My son and I did the CAIV April 2011. Nice boat, decent crew, great food, spectacular diving on Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, relatively mediocre diving on Grand Cayman. The crew was very stoked we were making the crossing Sunday night (I didnt realize there was no guarantee that we would make it over to LC), we found out they hadnt made t to LC for the prior 3 weeks. My son and I concurred that it was a fantastic trip and diving, and we were very glad we had done it, but it would have been not anywhere near as good if we spent the whole week on Grand Cayman and probably would not do it again due to the risk of not making it to LC (definitely will go land based to Little Cayman Beach Resort one of these years, Bloody Bay Wall was fantastic).
Boat was well maintained, only issue I recall during hte trip was the hot tub stopped working ~2nd day, which wasnt that big a deal except my son gets chilled and really enjoyed getting in the tub after the 1st two night dives. When we asked (not pestering, just curious) they werent all that infomrative about iff or when it might be repaired and didn't come accross as being particularly interested in dealing with it. Not a huge deal, and if it wasnt repairable at sea I get it, but they had a noticeable attitude the 2 times we asked so we stopped asking, and it didnt work the rest of the trip.
I had one very minor pre-trip request that they (very begrudgingly) accommodated after a lot of discussion, and there was a snafu picking us up at the airport (Continental changed the flight time which I notifid the office of and they apparently failed to update the crew) which was trivial but the crew bordered on challenging me that I had updated the office at all, instead of a simple sorry (totally no big deal, but they gave us a funny look when we showed up by taxi and they hadnt expected us yet). They sent out the typical post trip survey and I mentioned those minor issues, and a couple of other very trivial constructive suggestions, never heard another word back. Almost feel like they approach this like they are doing you a favor.
Went with Explorer Ventures this year on the Caribbean Explorer II, office pre-trip and crew throughout the trip really worked hard to try to make sure we had the best trip possible. Much older boat, but crew really worked it; while I would say the CAIV crew also worked very hard, didnt get quite as much of the warm and fuzzies from them as I did with CEII.
As for the Caribe dancer fiasco, while minor challenges on a liveaboard are somewhat to be expected (in my limited experience), from what Ive read and seen Aggressor Fleet sending that boat out in that condition, and with the apparent lack of interest in trying to get things in order while on the trip was inappropriate and IMHO inexcusable. While I am not one to rush to boycott a company over a single incident I hear about, the Aggressor Fleets response is lame, and a serious mistake given the negative exposure they are getting, and a warning to me to take my business elsewhere. I think I will be focusing on Explorer Ventures options and hopefully a Pacific trip or two over the next few years.
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