I would love to hear from anyone that has taken cruises (not dive liveaboards) to hit some dive spots throughout the Pacific. There are numerous cruise options that can give us a quick diving experience in a lot of places that I would ultimately like to spend a few weeks diving at each. There are cruises originating in Sydney, Australia that hit places like Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Isle of Pines, etc, and some make the rounds around Tahiti, Bora-Bora, Moorea, etc. While the locations look great on paper, and are no doubt fantastic for cruising/sightseeing, very few of the cruises we looked at had dive excursions at most of the stops. That makes me wonder if the cruise ports are too far from the good dive spots, especially considering the arrival and departure times (usually 8AM to 5 or 6PM), and the fact that many require tender operations. I would hate to jump on one of these cruises expecting to dive at some wonderful dive spots only to find out that diving is not feasible from the cruise ports or diving within close proximity to the ports is not worth the effort. We have dived on cruises in Coz, Roatan, Costa Maya, St. Thomas, Grenada, and Bonaire with some very good dives with both the cruise ship ops and off-ship ops, so I don't want to start another discussion of the pros/cons of cruise ship operators. Thank you in advance for any thoughts or recommendations.
