Beaches Turks and Caicos.

[pugdiver]

I echo the comments from Mikeycanuck. You will save huge money by renting a villa. We usually rent on Sapodilla Bay and get a car then dive with Dive Provo, although Flamingo is a great option as well, come to think of it Caicos Adventures and Big Blue are good to. For the price Beaches charges and the restriction to Grace BAy diving (good but a far cry from West Caicos and French Cay) I can't justify it. Also the restaurants on island are great. Message me private for info on restaurants and villas.

BTW I have statyed at Beaches TCI. It is a good resort but expensive.

 

[frostfire]

Let me just warn you that the dive shop at Beaches T and C has some really strong requirements before you can dive. When we were there 7 years ago, we thought they had obviously had some lawsuit issue. They required 1. a doctors cetificate of fitness to dive within 7 days of your arrival and 2. WAY more annoying, that you had to do a pool check out dive the day before they would take you in the ocean. They only do 1 pool dive a day so if you miss it for whaever reason, you are screwed until the next day for check out and the day after that for ocean water. DH and I are both Rescue divers and they said I dont care if you are an instructor. No pool check out dive, no ocean dive.

 

[Damselfish]

if its a nightmare of dealing with a packed boat and/or hour long cruises to the dive site or even a taxi ride to the other side of the island in order to get to the boat.... it was a short trip to the dive sites...

On Provo, no matter where you stay or who you dive with, you pretty much make a choice between short convenient boat rides and getting to the better diving. The geography is what it is.

 

[Bryan Cunningham]

I used to work as an instructor at Beaches T&C many years back. Although busy, it was well run. They send out a lot of divers, but have a lot of boats. They never overload the boats, but obviously have to fill them if people wanted to dive.
They have boats going to various sites. While they will have boats staying in the Grace Bay area, for those who want a short trip, they also have boats doing longer trips. The dive NW Point, West Caicos and French Cay. Where they go depends on seasonal weather, and they will sometimes keep a boat on the other side of the island.
Generally during the year I worked there, we had a very high customer satisfaction level with hardly any complaints. But it is not a small mom and pop operation.

The hotel/resort itself. Probably one of the best options you can choose if you have kids. Really good.

Price, not cheap, but they often have specials. Speak to a Sandals Agent.

 

[j yaeger]

just back from beaches-t/c
had a great time with all the staff and 5 days of 2 tank am dives
orientation and med. required,of course and refresher if it's been a while
because of the amount of people signed for dives,we were on stand-by each am
but,there were enough boats to always take us out-once with only 6 on our boat
the west caicos dives were unreal!!!!!!!
bang for the buck-family oriented
have fun
yaeg

 

[yrbabygirl]

Hi. We stayed 9 days at Beaches T&C in Dec 2013 and did 13 dives while there. We experienced a lot of similarities to what other have said but I will share my own experience...
You will need to fill out their medical form but you will only need doctor's clearance if you answer and say you have any current or previous conditions (i.e. you suffer motion sickness, you have diabetes, etc..) If you have dove in the last 3 months they will have you do a check out dive in their pool. It doesn't take but 20 min if you are comfortable with your techniques. They mainly want to make sure you can control your buoyancy and remove and replace your mask underwater.
You will want to get your name on the dive manifest as soon as you can for each day. If they aren't busy, they will allow you to put your name in for the week, but if they are busy, they would only allow reservations 2 days in advance. While we were there they were very busy. However, we did not have any issues diving every day that we wanted to.... we just had to remember to register each day for the day-after-next. The boat was usually full but they brought ample DMs so that they could split the group into smaller groups. I especially loved this because they would keep all of the AOWs together so we could go a little deeper and explore a little more than the less experienced. The dive team was great! A lot of the sites are long boat rides so having a good dive team with great personalities is important I think. Danian, Oats, Donkey, Captain Crunch... just a few of the fun and personable guys... They all took the time to get to know you and would recommend the best dive sites for you. They never go to the same place in a 2day window...but truthfully we dove all week and we only went to one site twice. The thing that I liked the most about this dive team was their respect for the environment. They were serious about leaving only bubbles and taking only pictures... they did not tolerate anyone touching the marine life... this was refreshing for me to see having seen so many DMs in the past let you touch anything you want
As far as the sites themselves... I would say they were good. Not great. We did see lots of life... reef shark, nurse shark, rays, eel, flounder, lobster, a few crab, conch, and of course cute little fish ....nothing however in large quantities.
As far as the resort goes... we've been to 4 in the sandals/beaches family (Grande St Lucian, Grande Antigua, Bahamas Royal Bahamian, and Beaches T&C) and this was the biggest and best resort of the 4!! I definitely DO recommend this beaches and would go back.
Go luck!