Princess Cruise Excursions for diving question

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Messages
20
Reaction score
0
Location
Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
# of dives
25 - 49
My wife and I are going on a cruise with Princess Cruise Lines in February 09. I have already reserved escursions to dive in Princess Cays, St. Thomas, and St. Maartin. We have all of our own equipment, but will only be bringing our regulators, computers(intergrated), mask and wetsuits. I was wondering if there were anyone out there that has gone on these dive escursions from Princess Cruise Lines and if the dive centers at these locations allow divers to bring their own equipment?

My only concern with arranging privately with dive shops is if something happens, we could miss our boat when it sails. By going on the ship sponsored escursions, we know we will not miss our sailing.
 
I recently went on a Princess cruise and dove in Grand Cayman and Cozumel. Other folks had brought their own gear and it wasn't an issue.

I was leery of diving at Princess Cay-- $120+ for a single tank dive is a little ridiculous.
 
I've always brought my own gear and it has never been a problem. In fact based on some of the equipment I've seen, I'd rather have my own.
 
I know the operator here doesn't mind if you bring your own equipment but you should know that the boat will have up to 45 divers and I've seen dive groups of fifteen people per divemaster and the dives are SHORT, like under 30 minutes in 40' of water.

There are a few other shops on the island (shameless plug for the one I work for, St. Thomas Diving Club) and not one of us ever wants to get someone back to the ship late. It would be very very bad for business. Although we (and the others) don't have any specific arrangement with the ships for them to wait if we get you back late, it's never happened with us and I've not heard of any op making people miss their ship.

Rachel
 
Hi there,
We've done three cruises with Princess (2 Carribean & 1 French Polynesia) and made use of the dive excursions on every trip at pretty much every port we stopped at. None had problems with the fact that we took our own gear! We did take advantage of the use of weightbelts so leave those at home. The rental gear at most of the operators has been "name brand" quality stuff, usually Aqualung or Scubapro and seemed well maintained for the most part. Oh...dive times were about an hour per dive underwater, max depth 80 feet.
Cheers,
Norman H.
 
Thanks for the information all.

BTW Wreckchick, I checked out your Dive Center web site. Looks like your dive shop is a bit further away from Crown Bay (where our cruise ship ports). Personally, I would rather dive with a separate dive shop then the one the cruise lines have contracted with, but since we port a bit from where you guys are located, I'm not sure. What do you think?
 
My family just took a Princess cruise and we dove in Princess Cays, St. Thomas, and Bonaire. We used the ship's excursion package for Princess Cays and St Thomas, but the Bonaire trips were all booked so we booked our own dive operator there.
To answer your questions: in Princess Cays, they do a one-tank dive due to limited time. The trip to the dive site is about 10-15 mins. The dive was about 45 mins at 40 ft, water temp 77 deg F, vis over 60 ft. We brought our own gear and the dive op had the tanks and weights. We did have one diver who rented their gear and it was very basic stuff. The boat is smallish, about 8 divers max. A good dive and we had no complaints. In St Thomas, we did the usual 2-tank dive, this boat was larger (sort of a pontoon boat) so we dove in 2 different groups of about 8 divers each. Again, your gear or theirs, no problem. It was about 20 mins to the site. Dive 1 was 37 Mins at 59 ft on a reef tour, and dive 2 was 39 mins at 44 ft on some wreckage. Water temp was 79 deg F, viz great.
Our experience in general with cruise ship dive tours is that they are pretty conservative and programmed so as not to get into any difficulties or get late - as you would expect.
Enjoy your trip!
 
S&V,

Thanks for the information from your dives. We have both the Pricess Cays and St. Thomas dives reserved from the cruise. We most likely will still go with the excursions with the cruise because of pricing, as even with the private dive shops, they are all just about the same price (excluding Pricess Cays of course, as I know of no private dive shops there). Since we know of another couple that are also going on the cruise, and they are determined to use the cruises excursions, we will stay with them instead of using the private companies, which would probably go to better dive sites. But what the heck.

Thanks all! It should be a lot of fun.
 
We did your same itenery on Princess a while back. Booked the dives through the ship in both St. Maarten and St. Thomas. Diving was not that great in St. Maarten. We dove with Dive Safaris. Did the Proselyte on the first dive. Oldest wreck I have ever dove but there were big swells, lots of current and viz less than typical of the carribean. Second dive was at Little Bay which is more of a snorkel site with lots of small sunk items (boats, plane, submarine, etc.) - I have dove in pools that were deeper.

Diving was better in St. Thomas. Don't remember the operator but it was a cattleboat operation. Picked us up and then picked up divers from another cruise ship so it took a while to finally get to the dive site which was probably less than 3 miles. At least the viz and diving were much better. Dive times were limited to the heaviest breather in each groups of about 8 divers-I guessing about 40 minutes for a 45 - 60' dives.

Passed on the dive at the Princess Cays as I had a hard time with the idea of paying $120.00 for a single tank dive.

All in all cruise ship diving will almost never be as good as what you can book on your own but it is only one aspect of the whole vacation. Some cruise desitanations with reputable operators or shore dive options I will do on my own (Grand Caymen, Cozumel, Roatan, etc.). However, I wasn't comfortable with any of the eastern caribbean destinations to book my own trip and risk missing the ship.

If I were to do it again I would dive St. Thomas. Leave St. Maarten as an option depending on conditions, and make sure I had an extra day in Fort Lauderdale to dive before I got on the ship.

JMO,

mg
 
We did the Princess Key thing about a year ago. I agree that the price for the single tank dive was ridiculous. The dive itself though was the best of all the ones that we did including Cozumel and the Grand Caymans. So I'd have to say on the balance that it was worth it. If memory serves me correctly, they take you to a fresh water hole that is particularly interesting due to the interface with the salt water.

We prefer to take our own equipment with us. The problem with Princess is that they don't give you a lower price for the excursions like Royal Caribbean does.

On the subject of being left behind, a lot of people on our recent RCCL cruise that booked dives outside of the ship were unable to make their dives in Cozumel because we arrived in port several hours late. We however, were able to make all of ours. We finished within a hour of the scheduled departure time. Based on that experience, we will probably remain too chicken to book dives other than with the cruise lines.
 
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