I agree that I've avoided the park because it was summer time, and I've been less than eager to be part of the masses. But, additionally, the last 2 times I've been on the Express, I've had some bad experiences.
The last time, we were on the newest of their boats, which was a big PITA. The deck storage that they have for gear on the bow of the boat has bins to store bags,tanks, etc... It's a good idea, except you need to pick things up 4+ feet to get over the railing and into the storage area. My bag is upwards of 70 pounds when packed - not too much fun to be lifting and hauling on a crowded boat. Plus, coming home last time, someone else pulling there bag out snagged a zipper on mine and it broke off where it can't be repaired. There went that gear bag (at least it gave me an incentive to buy a new one that I'd been eyeing ayway).
The trip before that one was a real riot. This was on the older boat where they store the gear in the back. Apparently, they had more divers than they anticipated, because they didn't have enough tank racks for everyone. So, they took the tanks that didn't have room in the racks and just stood them up interspersed with the rest of the gear with nothing supporting them. When I refused to leave my tank just standing there and explained that it didn't take much for them to tip over and bust a valve, creating a missle, they then started taking the extra tanks and just stacking them on top of each other on their sides - picture a tank pyramid. Of course, they weren't secured in any way, and the crew started treating those of us complaining like we just couldn't be satisfied. After all, they changed what they were doing for us and we still weren't happy. I just made sure my tank was at the bottom of the "pyramid". There happened to be an instructor on the boat who was making a big stink about it (as he should have been), to the point where they finally brought the captain down to look at the storage. HE agreed that it was unsafe and probably a DOT violation, but by this time we were already out of the no-wake zone, so there was nothing that could be done about it (that's what he said). The crew's response was that it was a calm day, so we didn't need to worry about the ride dislodging any of the tanks form their resting place. Really comforting, isn't it? Luckily, that turned out to be the case, but I wasn't comforted to know that's their approach to safety - if any one of those tanks fell and busted a valve, we would have had a lot more problems on our hands than having to grab an extra tank rack off the other boats.