I was not on the Emperor Elite. I was on the Emperor Superior in 2018. I believe it has been refurbished since then, so my information probably isn’t even relevant for the boat as it is today. So I will mainly focus on how I felt about the company and liveaboard experience in general with Emperor Divers.
In short, I was very pleased with the value and experience I received. At the time, I paid I think it was €1200 for private room on a seven day trip on the get wrecked itinerary. Nitrox was included at no charge. Because of valuable information from
@Wookie , that was a requirement for me. I also rented a set of aluminum 80 doubles which I used for the entire trip.
Booking the trip was reasonably straightforward. It was a little bit of back-and-forth for me because of me wanting to rent the doubles. That wasn’t something they normally did, so it took a little bit of effort for them to find out what was available. They ended up coming back with a couple of choices for me. Because I was not familiar with European tanks, they ended up having both of them available for me at the dock so that I could choose. Which was great, because my choices basically boiled down to aluminum 80 doubles or steel 130 doubles. There was no way I was dealing with those steel monsters on the zodiac… So it was really nice that they allowed me to see the tanks and make the proper choice.
The experience was certainly adequate. I’ve only done one liveaboard, so I don’t have a lot to compare to. I knew that it would not be a fancy experience, but I was hoping that it would be better than a Blackbeard-style camping on the water situation. I was quite pleased. The boat was comfortable. There was plenty of space, both in lounging and diving areas. The food was more focused to a European palate than an American one, but I had no problem with it at all. It was plenty and a reasonable variety of choices. I’m not overly picky, but I do have likes and dislikes, and there was never a time where there weren’t things I didn’t enjoy.
The dive masters were very helpful and professional. I had limited interaction with most of the crew: I don’t believe many of them spoke English. But the handful who did that we interacted with regularly were great. They kept an eye out for each passenger and did what they could to make them happy. It was great having somebody hand you a cold drink seconds after you land back on board the boat. Except for when I did our first night dive and they handed me a cup and it turned out to be a hot drink! Fortunately, it had cooled some before it was put in my hand.
At one point some fine sand got stuck in my wing inflator creating a small leak, overinflating my (old) wing. It ended up blowing out the seam for about 2 feet along the outer edge of the shell, causing the inner liner to spill out freely. Basically, my dive trip was over because of it. The dive master suggested that I give it to the crew and let them take a hand at fixing it. He said they have repair tape they use to repair the zodiac that could hold anything together. So I did. About two hours later there was a knock on my cabin door and the crewmember handed me my wing back. It had been sewn all the way around with heavy duty thread not just where the seam had ripped but all the way around to make sure that nothing further would happen to it. He had saved my dive trip! Worked great for the rest of the trip.
I had no real complaints for the entire trip. I was comfortable, well-fed and taken to interesting dive sites every day. I was up at odd times and still saw crew about, keeping watch. The ship seemed to be in good repair. There were no mechanical issues at any time. I would go back in a heartbeat. My only complaint was the sick diver who came on the trip and got *me* sick, scrubbing my last day and a half of diving…
I’d have to look, but I think I still got like 16 or so dives in? Good enough.
If you have any specific questions, I’ll do what I can to answer.
