Jeff Moir
Guest
DIVE REVIEW, Part 2
The next day found us in Moorea. Another tender port, we were met by the folks from Bathys (http://www.dive-moorea.com/index.html) who is also the contractor for the ship and shuttled us off to their shop at Beachcomber Inter-Continental resort. The pluses on this 2 tank dive were dive sites Opunu and Taotoi, with extraordinary beautiful reef formations, 60 foot depth, 100+ foot visibility, lots of reef fish, lots of black tip sharks, lemon sharks, a moray eel, Janet the pet turtle, and a video photographer who tagged along and got some great shots. The down side was the dive boat was unnecessarily overloaded with 16 divers, and we were jammed in like sardines. They have an identical second boat that they could and should have used to split the group up. On the second dive, after returning to the shop to replace bottles, they miss-counted equipment, leaving one diver without a rig and leaving another with an empty bottle on his! Absolutely ridiculous! Granted, each guy should check his own stuff, but this boat was so chuck-full of gear, it was darn near impossible to know which was whos. If I didnt have a camera and fluorescent tether in the pocket of mine and watched it like a hawk while everyone was suiting up, it would have ended up on someone else. Checking out was a disaster as well. It took a good hour and a half to return to the waterfront where the tender service was, a good hour past the return time advertised by the ship. If anyone had an afternoon tour scheduled for 1:00, they missed it. On the bright side, the video shot was top notch, complete with music. It was a little pricey, but considering most of the pictures I shot from my Motormarine 35 came out disappointingly green in spite of the crystal clear water, I figured Id get it and convert some frames to still pictures and at least have a few really good shots. Im glad I had the film I shot previously developed on the ship, otherwise I wouldnt have known my pictures were sub-par. A bunch of us got together and beat the photo guy down to $60 each, not good, but a whole lot better than the $90 US for a DVD that Bathys originally wanted to charge.
OK, now to sum it up, if I had it to do over, what would I change? Number one, use the dive excursions set up by the Princess, where available. They are set to run on schedule (with the exception of Bathys) so you can dive and still get your tours done in the afternoon. Theyre a little more expensive, but the lack of hassle is worth it, and hey, youve spent thousands to get here, so whats another couple bucks? If you do tour A in the morning and you get back late for tour B, the ship will give you a refund. Also, if you do a 2 tank dive in the morning, theres NO WAY youre going to be back in time to catch an organized tour. Like I mentioned, diving is not available through the ship excursions on every island, and we wanted to dive A LOT. Its a fairly simple deal to make arrangements via the internet with guys on Tahiti, Huahine, and Rarotonga. I looked all over the web and tried to cull little nuggets of info from web sites that would give me some comprehensive advice on diving this cruise and didnt find much. Thats why I was prompted to write this article. The Tahitian Princess 10 day Cruise has got to be the cheapest and easiest way to do the Tahitian Islands. That is one expensive place to try to find lodging, food and day-today stuff. How Princess does it for what they charge, I dont know. It must be because they stock the ship with supplies brought in by container from the US. They do make a fair amount from drink sales on board and excursions. The ship only holds about 680 passengers and another 373 crew and is necessarily small enough to get into the smaller shallower ports of these islands. It is very nicely appointed, having been built in 1999 and operated with the Renaissance Line until Princess took it over last year. Entertainment was great, the food super and the service very good. My only gripes regarding the cruise are the buffet had only slim pickins after returning from touring at 4:30-5:00 PM, when, if you had late seating for dinner (8:15) you really needed a substantial snack. There was always something there, but it wasnt much. Princess has adopted the tipping policy of $10 per day per guest, which is tacked on your bill at the end. This is to cover the cabin attendants and foodservice staff, so you dont have to run around with tip envelopes the last day. While amount this is more than fair and couldnt be simpler, I think the level of service has been degraded as a result. It seems like the staff didn't try as hard as they did on the last Princess cruise I took under the old system. Before, if you wanted ice in the bucket in your room at 4:00 you only had to ask once, and the rest of the trip there was ALWAYS ice in the bucket at 4:00 for that afternoon cocktail. Before, the waiter would NEVER make the mistake of bringing the wrong salad or entrée. Nothing earth-shaking, just little stuff, and if you didnt know any better, youd probably not even notice. There was a good mix of age groups, with quite a few families with teenagers, many honeymoon couples, many anniversary couples, middle-aged yuppies like ourselves, and the usual blue-haired (ahem, sorry, more mature) crowd. The only thing Princess might look into is providing more on-board activities for the teen crowd. All in all, I found the cruise extremely relaxing, with opportunity to do as much or as little onboard or on shore as you want, while being catered to as much or as little as you can stand. Hope this article helps. Jeff Moir
