Underwater Safari ---AVOID this dive shop in St.Thomas ---

[marine9]

Thanks!

I've also found Scuba Diving Magazine for Serious Divers, Undercurrent Reviews Dive Resorts and Scuba Diving Equipment as yet another travel site...

May wish to add that site as well.

 

[flashlight]

To defend Underwater Safaris I am a part of the operation. Although I can not give out how many divers we dive in a year I can say the % is .0001667% of the divers that dive with our operation have a incident. I can not discuss what happened except to say this business has been here for 30 years with out any fatalities from diving incidents. The number of divers over 30 years is well well into the 10's of thousands. Underwater Safaris is a very safe operation and high volume at times, which is not for everyone.
Huge credit goes to Michelle and staff for following our "code red" procedure for the above mention incident to ensure any dive injury or incident gets the injured person to safety and professional medical care. With this operation it does not end at the pier, it ends when the customer and family are at their next destination no matter who is the blame. I was basically put in tears from a thank you letter.
With respect to the opening comet, everyone has a bad day. Sometimes personalities conflict. And there are things happening behind the scenes that customers do not know about. I really do apologize for your negative experience, and I am sure Michelle is sorry about the way everything went. I know there is no way to change "TBeecher" experience but we have and will continue to improve our operation so this does not happen again.

Underwater Safaris is without a doubt the biggest dive operation in the US Virgin Islands. With all divers we try our hardest to give a great dive, but sometimes do not make everyone happy. And for some reason I try to have our customers post here and other places on their positive experience with Underwater Safaris. I can honestly say there are always a lot of happy people. For every one person that has a bad experience 10 find out for every one with good experience no one finds out. If I could post the daily comment sheets for the last year you would be reading them for hours. I feel people are truthful and not pressured into signing what everyone else signs. There are negative comments from time to time which we use to better our operation.

 

[mitsuguy]

Underwater Safaris is without a doubt the biggest dive operation in the US Virgin Islands.

I'm not so sure about that...

You all do a lot of DSD's and quite a few boat dives, but you also do it all on an expedited schedule. I would venture that we are similar in size, though we don't do as many DSD's as you all, but, we do certify more divers than you, for sure.

We have somewhere around 14 full time employees and another 12 part time staff, we also have 3 dive boats, though not nearly the capacity you have, as we don't believe in putting that many people on a boat... What do they seat, 35 or so?

 

[Jim Ernst]

To defend Underwater Safaris I am a part of the operation. Although I can not give out how many divers we dive in a year I can say the % is .0001667% of the divers that dive with our operation have a incident. I can not discuss what happened except to say this business has been here for 30 years with out any fatalities from diving incidents. The number of divers over 30 years is well well into the 10's of thousands. Underwater Safaris is a very safe operation and high volume at times, which is not for everyone.
Huge credit goes to Michelle and staff for following our "code red" procedure for the above mention incident to ensure any dive injury or incident gets the injured person to safety and professional medical care. With this operation it does not end at the pier, it ends when the customer and family are at their next destination no matter who is the blame. I was basically put in tears from a thank you letter.
With respect to the opening comet, everyone has a bad day. Sometimes personalities conflict. And there are things happening behind the scenes that customers do not know about. I really do apologize for your negative experience, and I am sure Michelle is sorry about the way everything went. I know there is no way to change "TBeecher" experience but we have and will continue to improve our operation so this does not happen again.

Underwater Safaris is without a doubt the biggest dive operation in the US Virgin Islands. With all divers we try our hardest to give a great dive, but sometimes do not make everyone happy. And for some reason I try to have our customers post here and other places on their positive experience with Underwater Safaris. I can honestly say there are always a lot of happy people. For every one person that has a bad experience 10 find out for every one with good experience no one finds out. If I could post the daily comment sheets for the last year you would be reading them for hours. I feel people are truthful and not pressured into signing what everyone else signs. There are negative comments from time to time which we use to better our operation.

I also Differ in Opinion, First off I have dove with a couple op's In St Thomas, And in the few days I was there Both of the Op's I dove with did not treat me like a cattle boat with a tight schedule, And I was never told that there were not another dive site, As a matter of fact Blue Island divers took me to more dive sites in a few days then I can list here, and I was treated Like a Best friend and or Family, Blue Island divers May not be as Big as your operation, But they would Never treat a customer they way the OP was treated in this case. I also Never heard or saw Not a single unhappy diver that dove with Blue Island!!
I also have heard undesirable things about Underwater Safari and would not Dive with them !!

