Sounds great. I think we need to definitely find a Discover class.
I LOVED snuba! I loved being able to be under water. Without having any training, I think I did well (the others in my group had great difficulty). In my opinion, the biggest negative was that we were right off shore at Coral World in St. Thomas, and there wasn't a whole lot to see. We saw more snorkeling in Punta Cana. So, I would like to scuba to see the variety of ocean life.
A big reason I think we should do the Discover class first is to make sure I don't mind carting around an oxygen tank. I also had issues with the weights while doing snuba. That was aggravating.
I will definitely want a DM to go out with us! I'm sure experience will bring confidence, so I need several experiences first!
Why I ask about the discover.
It is sounding like you are headed to a tropical destination with a total 3 days to play there. And like a plan to snorkel there, want to dive, discovered that takes training.
Training that is a bit complicated and it’s not exactly a fun way at that time of year at home to get experienced re comfort once out on your own at tropical vacation destination. And the cost may be a challenge as well to your finances.
I do not know the details with Discover Scuba dives. My impression is you get minimal instruction then get to dive where seeing it would cool to be diving – below amongst the cool stuff vs snorkeling above it.
I see Discover dives it in a tropical dive location as a quick and dirty so to speak way to get dive - here it would be two boat dives - in open water in so few days. And doing what we consider babycake dives and requiring high quality babysitting. Would take another similar thing I expect to get in another two dives. You’ll pay for both, likely in same place and still not be certified.
I think I’d have been real happy with Discover dives here, except yearning for what a certified diver gets’s to do. Living at a dive destination I skipped Discover and went for learning a sport I could do year round, with many sites and plenty of shore dives.
I’m not against getting full certified before vacation. I’d expect though, getting the open water dives in, in the three days of vacation a bit unfulfilling. Like TS&M describes, mine were mostly learning with little on the funner part of diving.
If you did go the OW dives in Cancun I’d definitely get them on Private just the two of you. Skills are supervised one on one and a lot of the tank of air is used waiting for the rest of the class members to work thru their problems- one on one.
Your weight issues will not improve without experience. Typically inexperienced divers are overweighed to keep them down as the first feet under water are the most dangerous. It is real easy to ascend too rapidly, a bad thing to do. And I expect this type of education is one of the things addressed in certification and skipped in a discover. One of the reasons/examples a discover is considered a ‘trust me dive’. You will be trusting the instructor to keep you safe with no knowledge how or why.
I’m not against trust me dives in general, a certified diver can just as easily screw up (oops, wrong button) as doing a trust me dive. But at least, with an attentive instructor (on a discover dive) babysitting akin to walking along a busy street with a 4 YO, they will stop you
before running out into traffic and keep you on the sidewalk.
Maybe someone will chime in exactly what a Discover Dive is like in your vacation location – if the dives are good sites.
