Cozumel?

[mexdiver]

easyerider003, One dive in Cozumel – Will make you realized that a cruise vacation was a mistake if you like to dive of course! However wile you are in Progresso you can go diving with the wale sharks in Holbox Island is north of Yucatan. Is beautiful. I am not sure if the Cruise offer a short excursion to Holbox . but you can ask the local’s how to get there is about 7 or 10 miles prx. I hope you have a great time in MY HOME TOWN (Cozumel)
Have fun! And when you comeback share some photos. I missed.

 

[mexdiver]

This is what I recommend.

1.- You can book your dive trip through the Cruise.

Pros: You will be under their terms and conditions. No matter what dive operator they work with in Cozumel they all good. They will bring you back to the cruise.

Cons: Is more expensive, you may go on the same boat with snorkel’s, swimmers or boat riders strictly schedule.

2. You can book your Dive from home (reserved).

My recommendation Dive Paradise reservations can be take for a fast boat 2 tank dive with only 6 divers and 1 dive master. Price is $65 to $75 us. They are very nice and they work with you to fit your needs.
They can Pick you up at the pier where the Cruise duck or they can meet you depends you arrival. And how long the Cruise stay in Cozumel.

Pros: Personal attention, small group, chip, fun!, fast usually you will be back before the regular trip that the cruise ship offer, you will have time to go to town and enjoy the shopping, eat, or Carlos & Charlie’s, or go to the beach for wile until is time to leave

Cons: NONE the Island is small the distances are very close and you would have plenty time to do all that. Trust me I am from Cozumel. And I us to work for a cruise ship.
SO…. Now except to you.

 

[ggunn]

easyerider003, One dive in Cozumel – Will make you realized that a cruise vacation was a mistake if you like to dive of course! However wile you are in Progresso you can go diving with the wale sharks in Holbox Island is north of Yucatan. Is beautiful. I am not sure if the Cruise offer a short excursion to Holbox . but you can ask the local’s how to get there is about 7 or 10 miles prx. I hope you have a great time in MY HOME TOWN (Cozumel)
Have fun! And when you comeback share some photos. I missed.

They will not let you SCUBA dive around whale sharks, although you can get on a boat that will drop you off near them with snorkel gear.

 

[mexdiver]

This is what I recommend.

1.- You can book your dive trip through the Cruise.

Pros: You will be under their terms and conditions. No matter what dive operator they work with in Cozumel they all good. They will bring you back to the cruise.

Cons: Is more expensive, you may go on the same boat with snorkel’s, swimmers or boat riders strictly schedule.

2. You can book your Dive from home (reserved).

My recommendation Dive Paradise reservations can be take for a fast boat 2 tank dive with only 6 divers and 1 dive master. Price is $65 to $75 us. They are very nice and they work with you to fit your needs.
They can Pick you up at the pier where the Cruise duck or they can meet you depends you arrival. And how long the Cruise stay in Cozumel.

Pros: Personal attention, small group, chip, fun!, fast usually you will be back before the regular trip that the cruise ship offer, you will have time to go to town and enjoy the shopping, eat, or Carlos & Charlie’s, or go to the beach for wile until is time to leave

Cons: NONE the Island is small the distances are very close and you would have plenty time to do all that. Trust me I am from Cozumel. And I us to work for a cruise ship.
SO…. Now except to you.

 

[mexdiver]

They will not let you SCUBA dive around whale sharks, although you can get on a boat that will drop you off near them with snorkel gear.

Correct!! I mean Swim with the Wales Sharks in Holbox.

 

[Christi]

easyerider003, One dive in Cozumel – Will make you realized that a cruise vacation was a mistake if you like to dive of course! However wile you are in Progresso you can go diving with the wale sharks in Holbox Island is north of Yucatan. Is beautiful. I am not sure if the Cruise offer a short excursion to Holbox . but you can ask the local’s how to get there is about 7 or 10 miles prx. I hope you have a great time in MY HOME TOWN (Cozumel)
Have fun! And when you comeback share some photos. I missed.

