandling the reef.

But I will give the dive operator credit for handling one problem very well. As we were milling around waiting to get everyone sorted out, before going out to dive, I heard a guy on the phone making an air reservation for that very afternoon. He was planning to leave the cruise and fly home immediately after diving because of an emergency with his business.

I told the dive operator about it and he quietly took the guy aside, asked questions about his travel plans and then told him that he wouldn't be able to dive and fly. He tried to explain the reasons for his decision but the guy got furious, he took his refund and stormed out of the place. I saw him getting in a cab and I'll bet that he went to another dive shop and didn't mention his flight plans.

Since then, whenever we are staying in a cruise ship port, we ask the dive shop questions in advance about the size of the boat, the number of divers , whether they service cruise ship dive excursions and if so, how is that handled? We don't want to repeat our unexpected cruise ship dive experience!