A Tale of Two Atolls: a Trip Report on the Belize Aggressor III, 18-25 November 2017

[Ironborn]

A fine trip report, covering the good, the bad and the ugly. Ironic, since you poured more effort than most into research and consultation to determine the best destination option possible, then ran into a number of unusual complications. Therein is a lesson for us all, from the old John Lennon quote that life is what happens while you're making other plans; resiliency is important on dive vacations!

Also enjoyed your perspective on the 'one stop shop' simplicity vs. 'stuck on a boat' dilemma; a live-aboard offers very convenient diving without worrying about breaking down gear daily, driving around/navigating topside or dealing with traffic, no hunting restaurants...but what you get is what you get. Which is usually quite good.

Richard.

So herein lies the contradictory challenge of planning a liveaboard trip, as I learned the hard way. Liveaboards require you to put all of your eggs in one basket and to pay in full for that basket well in advance. So they are one huge and potentially risky invesment, if it does not go well - in contrast to separate terrestrial arrangements for diving, lodging, food, and transportation, which one can often change in the middle of a trip, if need be. That is why I did such unusually thorough research on the subject, as you noted - more than I would for a terrestrial trip.

That risk might be more manageable if there were more resources for researching and vetting liveaboards with reviews and trip reports more thoroughly, but as far as I know, the only resources are Scubaboard and Undercurrent. For terrestrial dive operations, I would usually start with the broader perspective of Trip Advisor reviewers and then refine my results with the narrower perspective of Scubaboard and Undercurrent. I wonder if I could have avoided this experience if there had been a broader data sample available to me, as there are for terrestrial dive operations on Trip Advisor. Hence my question about additional resources for researching, vetting, and reading reviews of liveabaords.

So liveaboards involve higher risk from a planning perspective, but there are fewer resources with which to vet them.

Given the nature of some of the problems that we experienced, I suspect that this trip was not just a fluke but a reflection of longer-term and more systemic problems on the BAIII, and that we may not have been the first ones to have encountered such problems. Perhaps that was why there were so few reviews of the BAIII, compared to the BAIV, even when you account for the BAIII's smaller number of passengers.

 

[scubafanatic]

What resources do you use to research and vet liveaboards, other than Scubaboard trip reports and Undercurrent reviews? In other words, is there a Trip Advisor or a Yelp for liveaboards?

SB trip reports and Undercurrent.org are my two 'go to' places for pre trip research, I've also found Youtube videos to be remarkably helpful. Avoid Trip Advisor, they censor/delete 'negative' reviews as bad for business and are worthless as legit research resources.

 

[drrich2]

Liveaboard.com has reviews & ratings on their pages about the boats. On the Belize page, the Belize Aggressor III gets 9.0/10 starts, labeled 'superb,' based on 23 verified reviews (and the boat has its own page). Scroll down and look at the reviews on the boat page; none show a bad star rating.

Diviac.com has reviews, too; their Belize Aggressor III page shows 5/5 stars, based on 8 reviews, it appears. Looks like 3 people gave 4/5, the rest 5/5.

I'm not familiar with DiveZone.net, but they've got a page on the Belize Aggressor III, giving it 4/5 stars based on 7 votes (be careful; I clicked on the stars trying to open to see more reviews, and accidentally voted without trying to, dropping them to 3.88; I'll e-mail the site to fix my error. Then again, it shouldn't be that easy to mis-vote!).

Richard.

 

[drrich2]

Blue Water Travel has a page on the Belize Aggressor III with 5 reviews; star rating > 4/5.

I've listed these not only to help others research this boat apart from ScubaBoard and Undercurrent reviews, but also since I figure they've got reviews of other live-aboards, too.

So, if someone wishes to tease out the differences between, say, the Turks & Caicos Aggressor II vs. Explorer II, with all the above plus what they have on their respective websites, it should help.

That said, hitting a sand bar, a generator going out, the occasional bad crew member, these weird 'lightning strike' type problems can hit most anybody.

I'm not downplaying the things that happened to you. I'm reminiscing about other reviewers who've returned from much loved destinations or operators with surprisingly negative (or at least mixed) reviews. I'm thinking about the Bonaire shore-diving scene, one of the popular Bonaire resorts, Cozumel diving, a Cozumel dive op. I'd thought no ill would be spoken of on ScubaBoard, and someone even came back and described a crappy time on a Grand Cayman land-based group trip. My point: even a 'golden boy' destination or op. drops the ball on occasion in the opinion of someone (who may back it up with a credible account).

On the negative hand, you're stuck on the live-aboard boat. On the positive hand, that puts a lot of pressure on the operators to consistently provide not just good diving but good food, service and value. Especially where there's competition.

Richard.

P.S.: We should probably mention if you go back via land-based op., you'll probably get substantially fewer dives for the week (assuming you'd do 5/day if offered) and Huracan doesn't offer air-conditioning. Stoo's got an early 2016 Huracan trip report; back in 2010 he liked Turneffe Island Resort. @Stoo He mentioned some things in Huracan Bound in 2 Weeks! I'm not arguing for/against land-based/live-aboards; just want people using these threads for research to know their options.

