TxThunder
Registered
My 14 year old son and I had our first cruise ship dive experiences the first week of August while cruising on RCCL Oasis of the Seas using the shore excursions. We are somewhat recently certified (Memorial Day Weekend - OW, July 4th weekend - AOW), but had managed to get in 17 dives each prior to the cruise. We have our own gear that we brought along with us.
We had booked dives in St. Thomas and St. Martin, but due to tropical storm Emily we got rerouted to Costa Maya and Cozumel instead. We did a two tank dive at each location and came back very satisfied with our experience.
In Costa Maya, the group of divers got split into two groups. We were lucky to be assigned to the smaller boat and dove with just 2 other divers and a DM at two spots on the reef nearby. It was our first experience with a backroll entry, but it all went smoothly. We saw plenty of fish and a couple of turtles. I got some nice pics of one turtle lunching on the reef. We swam through some nice narrow coral "canyons" and found a few lion fish hiding underneath some small ledges (not many though, they had had an organized lion fish hunting competition recently, and our dive op had gotten first prize with 208 lion fish). Depths were up to 60ft on the first and about 40-45ft on the second dive. There was no real current and visibility was great, 50ft++ (at least for someone used to diving in murky lakes).
We were also quite satisfied with our Cozumel experience. We got picked up right off the cruise ship pier together with another 17 divers. We were divided into 3 separate groups, with a DM assigned to each. Both dives here were drift dives, the first a wall dive (San Francisco?) at up to 70ft, the second around 45ft or so. Again, plenty of life, including a nurse shark that swam a bit lower along the wall.
I've read a number of negative comments about cruise ship associated operators, but our experience was good and I thought appropriate to our level of skill and experience. I can see that more advanced divers may not be similarly excited. In conversation with other divers, there were a number of people that had been diving for years, but only during vacations, and thus had far fewer dives than us, so experience wise I don't think we trailed nor led the pack.
We had booked dives in St. Thomas and St. Martin, but due to tropical storm Emily we got rerouted to Costa Maya and Cozumel instead. We did a two tank dive at each location and came back very satisfied with our experience.
In Costa Maya, the group of divers got split into two groups. We were lucky to be assigned to the smaller boat and dove with just 2 other divers and a DM at two spots on the reef nearby. It was our first experience with a backroll entry, but it all went smoothly. We saw plenty of fish and a couple of turtles. I got some nice pics of one turtle lunching on the reef. We swam through some nice narrow coral "canyons" and found a few lion fish hiding underneath some small ledges (not many though, they had had an organized lion fish hunting competition recently, and our dive op had gotten first prize with 208 lion fish). Depths were up to 60ft on the first and about 40-45ft on the second dive. There was no real current and visibility was great, 50ft++ (at least for someone used to diving in murky lakes).
We were also quite satisfied with our Cozumel experience. We got picked up right off the cruise ship pier together with another 17 divers. We were divided into 3 separate groups, with a DM assigned to each. Both dives here were drift dives, the first a wall dive (San Francisco?) at up to 70ft, the second around 45ft or so. Again, plenty of life, including a nurse shark that swam a bit lower along the wall.
I've read a number of negative comments about cruise ship associated operators, but our experience was good and I thought appropriate to our level of skill and experience. I can see that more advanced divers may not be similarly excited. In conversation with other divers, there were a number of people that had been diving for years, but only during vacations, and thus had far fewer dives than us, so experience wise I don't think we trailed nor led the pack.