I am very sorry to hear that the OP and there friends were treated the way they were, Noing this ruined their vacation when there are so many beautiful dive sites to see in St. Thomas!!!!!!

 

[Bratface]

Always do your homework. Check Trip Advisor. Type in your destination and then type in dive operations. I live in St Thomas and have to agree with the ratings of Trip Advisor. I am so sorry you missed an opportunity to dive with a dive shop that was fun, safe, knew where all the good stuff was and made you feel special. I dive with that shop every weekend. There is also a good dive shop that picks up people from the cruise ships. i dive with them from time to time. Sorry for your bad experience.

 

[rxatrix]

I rearly post to Scuba Boards, because, an opinion is a person's ideas and thoughts towards something which it is either impossible to verify the truth of, or the truth of which is thought unimportant to the person. It is an assertion about something especially if that something lies in the future and it's truth or falsity cannot be directly established e.g. induction. An opinion is not a fact , because opinions are either not falsifiable, or the opinion has not been proven or verified. If it later becomes proven or verified, it is no longer an opinion, but a fact. So, I just don't.
However with that being said, I found myself in St. Thomas over the Christmas holidays of 2011 after doing some great diving in St. Maartin. Had my gear, Had space on the dive boat so I booked.
And what to my wondering eyes did appear, but 3 certified Instructors and 30 newly certified divers. O.M.G. a cattle boat with newbe's. Oh well, making the best of a bad sitution, I walked onboard the dive boat, introduced myself to the instructors, showed them all my certifications, AOW, Nitrox, Deep, Wreck, Master Diver, Tri-Mix, etc., and they pretty much let me do my own thing. So let's just say for the sake of arguement, that this is an observation more that an opinion.
I was the first in the water, they let me go straight to the bottom insted of doing a bouincy(spell check) check as they did for all the othes. After that, the Instructors splet the group into groups of 10 each. Now remember, these guys are PADI certified Instructors...not Dive Masters! I was in total awe and please remember too that Awe is an emotion comparable to wonder but less joyous, and more fearful or respectful. However whilst we say that we feel wonder at the rainbow we do not say we feel in awe of the rainbow. In general awe is directed at objects considered to be more powerful than the subject.
These 30 newly certificed divers, could bearly sub-merge let alone dive. And guess what? These 3 instructors handled them as if it we're childs play. Affording them all the personal attention, instruction, and assistance to make their dives as safe and successful as possible. Yes we dived the rocks at 60ft. Yes we dived the "wreck of 3 chunks" at 45ft. Can you imagion the fun and inspiration these 30 new divers experienced. As I sat (or should I say hovered) back and watched, those three instructors took 30 divers on a dive of a lifetime. Talk about covering you A** with both hands, these 3 guys had their hands full and pulled it off with out a hitch. No dive injuries except for maybe a couple of bruised egos.
After the dive, I did a little research and found out that all three instructors we're ex-marine divers, and fully certified to handle any sitution, diving, medical and emotional.
My observation is this: I want to go back some day and do some serious diving with those three instructors and with any amount of luck, I may learn something new!

 

[Mackinac Island]

I signed up on ScubaBoard.com specifically to leave this message to benefit other future divers who do their research on-line to check out dive operators in St. Thomas, USVI. After reading the below message on Underwater Safaris, and having personally dove with them on March 19th, 2012, I wish I had done my homework better. With the internet available to me, I have no excuses. We took a cruise recently with Royal Caribbean, and they never tell you who the dive operator is, but it was with Underwater Safaris. I trusted that they would pick a quality dive operation. Royal Caribbean/other cruise lines probably use them because they have a dive shop that is within walking distance from the pier when the cruise ships come in to port. What you can expect with that type of experience is a very full dive boat; there were probably 30+ divers on our dive boat (some call it a cattle boat), a large group of divers with one dive guide (we had around 18 divers to one dive guide), and that dive guide frequently clinking on his dive tank underwater to keep everyone somewhat together and heading in the same direction. We also went to Buck Island, like the other diver mentioned. If you check out St. Thomas Dive Club, which I'm going to dive with on our next visit to St. Thomas, they pick you up at the cruise ship pier in the morning or afternoon, and bring you back to the pier. From looking at the comments on TripAdvisor.com, they seem to be a top notch dive operator. I also read about them in Scuba Diver magazine, and they were reviewed favorably, as well as where they go. It can make all the difference on your experience, what you see, and how you remember that island's quality of diving.