The next day found us in Moorea. Another tender port, we were met by the folks from Bathys (http://www.dive-moorea.com/index.html) who is also the contractor for the ship and shuttled us off to their shop at Beachcomber Inter-Continental resort. The pluses on this 2 tank dive were dive sites Opunu and Taotoi, with extraordinary beautiful reef formations, 60 foot depth, 100+ foot visibility, lots of reef fish, lots of black tip sharks, lemon sharks, a moray eel, Janet the pet turtle, and a video photographer who tagged along and got some great shots. The down side was the dive boat was unnecessarily overloaded with 16 divers, and we were jammed in like sardines. They have an identical second boat that they could and should have used to split the group up. On the second dive, after returning to the shop to replace bottles, they miss-counted equipment, leaving one diver without a rig and leaving another with an empty bottle on his! Absolutely ridiculous! Granted, each guy should check his own stuff, but this boat was so chuck-full of gear, it was darn near impossible to know which was whos. If I didnt have a camera and fluorescent tether in the pocket of mine and watched it like a hawk while everyone was suiting up, it would have ended up on someone else. Checking out was a disaster as well. It took a good hour and a half to return to the waterfront where the tender service was, a good hour past the return time advertised by the ship. If anyone had an afternoon tour scheduled for 1:00, they missed it. On the bright side, the video shot was top notch, complete with music. It was a little pricey, but considering most of the pictures I shot from my Motormarine 35 came out disappointingly green in spite of the crystal clear water, I figured Id get it and convert some frames to still pictures and at least have a few really good shots. Im glad I had the film I shot previously developed on the ship, otherwise I wouldnt have known my pictures were sub-par. A bunch of us got together and beat the photo guy down to $60 each, not good, but a whole lot better than the $90 US for a DVD that Bathys originally wanted to charge.
OK, now to sum it up, if I had it to do over, what would I change? Number one, use the dive excursions set up by the Princess, where available. They are set to run on schedule (with the exception of Bathys) so you can dive and still get your tours done in the afternoon. Theyre a little more expensive, but the lack of hassle is worth it, and hey, youve spent thousands to get here, so whats another couple bucks? If you do tour A in the morning and you get back late for tour B, the ship will give you a refund. Also, if you do a 2 tank dive in the morning, theres NO WAY youre going to be back in time to catch an organized tour. Like I mentioned, diving is not available through the ship excursions on every island, and we wanted to dive A LOT. Its a fairly simple deal to make arrangements via the internet with guys on Tahiti, Huahine, and Rarotonga. I looked all over the web and tried to cull little nuggets of info from web sites that would give me some comprehensive advice on diving this cruise and didnt find much. Thats why I was prompted to write this article. The Tahitian Princess 10 day Cruise has got to be the cheapest and easiest way to do the Tahitian Islands. That is one expensive place to try to find lodging, food and day-today stuff. How Princess does it for what they charge, I dont know. It must be because they stock the ship with supplies brought in by container from the US. They do make a fair amount from drink sales on board and excursions. The ship only holds about 680 passengers and another 373 crew and is necessarily small enough to get into the smaller shallower ports of these islands. It is very nicely appointed, having been built in 1999 and operated with the Renaissance Line until Princess took it over last year. Entertainment was great, the food super and the service very good. My only gripes regarding the cruise are the buffet had only slim pickins after returning from touring at 4:30-5:00 PM, when, if you had late seating for dinner (8:15) you really needed a substantial snack. There was always something there, but it wasnt much. Princess has adopted the tipping policy of $10 per day per guest, which is tacked on your bill at the end. This is to cover the cabin attendants and foodservice staff, so you dont have to run around with tip envelopes the last day. While amount this is more than fair and couldnt be simpler, I think the level of service has been degraded as a result. It seems like the staff didn't try as hard as they did on the last Princess cruise I took under the old system. Before, if you wanted ice in the bucket in your room at 4:00 you only had to ask once, and the rest of the trip there was ALWAYS ice in the bucket at 4:00 for that afternoon cocktail. Before, the waiter would NEVER make the mistake of bringing the wrong salad or entrée. Nothing earth-shaking, just little stuff, and if you didnt know any better, youd probably not even notice. There was a good mix of age groups, with quite a few families with teenagers, many honeymoon couples, many anniversary couples, middle-aged yuppies like ourselves, and the usual blue-haired (ahem, sorry, more mature) crowd. The only thing Princess might look into is providing more on-board activities for the teen crowd. All in all, I found the cruise extremely relaxing, with opportunity to do as much or as little onboard or on shore as you want, while being catered to as much or as little as you can stand. Hope this article helps. Jeff Moir
