OldFireDiver:
April 29-May 4th we had a great time in Key Largo with one real sour note: We'd booked a weeks stay at Amy Slate's Amoray Dive Resort, and when we arrived at the boat Tuesday morning we were told that the deep dive to the Duane was changed to a snorkleing trip to the place we'd been the day before. Zero notification ahead of time, no clue from the front office even though the snorkle trip had been booked for months. No time to schedule a trip elsewhere.
We bent the ears of the folks in the front office, got their assurance that they'd do better... and on Friday the SAME EXACT thing happened AGAIN!! This time, there wasn't even room on the boat for us.
There are lots of other dive outfits in Key Largo, I for one won't be using Amoray ever again.
:redhot:
This must be Bruce and Susan.
It will take a while for me and the others in our group to post a trip report. So much went on and I want to be sure that everything that I post in it will be accurate and reliable. When we were at Amy's three years ago it was 5 star as far as my wife and I were concerned. So much so that I not only recommended Amy's to several of my friends but I went down and vacationed with them for this second trip. This in its self is a big statement for me to make as we generally never go to the same place twice. Just because there are so many places to go and see that it seems, to us anyway, silly to spend more than one vacation at the same resort or even the same location. But we had had a great experience there before and wanted to share it with our friends.
Needless to say that things are not as they once were and I felt responsible for taking my dive buddies to a dive resort that not only did not live up to all that I had told them but now I felt responsible for all the short-comings that happened while we were there.
I guess people come and go and personalities change the atmosphere of the organization at times, but I certainly will not be bragging about our stay at Amy's this trip to any of my other buddies. However in the end I think things did get resolved to a point as Amy did give each of us one free dive trip that was subtracted from the bill.
Having said all this I would lilke to put in a good word for the captain and all the dive crew that was aboard during our stay. Our problems all stemmed from the front office and their "policies" not from the boat and its crew.
I always book all my trips well in advance and had sent a dive schedule via email to Amy's regarding who in our group would be diving on what days and if they would be diving in the morning or afternoon, and scheuduled deep dives for the Spiegel Grove and Duane for those of us that wanted to go. Everything was confirmed and we were all scheduled in Nov 06 for our May 07 vacation. Upon arrival I sat down with someone in the front office and again confirmed the dive schedule before check-in.
On the morning we were scheduled to do the deep dive to the Duane, I was told that a group of snorkelers was coming in on a bus and that the boat was not only not going to the Duane but that we would be going to a shallow spot that we had already been to so many times that we were sick of seeing it. These folks had scheduled only a couple of months in advance. And they tried to do this to us on other days as well. Naturally we raised hell and got things moved around enough that our diving needs were eventually satisfied, but we had to change our months old schedule around to do it. They should call this place a snorkel resort not a dive resort. It made no difference to them that they had made agreements with us months ahead of all these other groups. They were only interested in satisfying the needs of these larger snorkel groups.
And there were other issues. The pool was in constant need of attention and never clean. At least once the boat was delayed while we waited on the owner, Amy, to get aboard, then she parked in a no parking spot to boot and when the dive was over and she was leaving she backed into my friends brand new shiny truck. She didn't even get out to look at it. Luckily she hit one of the tow hooks and didn't do any damage to the truck but she sure damaged her car, it had black marks from the rear bumper to the back tire. Cowboy, Amy's brother's dog, was running loose and into everything. He crapped a big pile almost directly in front of our door one night. A nice little present to wake up to. Someone stepped in it and you could see it smeared in every other step they took and I think I saw a guy on the boat scraping it off his shoe.
And I'd like to say one more time that the Captain and the crew were absolutely wonderful. They did everything they could to make our diving enjoyable but their hands were tied when it came to these other situations. Usually in businesses the customer comes first but we felt like we were second rate customers compared to the groups of snorkelers. We left on a Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings were scheduled for snorkelers only. We met more divers that were bumped from their dives.
There is more but I won't get into it. I think I have covered the most of it well enough to give you an idea of what to expect if you want to book with these folks. If you are a brand new shiny diver and don't mind doing shallow spots repeatedly with LOTS of snorkelers or taking a day off from diving because you got bumped because of snorkelers than it may be the place for you. If you want to really do some diving and see some deep wrecks this may not be where you want to go. And remember that even if you get it in writing it may not happen.
What a difference three years can make.
