Update on Sandals Montego Bay (long)

[daveg1]

Any recent trips to this Sandals? The wife and I are thinking about going for labor day. Some questions:
(1) Do they do two tank dives? Just one in the morning and one in the afternoon?
(2) Does the boat pick you up right from the hotel?
(3) Do you think the free scuba is just as good as scuba you would pay for through an operator? I.e. same trips, boat is as nice, same service?

I'm just trying to figure out whether the all-inclusive scuba is as nice as what you might pay for... Thanks!

My wife and I spent a week at Sandles St Lucia in Feb for this year. We had a great time. I did some diving while there, it was good but not quite as good as Coz. They do 2 tank dives if you are certified. A friend that was with us had to do a check out dive first only because he had not been in the water in a year and only holding an open water cert. They also offered night dives as long as 4 or more divers wanted to go. We stayed at Halcon which is the smallest of there places in St lucia. I would go back if we get a chance.

 

[deadend]

Just saw this thread. Was in Sandals Mo-Bay last Sept. to get married. Diving so-so. Not very many fish in Jamaica. Dive personnel were typical resort Hitlers. After having whatever certs. they wanted and several hundred logged dives to 150+and a full set of gear why would I have to do full skill checkouts in the pool with the resort coursers? 60' was the limits of any diving I did there. I usually do more spearfishing bounces in a day than I did in a week there. What gives?

 

[grkmbee]

I can add a little more information about Beaches in Turks and Caicos. I was there last summer and we had a great time! I hadn't been diving in the ocean before that trip so I didn't have much to compare the diving to but from what I can tell it was pretty good! More specs: 2 tank dives at 8am or 1 tank at 10 (if you want to sleep in!); night diving on Tues and Thrus-I'm not sure about min # of people as these were always quite full, also night diving is an additional charge; dives are guided but if you and your buddy have computers (and I presume some level of skill) they will give you a briefing and let you out on your own. The afternoon diving was devoted mainly to open water and resort course divers but if there was room you could hop on for another dive. You can also spend your afternoon going out on one of the snorkeling trips (3 scheduled so that you could get back from diving, grab lunch, and go back out). As far as locations went, it varied from the NW point to off the coast of one of the smaller islands for the first dive(80') and then the second(60'?) was made in Grace Bay. On both the Beaches and Sandals websites, if you look under diving it will go through a lot of the dive site specs concerning depth and what's to see. As previous posters have said, Beaches is a family resort so you do have kids around but that's usually not too bad except for that they hog the pool floats! (ok so maybe I was jealous) My family and I were so pleased with our experience last year that we were planning a trip this summer but that fell through just recently (see the post titled "Emergency Vacation Advice Needed!" in this forum) so we're going to Curacao instead.