You cannot dive with the Whale Sharks, only snorkel.

The Whale Shark season is July/August...May (when easyrider is thinking of going is much too early)

My recommendation Dive Paradise reservations can be take for a fast boat 2 tank dive with only 6 divers and 1 dive master. Price is $65 to $75 us. They are very nice and they work with you to fit your needs.
They can Pick you up at the pier where the Cruise duck or they can meet you depends you arrival. And how long the Cruise stay in Cozumel.

Well, easyrider can make reservations for a fast boat provided that his ship arrives on time or if he has a group that justifies holding a boat back. Maybe you know different...maybe you work for Dive Paradise?

MexDiver, do you still live in Cozumel?

 

[tlmainer]

The best thing about booking a dive through the cruise is, if the dive boat were to break down or any other problem came up, the cruise ship will wait on you. If you book with an outside dive shop and something happened, you are screwed. The ship will not wait. We took a cruise to Coz 3 years ago and we booked through the ship. There was not much difference in price and the piece of mind knowing the ship would wait on you if something happened is worth it. We have been coming down there for 10 years in a row and that was the only year we went on a cruise. We were booked with a hotel, the hurricane hit, and they canceled out trip so we ended up on the cruise instead. The worst part of the cruise, only 1 day to dive. Like earlier posts, 1 day is not near enough to enjoy Cozumel!!!!!!

 

[RonFrank]

I doubt that it's intentional; IMO it's far more likely that they give it no consideration whatsoever. The vast majority of folks on cruise ships do not dive.

Again, I don't think it's a conspiracy. Anything you do that takes you out of the cruise ship's organized programs puts you on your own responsibilty to make it to the boat by sailing time. If they book you on one of their activities, they coordinate the schedules 1) because they can, and 2) because they have to.

I've worked for a lot of very large companies (Verizon currently). I think many would be surprised at the lengths large organizations go though to increase revenue.

I find it interesting that it's difficult to plan activities easily outside of the cruise sponsored activities generally due to scheduled shore time.

My buddy recently did an Alaskan cruise. He did a cruise sponsored Salmon fishing trip. It was close to 2X as expensive as other fishing trips offered outside of the cruise sponsored trip. The real kicker was that the cost to have the fish processed was so expensive he could purchase wild Salmon at home for about half the cost of getting the fish he caught on the overpriced charter.

I don't think these types of things are accidents, and neither did Terry.

 

[ggunn]

I've worked for a lot of very large companies (Verizon currently). I think many would be surprised at the lengths large organizations go though to increase revenue.

I find it interesting that it's difficult to plan activities easily outside of the cruise sponsored activities generally due to scheduled shore time.

My buddy recently did an Alaskan cruise. He did a cruise sponsored Salmon fishing trip. It was close to 2X as expensive as other fishing trips offered outside of the cruise sponsored trip. The real kicker was that the cost to have the fish processed was so expensive he could purchase wild Salmon at home for about half the cost of getting the fish he caught on the overpriced charter.

I don't think these types of things are accidents, and neither did Terry.

Oh, I don't doubt that the cruise sponsored dive trips are expensive; I just don't believe that they structure the shore time of several thousand people just to keep an extremely small percentage of them from diving off their plan. And I don't think that their policy of leaving you behind if you don't make the call is just to force you to dive with their program, either.

It's not that I think that they wouldn't do these things if enough money were involved; I just don't think that divers make up a large enough portion of their passenger list to make it worth their while to worry about it one way or the other.

But even if they did, so what? It's their business to run any way they want, and if you don't like it, do something else.

 

[cicopo]

I read back a ways on the forum where I normally contribute because this topic regularily comes up. The 2 dive ops with hopefully usable times are Deep Blue who have a 9:00 AM departure, and Blue Angel who have a 10:00 AM departure.
blueangel-scuba.com
Dive Packages
Unless you can put a group of at least 4 divers together in order to book a small op to fit your time frame you are at the mercy of the fact that the majority of dive ops are already on the reefs by the time you will get off the ship.