Hawaii - Suggestions anyone...?

[diversteve]

Just for clarity, frogmanlouis won't be posting here again till April 1st.

 

[The_Aviator_1]

Just got back a few weeks ago from Oahu. I dove with Ocean Legends, they were amazing. They even provided complimentary shuttle service from my hotel to the boat and back, in addition to allowing me to store my gear there for several days. Very knowledgeable and friendly, if you choose them try to get Austin or Mary, they were the two I had interactions with and I can't say enough good things about them.

 

[Kahuna J]

As we head into summer my favorite diving in the Hawaiian Islands is Lehua Rock and Ni'ihau. Vertical Awarness is about 300 feet of fun. Big fish, fun shark activity, monk seals, great viz etc etc. I've been using Bubbles Below for over 20 years and my Niihau dives are more memorable than most of my other dives in da islands.

 

[RN Diver]

My wife and I dove with Kaimana Divers for a few days early last month. Those were our first dives after gaining certification in November. Our experience with KD exceeded our expectations. They never lost sight of our inexperience and our DM Jarrod took time to provide feedback on our diving to help us improve and have a better time underwater. He was knowledgeable and courteous and the boat crew was safe and a lot of fun.

When deciding which outfit to dive with, I reviewed some threads on Scubaboard and found several recommendations for them. I also checked yelp (50+ great reviews). While these were helpful in narrowing my choice, the real reason I chose Kaimana, was because Gabe was extremely responsive to my communication. Emails, text messages and phone calls all returned in a timely, reassuring manner and I never once felt like I was inconveniencing him.

When we return to Oahu, I'll dive with them again. No need to look anywhere else. I am not an employee. I'm just a satisfied client.

Thanks to Gabe, Drew and Jarrod for providing a great experience!

RN Diver


(Temporarily changing my signature)

 

[Anna G]

This is a weird drama llama thread. Quite entertaining.

As a relative newbie who's never been to Hawaii before, I went to the forums to find a good dive shop for my trip to Oahu, and Kaimana was highly recommended. No conspiracy, that's why I chose them, because of the recs on the forum here. And I had an awesome time, would certainly dive with Kaimana again if I find myself in Oahu in the future.

Does giving a good rec to Kaimana diss anyone else? Of course not, I don't know anything about the other shops. My only other interaction was with Pearl Harbor Divers as the boat on my first dive was a shared charted. Their customers seemed very happy too, and one of their DM's recommended I get a Lavacore top since I was shivering like crazy after my dive (no idea why, nobody else was having as hard a time and this was a blow to my pride as a Canadian ); she first made sure that Kaimana didn't carry that so as not to take their customers' business away. So I can give good recs to Kaimana for my awesome time diving with them (man, the staff members tried so hard to find octopuses for me when I told them how much I loved octopuses, and I did get to see a few!), and to Pearl Harbor for the selection of gear/apparel

 

[HawaiianMonkSEAL]

Just wanted to add my two cents here.


Rainbow Scuba on Oahu is great! Ken is amazing and seems to have the respect of several other dive companies' instructors. Referred a few friends to him and they all agree he's great and is able to work with strange idiosyncrasies of students brand new to diving and get them to overcome them and be successful, happy divers.


At Ocean Legends on Oahu, Austin is also great!


Have a dive in three weeks with Jack's Diving Locker on the Big Island -- will update later with impressions.


I'll have to check out Kaimana Divers soon...

 

[tphelps]

Heading to Hawaii. Must dive. Anyone have any good suggestions?

I have worked in the dive industry for a while and been to many dive resorts. Words cannot express how highly I recommend Kaimana Divers.
The owner, Gabe, reached out to me before I even thought of coming to Hawaii. I was looking at Hawaii for business-related info and he instantly pointed me in the right direction, giving me some valuable contacts. Even though it did not apply to him, he still reached out because that's just the kind of nice guy he is. Gabe is the embodiment of a perfect dive shop operator and has set the standard for every other place I will now go to. And when I came out to Oahu, he even picked me up from where I was staying and brought me to the dive boat! All of their staff went above and beyond expectations to be helpful and made sure everyone was safe while having the time of their lives. [FONT=Arial, Tahoma, Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif]They are extremely professional and create the sort of fun atmosphere that every dive shop should have.

[/FONT]To name a few of their staff that I met:
[FONT=Arial, Tahoma, Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif]Jarrod - extremely funny, personable and a great Divemaster.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Tahoma, Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif]Drew - on first impression you can tell he is very experienced and knowledgeable. Showed great awareness about the divers he was leading, fun instructor to dive with.
Kyle - Instr/DM super nice and always could find the cool stuff on dives. When you talk to him, you have no choice but to be in a good mood.
Denise - Very professional instructor that always offered to help.
Liv - Extremely sweet, I wish all instructors could give half of the positive reinforcement as she did.
Billy - Fantastic DM, very cool guy to talk to, he also knew where to find the cool critters.
Alex - Very outgoing and social, definitely made you feel welcomed.
Randal, Andrew, Justin - some of the captains I met. All were so funny, I cant remember a time throughout the day when I was NOT laughing.

[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Tahoma, Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif]From a diving perspective, all their staff are extremely knowledgeable about the dive sites. We saw a lot of great aquatic life - loads of turtles, eels, white tip reef sharks, some sting rays, Hawaiian lion fish, frog fish, and a lot more. Safety always came first. The Divemasters were very attentive to the group, correcting buoyancy, checking for air and had through dive briefings. Here is their website to check them out, I know I will be coming back to dive with them!
I am not affiliated with Kaimana, I just had an incredible experience with nothing bad to say. Feel free to PM if you have any questions about them.
Cheers - Tyler
[/FONT]http://www.waikikiscuba.com/

 

[koozemani]

Just for clarity, frogmanlouis won't be posting here again till April 1st.

Finally!! A 5 page hijack was getting old.

 

[popje]

To the person who hijacked my post, aka frogmanlouis, NOT APPRECIATED!!! Moderator should have done something about it 5 pages ago.

I'm not a big one on creative writing, so I'm just gonna end this thread with a couple of notes.

I dived in Oahu with Gabe and had a fantastic time. I dived on BI with Kona Diving Company and had an equally amazing experience.
I have been working as an instructor/DM for over 7 years so I know exactly how demanding this job can be and both Gabe and Kerry and their crew are doing an awesome job. I'm still working in diving, but in a different industry now, so it was a treat for me to actually do some fun diving. And I'm not sure if I've already mentioned it... (For those of you a little on the slow side, hint, don't take that literally...) But diving with Gabe on Oahu and KDC on BI was a wonderful experience.

There. End. Finished.

Mod, can we please close this thread? Thank you.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Mod, can we please close this thread? Thank you.

The odd thing about hijack / attack threads, it gives the victim a chance to really shine under some adversity. I am tagging along with my wife for 10 days to dive while she is at a convention. Guess which dive op will be at the top of my list? A long list of loyal customers and a cool head when someone gets bitchy. My kind of dive op.