I do find it ironic that these dive parks are already available in other places in the world.
I think the irony is when you realize just how big the US is compared to Western Europe, and in the larger states just how dense the diving population isn't. Then compare liability and tort law in the US to most any European country and you begin to see that the fact this does not exist in the US as of yet is not all that ironic.
The reality is that it does exist in the US but is prohibitively expensive for it to be a casual experience; look at the cost to dive Epcot or in the tanks at any of the aquariums around the US.
In Belgium there is TODI which is a 10 meter deep pool (at its center, actually averages between 4-6 meters deep overall), and is filled with fish and artificial habitat. It is fresh water, but there is quite the variety of fish species and size. The only issue with diving there is that it is mind numbing. The rush is that you are doing something fairly exclusive, kind of like looking through the glass of the tank at the park visitors are disney, the reality is, if you have ever done a dive with lots of fish, it is a rather mundane experience and can be expensive (as in the case of places like Disney). TODI charges 35 Euros for 2 hours which starts and ends at the turnstyles as one enters/exits the changing rooms. One might think 2 hours is not that long but after about 15-20 minutes in the pool, one has seen everything and it just gets boring.
The major difference between diving inside and diving outside are the variables. Outside you have to contend with (depending on where you dive) variables such as visibility, awareness and control of depth, currents, waves, thermoclines, etc. You also have to be aware of the impact of these variables on your dive partner (if you are not diving solo). When diving indoors the physics of diving is all the same but none of the other variables really exist. There is no challenge to navigating across the big crystal clear pool. The hard bottom means there is not chance of sinking into the abyss. You say to yourself lets swim over "there" and check out that school of fish, only to realize that you have swam past that school of fish 10 times already.
Places like Nemo 33 and the dive tank in Italy are fairly sterile environments. The nice thing about them is that if you descend to the bottom you need to maintain awareness of your bottom time/no deco time as just because you are inside you cannot escape the physics/physiology of nitrogen loading. You also have to watch your ascent rate because just because you are inside you cannot escape reality of Boyle's Law.
If you look at Nemo 33 from a business model, they use the pool for teaching swimming, teaching diving, aquasizing, mom and baby classes, and other activities to make operating the place more cost effective. I have no idea what their overhead is or how profitable they are but they are currently able to sustain operations. They are located just on the outskirts of Bruxelles where there is very good public transportation to their location. With Bruxelles centrally located, Nemo 33 is at most 2 hours away from the southeast corner of the country with most other cities averaging an hour or less.
And for some strange reason there is a very high density of divers among the populations of Belgium and Netherlands despite that local diving is in lakes and quarries with limited visibility, or the North Sea where there is often cold water temps, limited visibility and can be strong currents, there is a surprising number of people who dive all year round. Nemo 33 and TODI are able to take advantage of this because on those cold miserable mornings when one is just unmotivated to venture out under the often gray cloud filled sky the warm and inviting environment of these indoor dive centers is a very attractive way to spend an hour or two of the day.
Going back to the differences between why this works here compared to the US, the fact that learning to swim is a compulsory part of public school curriculums (at least here in Belgium), a much larger percent of the population is exposed to water activities at a younger age than in the US.
There is also a major difference in the mentality towards personal responsibility, and there is far fewer tort lawsuits here than there in the US where the prevailing mentality is the one is not responsible for their own actions and/or stupidity or ignorance. I could not imagine the amount of liability insurance one would need to make something like this a go in the US, and of course that cost would be passed on to the customer.
When you look at the prevailing factors, and I am sure I am not accounting for some, it is not very ironic that these type of places exist here but not there.
-Z
Similar concept though, and a pretty cool dive. I've been trying to talk Stu at Dutch Springs into doing this. But of course, the ROI isn't there, and the amount of capital (as others have said) to do something like this is off the charts.
