PADI AOW cost

[vagabondexpedition]

If I'm picking up my PADI AOW along with actually doing the specialties (PPB, Drift, Night), do I still pay full price for AOW or should it be discount? Or should I get discounts on the specialties? Just seems odd to pay full price for each of them, even though I'm doing dives for the specialties on the AOW dives. Maybe I'm missing something obvious? Things just seem a lot different from when I certified with IDEA years ago... you just dove, did some work with the tables, a couple of decompression stop dives.. and one day your instructor says you're AOW now.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I would never discount a class for something like this. I also don't offer them in conjunction with others. It doesn't matter if you do AOW and then UW Nav, Deep, or whatever. We are still going to do all the required dives for each class.
For AOW you are only doing 1 dive from each specialty and if it's a by the book minimum standards it's probably not going to be that informative.
Different instructors/operations teach to different levels. I'd be leery of one that uses a dive from AOW to shorten the actual full specialty.

 

[saxman242]

If you're paying full price for AOW and the specialties, I would at least make sure that I was doing different dives for the AOW than the specialties.

 

[oly5050user]

If I'm picking up my PADI AOW along with actually doing the specialties (PPB, Drift, Night), do I still pay full price for AOW or should it be discount? Or should I get discounts on the specialties? Just seems odd to pay full price for each of them, even though I'm doing dives for the specialties on the AOW dives. Maybe I'm missing something obvious? Things just seem a lot different from when I certified with IDEA years ago... you just dove, did some work with the tables, a couple of decompression stop dives.. and one day your instructor says you're AOW now.

PADI advance does not offer the full speciality, only the first five of deep, navigation , and the first dives of the 3 electives. Can be credited towards the speciality, but still need to complete all objectives. As to a discount, that is up to the operator you are diving with.

 

[tmassey]

For me, training was at least as much the opportunity to dive with someone as it was about the curriculum or certification. So I always tried to avoid such overlap for the specialties. And most training is usually at a pretty reasonable cost-per-dive rate, especially compared to something like guided diving.

But make sure you get the full three dives! If they’re only going to give you two, it should be at a discount!

 

[shurite7]

If I'm picking up my PADI AOW along with actually doing the specialties (PPB, Drift, Night), do I still pay full price for AOW or should it be discount? Or should I get discounts on the specialties? Just seems odd to pay full price for each of them, even though I'm doing dives for the specialties on the AOW dives. Maybe I'm missing something obvious?

Your question appears to imply you are taking four courses, the advanced course (five dives for PADI), peak buoyancy (2 dives), Drift (2 dives), and Night (3 dives). In most cases you would be charged for four courses unless the shop/resort has set up a package deal.

 

[saxman242]

Your question appears to imply you are taking four courses, the advanced course (five dives for PADI), peak buoyancy (2 dives), Drift (2 dives), and Night (3 dives). In most cases you would be charged for four courses unless the shop/resort has set up a package deal.

It sounds to me like they're using one dive from each of the specialties as the dives for advanced though, so he's paying for 3 more dives than he is getting due to them doing double duty.

 

[tursiops]

I hate it when shops act like this.
It is totally up to the shop and the instructor, but if you've got the same instructor for the AOW and the three specialties, they are screwing you over if you are charged full price for everything. You need to do 5 dives for AOW, and 7 more for the three specialties, unless you want to do those three specialties as part of your AOW, in which case you are only doing the 5 for AOW, plus one more each for PPB and Drift, and 2 more for Night, or a total of just 9 dives. You need to negotiate this. If they insist on full price for all 4 classes, then demand that the five dives for AOW NOT include PPB, Drift, or Night. Find three others that interest you. Make them work for their damn money. Several you might consider are Search and Recovery, Drysuit, DPV, Digital Underwater Imaging, Wreck, DSMB, and Cavern. Not all PADI instructors can teach all those, but it is worth asking. Also, as another negotiating point, tell them since you are overpaying, they should throw in Nitrox and an Equipment class as freebees; they don't even take a dive. Finally, do the full PPB before any of the other dives.

 

[mi000ke]

When I did my AOW, I looked at it as an opportunity to refine my diving skills in general. Rather than each dive being a separate specialty (even though technically that's what they called them), we worked on all of my skills on each dive, especially buoyancy and trim - which was what I wanted to work on the most. So I did the PPB first, and that's what we concentrated on the first dive. But we worked on buoyancy on all five dives, plus all the dives were "deep", all were "boat", one was a drift even though I was not specifically doing drift. The only dive that was specifically focused on a skill was the nav dive - but I used my compass on all of the following dives as well. In the end they made me a better diver overall - and the cost was almost the same as if I had just paid for 5 group dives, except that I had my own instructor. And after that experience I saw no reason to go into any of the specialties in more depth. Night dive? Just do a few with a dive op after doing AOW - not necessarily as part of a course. Same with drift. So, I would suggest you just to AOW, then wait and do a bunch more dives and then evaluate whether or not there are any specialties you think would be worth doing. Also, I did nitrox course before the first dive, and used nitrox on all 5 AOW dives. They gave me a deal on nitrox course having combined it with AOW.

 

[Rob9876]

. . . Maybe I'm missing something obvious? Things just seem a lot different from when I certified with IDEA years ago... you just dove, did some work with the tables, a couple of decompression stop dives.. and one day your instructor says you're AOW now.

You do realize that you don't have to take the separate specialty classes in order to get AOW, right? Unless you just want to pick up the specialty classes, I'd be inclined to agree with mi000ke above and get AOW and wait and see what you think after that. You'll probably want Nitrox, but paying for a specialty in Night Diving (after you do one in your AOW) seems almost like paying for a specialty in Wetsuit Urination.