Wife & I Just finished our AOW cert. last weekend at Dive Locker in Panama City (Thomas Drive); Todd, David, & Patti did a great job. I must say that one of two things happened (and bear with me here):
1. We were more prepared than the average diver that they are used to seeing in the AOW class, since we have plenty of recent diving experience, and took our OW certification through a very, very thorough NAUI instructor; they thereore left us to more or less just demonstrate the skills, so it was kind of a "we show you once, then you show us that you can perform the same task." Fairly straightforward demostration of skills and finish the Knowledge Review in the book for the 5 dive specialties (Deep, UW Nav, and three of your choosing).
2. We paid our fee and they are willing to sign off just about anything; this is not what I think really happened though because Todd really pays attention and makes you either do the skill/task correctly or do it over (Wife had plenty of instruction in knot tying, Sunday). The boat dives were a good time, plenty of attention to the basics and monitoring of techniques throughout the dive. Used the dive slates and performed all the required tasks to standard.
I know that I did not really learn too much "new" information and was a little underwhelmed by the academics; at the same time, I appreciated being treated like an adult and just getting to "go dive with some new dive partners" as Dave put it on our Deep dive.
Good overall experience, very accomodating since we travelled from out of town to go there too (Fort Rucker, AL).
