OMyMyOHellYes
Contributor
I can't speak to cruise excursions, but I imagine that the excursion experience would be similar.
For week long stays I think they will put everyone in a group together on a boat, regardless of experience/ability level. Then they say they try to group non-group divers on the same boat by an assessment of what you tell them re: experience. I don't know how diligent they are in that regard.
But for the group excursions, I would expect that everyone getting on the boat from a cruise would all be on the same boat without consideration of dive ability. I would think they probably expect everyone in the cruise excursion group to be at the experience level of the brand-new OW diver with total dive history consisting of the minimum 4 cert dives. Or somebody that's certified but has not been in the water for 10 years. They'd have to assume so since your first drop is the first time they get to see you in the water.
In my experience with them, they didn't really push the concept of a dive buddy - we just kind of made informal insta-buddy pairs. By myself? Find another person without or a pair that takes pity on you. Once we hit the water, there was no semblance of anything resembling "dive buddies". Well, except for maybe folks that were paired above water. For the most part it seemed a loosely cohesive group. Early on I just tried to stay close to the DM. Of course, they know the sites well and where critters hide and the dives were very leisurely affairs.
Do they pick up folks and bus them to AKR from the cruise terminal or do they launch from Maya Key right across from the cruise ship docks? Do you know already?
All of the boats AKR uses are 42-48 boats. Newtons, I think. Most of my experience has been around 10-12 divers on a boat (the smaller ones). I would expect they will pack up to max capacity for excursion trips. Their fleet summary is at:
anthonyskey.com
For week long stays I think they will put everyone in a group together on a boat, regardless of experience/ability level. Then they say they try to group non-group divers on the same boat by an assessment of what you tell them re: experience. I don't know how diligent they are in that regard.
But for the group excursions, I would expect that everyone getting on the boat from a cruise would all be on the same boat without consideration of dive ability. I would think they probably expect everyone in the cruise excursion group to be at the experience level of the brand-new OW diver with total dive history consisting of the minimum 4 cert dives. Or somebody that's certified but has not been in the water for 10 years. They'd have to assume so since your first drop is the first time they get to see you in the water.
In my experience with them, they didn't really push the concept of a dive buddy - we just kind of made informal insta-buddy pairs. By myself? Find another person without or a pair that takes pity on you. Once we hit the water, there was no semblance of anything resembling "dive buddies". Well, except for maybe folks that were paired above water. For the most part it seemed a loosely cohesive group. Early on I just tried to stay close to the DM. Of course, they know the sites well and where critters hide and the dives were very leisurely affairs.
Do they pick up folks and bus them to AKR from the cruise terminal or do they launch from Maya Key right across from the cruise ship docks? Do you know already?
All of the boats AKR uses are 42-48 boats. Newtons, I think. Most of my experience has been around 10-12 divers on a boat (the smaller ones). I would expect they will pack up to max capacity for excursion trips. Their fleet summary is at:
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