Question about Blue Grotto

[moneysavr]

I was curious about everyones opinion about the way this place is run. I have been there once,

Wow I was down to Devils Den In July-Made trip down from Wisconsin,They found me an instructor for me with only a weeks notice,and made several calls to set it all up,The dive instuctor was GREAT! made me go thru all my skills,and then worked me like a diving dog!The staff was nice!and well a great site to train at,and well 100% better vis than we have in Wisconsin!!
Then did The Blue Grotto and well after the video =do not touch the bottom! did several dives, and well got the guy mad because we were the last out and it was past closing!so seen his bad side but our fault,then was next day at Hal Watts and that is a training place. and a cool site to dive he has it all in that spring,and felt like home in the top 20' with poor vis then wam it all opened up after 60'way too cool! to get a dive pic on a motorcycle at 60'

 

[KangarooSeatbelt]

Alright fellas, here's my two cents. Blue Grotto was my first dive after getting OW cert. (I got cert at the University of Florida, so my NAUI class took three months! diving every week.. got a lot of water time... so feel a lot more comfortable in the water than your average OW diver.. hence the hey lets go do a 95' cavern dive!).
I heard they weren't that friendly at Blue Grotto.. it's true. They were friendly enough when we got there.. nothing spectacular but friendly enough. Once we paid though.. I went back up to the shed to tell them that the lights weren't on and the diving bell wasn't working yet.. the guy didn't even look up from his magazine.. just mumbled something about having turned them on and that was that.. i asked him a couple more questions and he just shooed me off.. very rude. I tried talking to them after the dive and they were just like.... well it was like talking to wallpaper.
Earlier today I just dove Paradise Spring.. went to 140'.. stuck my hand in a hole for the 141'. Dive was absolutely freaking fantastic. great site.. the only site i'd pay 30 dollars to go back to. AND the owner was nice as all get out. very talkative.. friendly.. helpful.. filled our tanks while we went to lunch.. super nice. Nothing but good things to say. He bought it a couple of years ago, so maybe he's new. I talked to his wife too.. also extremely nice.

 

[inter_alia]

I was curious about everyones opinion about the way this place is run. I have been there once, and I thought the guy there was very rude, and I dont care to go back any time soon. Did I catch him on a bad day, or is that the norm there?

I was at Blue Grotto last weekend and... I wouldn't say "the guy there" was rude, but he was very open about how business was being effected by the weather. I just thought it was because he's obviously a Yankee transplant (I heard Bostonian in his voice, I'm nearly certain) so I tried killing him with kindness and patiently listening to his woes a little. This worked. After our dives when we went to get our tanks filled (had already paid for this), it turned out one of the tanks was past the hydrostatic date -- he rightly refused to fill it and quickly refunded the charge of that fill. It's the "quickly" that counts here, right.
I wonder if he just gets sick of the business of running a gorgeous dive location... I come across this a lot in scuba, anywhere. From dive captains to deck hands to instructors -- they got into the business of this "sport" and get jaded pretty quickly. I've come to expect it and refuse to let their attitudes make me think twice about whether or not a dive was good or bad. They're at work whenever I'm checking in to dive, anyway. I'm on vacation whenever I'm checking in to dive. Totally different mindsets.

I can say that the reception at Paradise Springs was exceedingly friendly, and at Devil's Den it was at least attentive.