Aldora opinions please

[5615mike]

I'm sure there are many good dive ops in Coz. Board members talk about them all the time. I started using Aldora and liked them. Yes, I always come up in the yellow and usually with about 1000 psi in my tank or more but I like the operation and DM's so the extra money is a non issue for me. If I somehow found another op I liked as well that was cheeper I would use them if Aldora goes OOB, changes service, or the like but until then us Aldora fans will keep them open.

 

[Tim Ingersoll]

Does the saying. . .You get what you pay for. . .ring any bells? I have been travelling in the Caribbean for 15 years and have found nothing to be truer. IMHO you just travelled 1000 miles to do some diving you can afford to spend a little more to insure that your dive experience is the best it can be. Once again just my two cents. No offense.

 

[ggunn]

Tim Ingersoll once bubbled...
Does the saying. . .You get what you pay for. . .ring any bells? I have been travelling in the Caribbean for 15 years and have found nothing to be truer. IMHO you just travelled 1000 miles to do some diving you can afford to spend a little more to insure that your dive experience is the best it can be. Once again just my two cents. No offense.

Well, since you asked, I have been diving Cozumel for more than 10 years and have never dove with Aldora, and I have no plans to. I have consistently had great experiences with the other dive ops I have used. "You get what you pay for" is a common platitude, but in fact paying more in no way guarantees commensurately greater quality.

Aldora charges $87 for a two tank dive, according to their website. My dive op of choice charges me $50. That's not "a little extra", it's damn near double. I go out about 8 times on a typical Coz trip, and I am paying for 3 (wife and kid). That's a difference of $37.00 X 3 X 8 = $888.00, significantly more than my entire hotel bill.

So what if we could get a little more bottom time with Aldora (though I probably wouldn't); for the money (and $12) we could dive 6 more days. So what if they store your gear until the next morning; I like to shore dive in the afternoons. Small fast boats, small groups, pleasant SIT locations, good DM's, dive where I want, dive my computer, O2 on board, etc., I get all that for 50 bucks.

Again, I have nothing against Aldora; they have their target market and I'm not it.

 

[ronrosa]

ggunn:

Just curious, who is you operator of choice

It would be nice to know of another good operator in Cozumel. I like to keep my options open and keep a short list of recommended operators

 

[ggunn]

Cozumel Equalizers.

 

[peterjmaerz]

...rages on! I think the key phrase that's come up is it's not for everyone. And that's one of the reasons Aldora proved so right for me---you're not diving with everyone but with folks for whom the extra cost is manageable and worth the added bonus of the experience.
I have had no experience with any other ops in Coz, so, of course, have no basis for comparison. I CAN say, though, that out of dozens I've dived with throughout the CAribbean and the Pacific, Aldora ranks among the very best. First off, the two-and-a-half-hour surface intervals (at a very pleasant beach-front site) put a whole lot more no-deco time back on your clock. And 90 to 100-minute dives with those 120 steels and no more than 3 other divers (in my case) certainly adds to the experience. The care taken in rinsing and storing my equipment was exemplary. But, I think the strongest points in Aldora's favor are less tangible. It has to do with the overall 'care and feeding' of their divers: the attention, concern and dedication to providing the best possible dive experience to each client.
I can certainly understand the hesistation at spending a significant amount of extra dough, or the flat-out impossibility for some (I took a deep breath myself), but (1) I know it's not arbitrary: Dave and company really seem to need to charge more to provide the service they do and (2) the exta cost really seemed justified in the sense of the return I got for it.
Capt Al, you can check out my full report at http://www.scubaboard.com/t40204/s.html


Best,

 

[Tim Ingersoll]

ggunn once bubbled...


Aldora charges $87 for a two tank dive, according to their website. My dive op of choice charges me $50. That's not "a little extra", it's damn near double. I go out about 8 times on a typical Coz trip, and I am paying for 3 (wife and kid). That's a difference of $37.00 X 3 X 8 = $888.00, significantly more than my entire hotel bill.

So what if we could get a little more bottom time with Aldora (though I probably wouldn't); for the money (and $12) we could dive 6 more days. So what if they store your gear until the next morning; I like to shore dive in the afternoons. Small fast boats, small groups, pleasant SIT locations, good DM's, dive where I want, dive my computer, O2 on board, etc., I get all that for 50 bucks.

8

You make a fine argument. What do you average for bottom time and number of people on your boats? Are you stuck diving with newbies? How early do they get you out there?

Last time I was in Cozumel I dove with just me and the DM for two days. They let me decide when I wanted to get picked up. We went out really early. It was incredible. They gave me my own boat because they had one group (experienced) going to the cenotes and one group (newbies) diving the shallows. They thought that was unfair to me so they ran a boat just for me. Now mind you this was the fourth year I had dove with them. That kind of service keeps me coming back. I might reconsider another op if I was with the family though.

 

[ggunn]

Tim Ingersoll once bubbled...


You make a fine argument. What do you average for bottom time and number of people on your boats? Are you stuck diving with newbies? How early do they get you out there?

Bottom time is of course variable due to different profiles, but I am usually (~85% of the time, maybe) in the yellow on ascent. Last trip I had several BT's of an hour or more.

Number of folks is variable as well. Last trip there was a max of 7 divers, a min of 2 (myself and my wife).

There are newbies occasionally, but not that often, and I am tolerant. I was a newbie myself once. The DM's are really good at Newbie Wrangling, and they are effective at insulating the more experienced divers from most of the potential negatives in diving with them. They get them back on the boat when they run out of air without making the rest of us end the dive.

They pick up at my hotel between 8 and 8:30, and with twin 200 Yammies, they get us out pretty quick. That's plenty early for me. Sometimes we see other divers at depth, usually not.

 

[BrettM]

I can sure understand Gordon's point of view and it sounds like for him and perhaps many others, Equalizers is a fine operation that keeps them happy. I've not dove with Equalizers but it is good to hear the positive feedback on them. Beyond price, air capacity, group size and everything else, repeat visitors to Coz form a level of comfort, trust and familiarity with a particular dive operation and particular DM's and they just simply enjoy diving with them. A lot of it is intangible yet all of it is valid.

As for the benefits of the Steel 120 tanks Aldora uses... on deeper dives where you have less bottom time due to deco limits you may well end up surfacing with 1,000psi still in your tank but it is nice to have the insurance of extra air on dives like this should an emergency occur and the air be needed for some reason.

Using those steel 120 tanks I once did a shallow critter dive on Paradise Reef that was over two hours long. We came up with over 500 psi in our tanks, plenty of deco time on our computers and ear to ear grins.

For me Aldora has always been worth the extra they charge.

 

[TDunbar]

Keep in mind that Aldora uses DIN valves on their tanks, so if you're taking a yoke reg, they'll need to have your reg for a while beforehand to install a DIN adapter. They only kept my reg for an afternoon afterwards to reinstall my yoke.

I enjoyed my time with Aldora, but usually charter a boat when I there so we can head north.....

Todd