Another island stop on our cruise was Aruba, and there I did go with other dive operator than what the cruise ship offered, due to a time conflict my wife and I had for a Best of Aruba trip in the morning. It was with Unique Sports of Aruba, where owner/manager Emmit Kimble was excellent at responding to my e-mails and answering my questions on how to catch a taxi from the pier, where to be dropped off, location of the dive shop, and they transported me back to the pier after the dive. The number of people on the boat was 8, so it was a much more pleasurable experience. So my advise to anyone reading this message is: DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

I dont normally post on this board but, I'd like to warn all divers and cruise ship passengers of the Underwater Safari dive operation in St.Thomas USVI.

Do NOT allow your ships shore director to book your dive with Underwater Safari in St.Thomas. Cancel your dive if they do so!! ..Dont waste your hard earned money at Underwater Safari.

The management/owners(Michelle) are just flat out rude and COMPLETELY disrespectful. This "cattle boat" operation needs to be shut down.

I'm shocked that respectable cruise lines like Carnival and RCCL would do business with such people.

We were on a 10 day trip to St.Thomas with some friends who booked dives with Underwater Safari. Little did we know that we would be railroaded to the SAME dive site for 3 straight days (Buck Island) and treated like cattle. When we asked if their were other dive sites to see, we were promptly told no, and if we didnt like it then we should have done more research before booking our dives. Our friends who where traveling with us booked the dives and were unaware of this as well.

After the second day, we called 4 times, yes 4 TIMES in the same day, to try and talk to someone about canceling our other dives only to be told that they were to busy to talk to us on the phone and that they would have to call us back. No one ever called us back after waiting all day. And when we finally called them again for the 5th time the next day, the lady from the shop knew nothing about anything related to the day to day operations, scheduling or diving in general. What the ?..... absolutely no help at all. At this point we're feeling like these people have just taken our money and ran.

Our friends that were traveling with us called and spoke with a women named Michelle?, claiming to be an owner or manager of the shop, and was just completely rude and disrespectful. She was absolutely no help at all. Saying there's nothing she could do or offer us and its just tough sh* t. Then she just rushed us off the phone. I guess because she's so busy and has no time for people who are not making her money right this second.

Their dive site is nothing but big rocks covered in fire coral and a big piece of bent up metal they call a "shipwreck"...? Once we got back to the dock our boat driver was yelled at for 10 minutes in front of the whole boat of customers by whom I assume was the owner Michelle. She yelled at him for being late getting back to the dock and among other things. We actually felt sorry for the guy as everyone could see this lady rules with an iron fist and all the employees live in fear of her. What a great way to run a business...?

Also, they passed around a completely blank sheet of paper on a clipboard on the way back into the dock, asking everyone to write comments down about their "service" or dives. I, like most people, wouldn't feel comfortable being singled out in front of everyone else on the boat if I DID write a bad comment on the sheet and then made to explain myself in front of everyone, or cause a scene. This is not a legitimate way to get real comments or criticisms for a business, when others can see whose writing what and whose unhappy when running the risk of being singled out for writing a negative comment. Someone on the boat mentioned they probably have to do this to counter all the complaints they get from people who complain to the cruise lines...? Interesting point and makes sense too. hmmm....

After talking to some of the other divers on board that were from cruise ships, I feel sorry for them being dropped into this place. And then told they dont have a choice of dive operators or dive sites.

In conclusion, avoid this place at all cost. I would never give my money to an operation like this. Dont let the cruise line shore director push this dive operation on you because its cheap, easy and convenient for them. Its appalling the level of disrespect for their customers and uncaring attitude portrayed by this operation all the way up to the owner herself.

Enjoy your vacation and book elsewhere.

 

[h20Below]

Really wish I read this I Too have been Burnt by this shoddy outfit

They cancelled and I am checking my credit card statements to make sure they did not take my money as well

 

[Steve_C]

I dove with US while on a cruise early in my dive life. I had brought my own regs. They ran out of regs and several in our group could not dive. I dove. The dives were pleasant but not super exciting but I am easily amused. I and another fellow sort of followed the group along at our own pace. My one complaint was that they said they were under pressure to get back to the dock so they cut the two dives to 35 minutes each. I had a pleasant but shortened couple of dives. I would not dive with them again.

 

[jdcpa]

I find it quite telling that flashlight did not make any mention of the OP's concern over diving the same site day after day.