We dove with Aldora a few years back, and found them to be rather snobby. We also had a number of problems with them. First, taking our gear to them several days beforehand so they can set up the special DIN fittings so as to accommodate their steel tanks turned out to be a lot more trouble than it was worth. They claim to give you longer bottom time, but we actually got LESS bottom time with them. We never went deeper than about 70 feet, and did a very slow ascent up the reef, but still had to do TWO safety stops in areas with nothing to look at. Ugh. They did not give the customers the opportunity to influence where we dove. They didn't vary where the surface intervals were taken. They had everybody learn some special Aldora hand signals a few minutes before entering the water (which, of course, were immediately forgotten by all). While underwater, the divemaster was CONSTANTLY checking everybody's computers, telling the people 5' lower than the rest of the group to ascend a bit, and fiddling with everybody's buoyancy. We were herded around like cattle, and didn't get time to look in holes and explore stuff. It was extremely annoying, and we wound up feeling very stressed the entire dive.
They are over the top when it comes to safety, but on our second dive they forgot to put a new tank on my BC, and were in a big hurry to get in the water. When everybody was getting on their gear, I noticed the problem, and told them. The boat captain took forever to get to me, and by the time he started to work on it, everybody was ready to go. The divemaster asked if everybody was ready, and I said "no, I don't have a tank yet". He reminded me that everybody needed to enter the water at the same time. (Yeah, no sh*t!) He seemed frustrated, but waited. He asked if we were ready again, just as my valve was being turned on. I was totally rushed, and was only able to check to see if I had pressure in my tank while rolling into the water. No time to check out my buddy or give all my gear a final check-over. Obviously the dive was not fun, and we couldn't wait to get out of there.
We mentioned some of this at the dive shop when we told them we were going with another dive operation, and they acted as though the was something wrong with us.
The good thing about Aldora is they have small boats, so you don't have to deal with 40 other divers.
Would I recommend them? Heck no! We abandoned Aldora and went with Papa Hogs. We had a wonderful time with them, and were everything we wanted in a dive operation. And they have small boats, too!