 

[drrich2]

On the subject of DiveZone.net, by the way, I sent them this e-mail (based on a page telling me - To contact us please send an email to hello@divezone.net. We will get back to you as soon as possible!):

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Hi:
I was looking at your review page on the Belize Aggressor III at MV Belize Aggressor III Liveaboard Review – Belize, Dive Boat Reviews and saw the rating & votes, 4/5 with 7 votes I think. I clicked on the stars, which on some sites takes one to reviews. I think it then said 3.8/5 stars based on 8 votes.
Yet lower on the page still says 4/5 based on 7.
Anyway, I have not been on that boat, and I was NOT trying to rate it, especially not a LOW rating. If I somehow voted it ‘down’ the evening of Dec. 16, 2017, please remove my miss-vote. Thanks!
Richard.
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Got this back very quickly:
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Hi Divezone reader,

First, we would like to thank you for your interest in Divezone! We work very hard to provide quality content and reliable information to the scuba diving community!

However, it is not possible for us to offer a personalized information nor booking service. The best way to have your questions answered would be to publish a comment at the bottom of the page related to your question (destination page, dive site page, blog post, etc.).

Indeed, by doing so you will be answered either by a Divezone representative or by a scuba diver from our big community! Plus, the information will then be accessible to everyone, which is convenient!

Thank you for understanding, and we hope to read your comments on Divezone soon!

Happy bubbles!

The Divezone Team.
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Unless we hear more, I'm a little leery of what to make of their ratings.

Richard.

 

[scubafanatic]

TripAdvisor's business practices under review by FTC as more travelers say their warnings of rapes, injuries were blocked

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news...1/tripadvisor-blocks-more-warnings/884750001/

 

[Ironborn]

SB trip reports and Undercurrent.org are my two 'go to' places for pre trip research, I've also found Youtube videos to be remarkably helpful. Avoid Trip Advisor, they censor/delete 'negative' reviews as bad for business and are worthless as legit research resources.

How do you use YouTube videos to research, vet, and choose dive operations?

Trip Advisor certainly has its flaws and limitations, but those flaws and limitations do not render it useless. As with any source of information on the Internet, one should compare and combine it with other sources. Also, I think that the practice of censorship to which you alluded may be more of an issue for hotels and resorts than it is for dive operations, which are less likely to take bookings through Trip Advisor (for which I presume that Trip Advisor receives a commision).

I have found plenty of negative reviews of dive operations on Trip Advisor that I used to rule out candidates. For example, one dive operation that Scubaboard members recommended to me had some significant safety and customer service issues that credible Trip Advisor reviewers mentioned on a recurring basis; I would not have learned about them if I had relied solely on Scubaboard. Hence my desire to use multiple sources to vet dive operations, taking into consideration the biases and limitations of each source.

 

[Ironborn]

Liveaboard.com has reviews & ratings on their pages about the boats. On the Belize page, the Belize Aggressor III gets 9.0/10 starts, labeled 'superb,' based on 23 verified reviews (and the boat has its own page). Scroll down and look at the reviews on the boat page; none show a bad star rating.

Diviac.com has reviews, too; their Belize Aggressor III page shows 5/5 stars, based on 8 reviews, it appears. Looks like 3 people gave 4/5, the rest 5/5.

I'm not familiar with DiveZone.net, but they've got a page on the Belize Aggressor III, giving it 4/5 stars based on 7 votes (be careful; I clicked on the stars trying to open to see more reviews, and accidentally voted without trying to, dropping them to 3.88; I'll e-mail the site to fix my error. Then again, it shouldn't be that easy to mis-vote!).

Richard.

I would be skeptical of the reviews on liveaboard.com and diviac.com for the same reason that @scubafanatic is skeptical of Trip Advisor reviews, which I believe is even more applicable in this case. I presume that those websites have a financial interest in selling liveaboard trips, so I hesitate to trust them as a platform for independent (and thus potentially negative) reviews. Also, many of the reviews are very brief (if they have any text at all) and lack enough detail to make them credible or more useful.

Thank you for finding that flaw in divezone.net’s rating system; I can probably scratch that one off my list.

 

[drrich2]

A good point. Conversely, dedicated live-aboard vendors are likely vulnerable to being the target of rants on forums if they are heavy handed in deleting negative reviews.

As you indicated, a resource amongst others needn’t be perfect to be useful, and hopefully others can balance out the weaknesses.

When I look at review listings, sometimes I pick out reviews with middle ratings - like 3 out of 5. That gets me past fan boys yet hopefully not too far into the territory of those catastrophizing. Find a few middle-rated reviews and look for common themes. That can be enlightening.

Richard.

 

[Dogbowl]

Interesting to see different approaches to researching reviews. I personally read from worst (1 star) to best (5 star). I want to know what is the worst thing a business has done, and see if there are any trends.