Cruising and 4 stops where to go diving

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I've been on over 30 cruises and when I dived with the ship, I've never had a problem. No cattle calls and all first rate professional operations. Why would they choose something else?

Cayman: My experience is that most times the ship stop is a short one (many times leaving around 3:30pm or 4pm) AND they all have to tender people to shore on little boats. That means that ship excursions depart the ship first and all others ( self arranged tours or day shoppers included) have to wait. Now personally, I'd rather take the ship's tour and get off ASAP and get underwater.

Because of the short cruise stop and possible weather issues, sometimes Cayman ship-diving doesnt venture out very far. These are issues one can live with, however:D
 
I dove in Cozumel with Carnival in March 2009. They use Sand Dollar as their dive shop. We had 18 divers on board that day. At our first stop, there were at least 4 other boats in the area on a day with rough seas.

Bottom line, too many divers in the water! The boat captains could not tell who was who. Some of our divers ended up on the wrong boat at first. Also, since there were so many divers from our ship, they had to recruit some divermasters that they don't usually use.

They also poo-pooed a saftey stop. In my experience (with most diver operaters) there is usually a hang bar for a safety stop with and additional tank or two - just in case.

Having dived in many Caribbean sites (Bonaire, Turks and Caicos, Grand Cayman), this wasn't an ideal scenario. If you are newly certified, I would either go with an operation other than the one picked by the cruise line, or try another island (Grand Cayman) where there is no drift diving.
 
I am actually in the same boat and scheduled two seperate dive trips on my June Cruise with Carnival. Problem is Cozumel is off the schedule. After reading the posts I don't want to risk paying alot of money for a mediocre dive in Belize.

As for Cayman I have dove there twice with Red Sail and some had decent dives, but will skip it this time. Now all I have to look forward to is my dive in Roatan with Bananarama.
 
We dove Roatan (Anthony's Key) and it was awesome. We've also dove in Cozumel with Sand Dollar twice and enjoyed it. Sounds like Belize is a little out of reach for diving. We did the cave tubing there and that was fun. Enjoy your trip!
 
We did the same cruise last August. We did a shore dive in Cayman as sort of a refresher dive. We had a spent a week diving there several years ago. Roatan with Anthony Key was AWESOME! Actually we are heading to Roatan for 9 days in two weeks and can't wait. The diving was great and so were the dive boats and DM's.
Belize was nice, great DM's etc but it WAS a very long boat ride and very expensive as you see.
I would not do it again on a cruise. By the time we got to Cozumel we decided to just explore and relax for the day. I hear the diving is great but we wanted another adventure. Rented a jeep and went around the island stopping at the beach and a great place for lunch.
You will enjoy the cruise..... have fun and definately dive Roatan.
Oh and as far as booking excursions off the ship....we thought about it and was glad we didn't as there was a weather issue and our stops between Roatan and Belize got switched. Weather didn't affect us but it did affect other ships so they switched us. Was glad then that we were booked through the ship.
 
One suggestion I will make about the diving. Find a local dive shop that caters to the cruise ships. Don't take the cruise line diving excursions. I went to Charolette, St. Thomas onboard a Royal Carribean ship in December. I have tried diving with the cruise line, and believe me when I say the experience and type of diving is much better with a dive shop. You can find them online or check with your loval dive shop for suggestions. I am also cruising to Grand Caymen on a Labor Day cruise and I do remember there are great dives very close to the island. The local boats give you usually two tank and location dives a reef and wreck. The cost is less or about the same. Good Luck and have fun.
 
You can't go wrong with diving in Cozumel. Lots of dive operators, and lots of beautiful dive sites.

Grand Cayman has some nice walls on the northern side of the island. I used Red Sail Sports when I was staying on the East end of the island (opposite of George Town, where the ships make port). But, they have dive shops all over the island.
 
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