Ginnie Springs Ball Room

[scubaguy]

Making the trip from Oklahoma to Florida in March, I have personaly never been there. Going to see Family and a couple other things. I am IANTD full technical cave, but my wife is a very skeemish open water Diver. I have her talked into going to Ginnie springs for a day. Having never been, but read pro's and con's on the place, is the ball room an ok dive for a pretty new open water diver?
Just curious if anyone has any opinions.

 

[PfcAJ]

If she doesn't have her stuff together, no.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Yes. There's nothing difficult, scary or claustrophobic about the Ballroom. My wife and I are both OW divers who have been in it once, spent three or four minutes looking around wondering what the hype was about, shrugged our shoulders, and that was the end of the dive. I just don't get what some people find interesting about the Ballroom. To me, it was a total waste of time. It doesn't look like any of the beautiful terrestrial caves I've seen, as it's fairly featureless.

 

[corvettejoe]

Ginnie has tons of open water diving available. If she wasn't so "skeemish" I would say the ballroom might be fun, but then again... even though they allow open water divers inside it...it's still a full overhead environment that you (and her) need to be aware of.

I don't particularly agree that they allow this ,but hey, its private property, they can do as they like.

That said... it's pretty open in there and the cave itself is grated off. You can see the entrance from most areas except off to one side. If youre looking to poke around yourself in it, theres lots of nooks and crannies you can squeeze through in sidemount

Otherwise, once she's done, the park is very solo-diving friendly. There's always tons of divers there of all skill levels, you may even find a new cave buddy while there.

---------- Post added August 16th, 2013 at 03:01 PM ----------

Yes. There's nothing difficult, scary or claustrophobic about the Ballroom. My wife and I are both OW divers who have been in it once, spent three or four minutes looking around wondering what the hype was about, shrugged our shoulders, and that was the end of the dive. I just don't get what some people find interesting about the Ballroom. To me, it was a total waste of time. It doesn't look like any of the beautiful terrestrial caves I've seen, as it's fairly featureless.

With proper lighting and someone to show you around, it is a blast in there. With crappy, or no lights at all, its a pretty crappy dive and there's not much to enjoy in there.

It's a great place to show someone a cavern to see if they may or may not enjoy the experience before doing cavern. But it's not for everyone. Some people love it (me) and others just don't see the beauty of it. Nothing wrong with that... it's just not for everyone.

I think the last time I went there, my buddy and I (both full cave) spent about an hour and a half in the ball room just goofing around, taking fun photos and other nonsense... even though we had miles of cave just a few feet away to actually go dive LOL.

 

[boulderjohn]

If you are going to go to the area no matter what, the area outside the entrance is pretty easy diving. Any OW diver can enjoy it. You can take a look into the cavern to see what you think.

 

[TSandM]

I don't think anyone who is a timid or nervous diver should be in an overhead environment. If anything goes wrong, with the heightened anxiety of being inside and in a dark place, I'd be afraid a nervous diver would try to bolt . . . and that's the one thing you CAN'T do in the Ballroom.

The spring run at Ginnie is shallow, but very pretty. You can sit and watch the champagne bubbles streaming up through the limestone from the cave divers below. You can go down into the Eye and peer into the cave opening. All of that is very safe.

 

[Instructor_Tom]

depending on where you are headed you might want to go a little further south to Williston fl and check out devils den and/or blue grotto.

we teach OW at these locations and are more friendly to OW divers while offering a cavern environment that provides some interest to more advanced divers.

the ballroom at Ginnie is nothing more than a 60/70ft deep room with about 100ft of overhead penetration. it's kind of cool when someone is doing a galaxy dive on a Friday or Saturday night, but not worth taking a skittish diver into.

hope this helps.

Tom


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[lowviz]

...//... The spring run at Ginnie is shallow, but very pretty. You can sit and watch the champagne bubbles streaming up through the limestone from the cave divers below. You can go down into the Eye and peer into the cave opening. All of that is very safe.

-and so very under-rated. Take your time and enjoy...

 

[bamafan]

If you are driving from Oklahoma to Florida I would suggest a stop by Morrison Springs to check out her abilities. As long as it is not flooded from rain / river intrusion it is a decent cavern dive open to o/w divers. It does have freshwater eels so if she has a snake phobia it might not be the best place to take her but it could well save you about $30 as it's free and Ginnie is overpriced. If you have never done it the mill pond in Mariana is definitely worth few days. Jackson Blue is a lot like Ginnie springs minnus the drunk rednecks and dark cave walls. Notice I said drunk not rednecks.

 

[lowviz]

Now that you brought it up: Don't leave anything unsupervised on the surface at Ginnie. Almost lost some dive gear, so did my instructor, until he noticed a suspicious pile of picnic stuff on a table surrounded by a bunch of teen / twentys party people.