Diver Lori once ranted...
"We spent 6 dives days at Divi Tiara and won't be making another trip there..."
As a timeshare owner at the Tiara, my aggregate experience now exceeds a half year as a guest in this resort, over the past 14 years.
Now I'll freely admit that there are serious maintenance problems with the TS units, but generally speaking, the rest of the resort (including staff) is usually quite good.
Yes, you had a problem.
If the resort had 120 guests, then it was literally full. Years ago, the Tiara had 6 diveboats instead of the current 5 (Island Fever, Island Fever II, Cayman Fever, Tiara Fever and Ocean Fever; they sold off Brac Fever), but with Max saying that he can only provide service 68 divers (18+18+18+14 = 68) can only mean several things:
First, one of the dual-engine diveboats was out of service. Its probably over at The Creek for rebuilds.
Second, past practice when full has been to hire (rent) a 6th diveboat, which they obviously didn't do here.
Insofar the who/what/where finger-pointing, GM Max should have gotten the guest manifests two weeks in advance, but that may not necessarily give him enough time to respond. For example, line up renting a spare diveboat from Grand Cayman.
Furthermore, there's also the question of payment, and Divi has local businesses who are reluctant to extend them credit. If some business won't lift a finger for them unless it is "cash upfront", this merely makes a 2-week notice problem even harder to solve.
They wouldn't let you backroll off the side access either.
Yes, that's generally true, although I'm allowed to do it.
But then again, I don't whine about a tiny squim leaking O-ring on a shallow, no-overhead dive. :mean:
"(Diveboat schedule) This greatly cut into your vacation time to do other things....Most times we didn't get back in till 1:00 or later."
A normal trip for me has a 9am diveboat departure, which returns around 12:45pm - - our timeshare group tends to do long dives (80 minute dives not unheard of). By the time I take my UW camera back up to the room, we get down to lunch around 1pm.
This gives you an hour and a half to eat lunch, change UW camera film and get back down for the 2:30pm PM boat...yes, its tight if you also want to take a nap, have a long line for lunch, or choose to eat lunch off-site. But generally speaking, when I want to "do other things", I just skip the PM dive. I can do that because I'm on vacation
The dining room was packed during the dinner hour...
Yeah, I ran into that on a trip to Divi in July 1990...IMO, the crowds were the trade-off for great diving conditions. And its fine to eat outside, so long as there's any breeze.
"...I have a leaky tank...my buddy and I are cavers....we DON'T dive with leaky tanks...PERIOD....the DM is shaking his head and muttering about how picky we are."
Anal cavers; figures. In the context of a shallow no-overhead OW dive, the DM was right and you were wrong. Period, full stop.
As a learning opportunity, I suggest you go take a tank with a similar leaking O-ring, put your gear on it, turn the rig on, and dump it into the bottom of a pool. Check it once every 2 hours and watch the results are. Don't forget that the first hour will be off because of temperature equalization. Report back how many *DAYS* it took for that mere AL80 to empty itself.
Similarly, you might also want to research if there's a statistically proven measurable change in the risk of a blow-out from a non-leaking O-ring compared to a slightly-leaking O-ring. Remember to provide your Citation.
This all came to head on the last day when the dive op tried to tell us we wouldn't get to do our last dive of the week for two reasons....
1. We were flying the next day and we needed to off-gas. (We weren't flying for 28 hours)
A 28 hour SI after the PM dive? Gosh, that would be roughly 8pm at night. So just what flight were you on?
KX-102 leaves the Brac at 6:20 AM and flies to Grand Cayman
KX-726 leaves the Brac at 2:15 PM (Saturdays only)
These are the only Saturday Flights on Cayman Airways, and Island Air doesn't fly at night.
The closest I could find was KX-406, which leaves at 7:15pm (27 hours), but it reportedly is a special (limited) service flight that only flies on Mondays. Here's CAL's current official flight schedule for referral:
http://www.caymanairways.com/trip/schedule.html
On the last night we were awakened at 5am by the hotel staff beating on our door.
Knocking on doors is what's appropriate to do when the room phones aren't reliable; it helps prevent guests from being very upset that they missed the 6:20am flight when its the only CAL flight of the day.
When I mentioned this to the GM his reply was...."You already hate us, it's just another nail in our coffin" and he walked away from me. I was astounded!"
Shocked by his honesty, I see. He was right, wasn't he?
...wth that said.....I'm just frustrating myself all over again and I need to get past this. I just wanted to make sure my dive pals on scubaboard were warned off Divi Tiara......go with the other resort on Cayman Brac instead."
This was your first-ever visit to the Brac, wasn't it? Yeah, you hit a bad week, but both Resorts have had problems...and at least none of the Divi dive staff have gotten DCS hits (nod, nod, wink, wink).
On a positive note.....the food was very good and the kitchen & dining staff was very good too."
You're probably thinking of Cliff, the AM cook on the grill. Came down from Boston in the '70s to help build the airport runway, never went home.
Accomodations were okay....nothing to brag about, but clean, although PRICEY."
Pricey? Did you not use Divi's $777 special? It includes room, diving and MAP food, which is a mere $129/pp-day. If you want to see Pricey, look at the LCBR's prices on Little Cayman: $80/pp-day just for the diving.
-hh
