Dive Paradise Gear Rental

[chrpai]

Long story short... I gave all my gear away a few years ago and I don't have squat. I can spend $1500 - $2000 on gear and get back into local diving or I can spend $1500 on a trip to Cozumel and enjoy a week of diving.

Can't really do both. Now to do Cozumel, I'd have to rent. I don't know anyone in Austin who's just going to hand me a full set of gear to take to Mexico for the week. So the question is: Is the rental gear in Coz from Dive Paradise decent enough to dive in a pinch?

Wish I had more time to get funds together for this trip as I'm itching to start off by buying an Express Tech BCD and Jet Fins.

 

[cardzard]

Long story short... I gave all my gear away a few years ago and I don't have squat. I can spend $1500 - $2000 on gear and get back into local diving or I can spend $1500 on a trip to Cozumel and enjoy a week of diving.

Can't really do both. Now to do Cozumel, I'd have to rent. I don't know anyone in Austin who's just going to hand me a full set of gear to take to Mexico for the week. So the question is: Is the rental gear in Coz from Dive Paradise decent enough to dive in a pinch?

Wish I had more time to get funds together for this trip as I'm itching to start off by buying an Express Tech BCD and Jet Fins.

Last year I heard no complaints from anyone that rented gear from them. They run a top notch operation.

 

[chrpai]

My last trip to Jamaica was really shady on the gear side. If it wasn't for my good relationship with the DM I'd been stuck with a mask that leaked, pressure gauges that moved when you tapped them and fins with rips in the foot pockets.

Thankfully I knew George from previous trips and the first thing we did for my "scuba tune up" was to rebuild and tune a regulator set. I then dove that reg for the week. The man does try to maintain his equipment it's just the funding isn't made available to them.

 

[cardzard]

We have free shore diving, you can fine tune everything right at the dock. Dive Paradise is committed to work with us 100%.

 

[SoCalMike]

Check with STWill, he had to rent some fins and ended up with cuts on the tops of his feet because they were the cheap kind. I believe he also had a rental reg setup one day and discovered the air pressure gage was reading wrong by 500 psi, telling him he had 500 more then he really did.

I had to rent a reg setup one day and noticed at depth the reg was very hard to breathe.

You have to turn in your rental gear each day, so each day you get a new set and have to hope it's working right. Rental gear is exactly what it is, gear thats been used by every Tom, Dick, and Harry before you.

Perhaps rent from a local dive shop and take it with you? You would probably be able to check out the gear in the pool before you left.

 

[STwill]

I did document some issues in this thread: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/in...ned-during-our-extended-cozumel-invasion.html

I rented all my gear from Dive Paradise for the week I was there.

I did have issues with the fins, and as I look down at my feet I still have the scars from them. I would never, ever use their rental fins again. I have heard of some others that had that same issue on previous trips. I have used rental gear on other dives from other shops and never had a problem. Then again, others have no issues at all. If you are spending that much on a trip, do you want to risk having an issue with fins that causes you pain for the rest of the trip? I know I wouldn't want that to happen to me again.
Needless to say, my fins will be coming with me this year! I would recommend that, at least with personal fit items like your fins and mask, you should probably bring your own.

I also had the issue with the pressure gauge and sizing with the BC that had to be exchanged daily. Though I should have checked the gauge myself by purging the air and making sure at 0 it read 0, for when I got to it, it already had the air turned on. Getting different gear daily doesn't help. With the BC, had I been on the same boat with the same crew daily and the same gear, I am sure that this would have been less of an issue or not an issue at all.

The one thing that you probably want to make sure is that you don't have to buy anything down there, the prices are a lot higher than what is available from your LDS/online.