It's unfortunate that Backpacking Diver didn't enjoy his experience on the Tropic Dancer. While I have no way of knowing what actually happened during his cruise, I have to say that my wife and I have just returned from a week on the Dancer, and I count it as one of my best diving experiences ever.
For context, I am a NAUI certified instructor and underwater film-maker (
UnderwaterMotion.com), and my wife is a a master diver and biologist. I have 970 logged dives. My previous liveaboard experiences include Caribbean diving with the Nekton and Aggressor fleets, and Pacific diving in Chuuk off the Odyssey.
De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum, but I would like to comment on some of the points raised by BD.
"
One of the main subjects of discussion among us over the weekvery few fish or any life, maybe one or two sharks."
Well, that's odd. In my 33 dives in the last week with the Tropic Dancer, I think I must seen over a hundred sharks...to the point where the members of our group stopped signalling each other when a shark was spotted. In three dives at Blue Corner, we spent about twenty minutes per dive watching dozens blacktips, white tips, reef, nurse and grays. Other highlights for us included three mantas, many turtles, huge Napoleon groupers, and spectacular schools of barracuda, Moorish Idols, and an amazing array of nudibranchs and other cool critters. Don't know what your problem was.
"
at one point in Peleliu we left the wall (where we actually were seeing some sharks)..."
This would be the "one or two sharks you referenced earlier?
"to spend most of the dive crossing the barren, current-swept plateau, which was *much* wider than the guide seemed to expect."
I'm not sure you paid much attention to the topography of the Peleliu sites that give rise to the eddy currents that simply have to be crossed. With all due respect, I didn't find any of our guides "surprised" by the eddies, or by the stretches of busted up coral, usually between two cuts. Perhaps you were misreading their reaction?
"One of the guides, Ike, knew his stuff..."
You are aware that Ike is in fact the Captain of the vessel?
"The dives were at the same time every day, so we werent timing the spots for tides etc., which certainly had an impact on what we were seeing and where we could dive (the rigid schedule adherence came to be a massive headache)."
Given that the Dancer's promotion clearly indicates that (a) they're going to try to offer five dives per day (which in our case, they did), and (b) dives are off their skiff, which requires that everyone assemble at a given time for a briefing and board the shuttle, the rigor of their schedule worked just fine for me. On our dives they addressed the variability of currents (tidal and otherwise), as well as congestion at the more popular sites, by providing contingency scenario briefings and a final skiff-board briefing just before entry. I agree I prefer the flexibility of the Truk Odyssey, but since the Dancer cannot moor directly over its sites, a bit more structure is understandable.
"If you hesitated trying to find some dead coral to hook to, the guides grabbed it out of your hand and hooked it to the live stuff."
I personally found the opposite to be true: when a less-experienced diver hooked into live coral despite our briefings, the DMs would reposition their hook for them to minimize damage.
"The boat photographer, Ben, was all over the coral, and I saw another guide clambering hand-over-hand on it, which was a bit disappointing."
I'm pretty old school, and believe in zero contact between divers, fish and coral, and I have to agree that the notion of "playing" with Napoleon groupers sends the wrong message to divers. Having said that, our DMs (including Ben) were totally solid divers, and in one case took other divers aside for a quiet word about maintaining buoyancy and a respectful distance from coral. As an underwater videographer, I acknowledge that both photographers and videographers tend to fixate on "The Shot" to the exclusion of all else. I agree with you: that's not an excuse. I personally did not witness the behaviour you described from our DMs last week.
"Generally, the dive guides would all be on the boat first."
Yep. And then they probably took your fins and helped you into the boat? I'm going to assume (not having read otherwise) that they did, in fact, recover everyone after every dive, and no-one was washed out to sea? May I respectfully suggest that if you are appalled by a wait of fifteen minutes on the surface while the dive boat picks up other members of your group, you might want to consider other venues.
"
Melissa explained the last night that the Dancers policy is to intimidate the divers a bit so that we all behave."
Again, not having been on your trip, I can't comment - but that certainly was not our experience. Our briefings were concise, clear, covered the different approaches our dive might take given current and other variables, and always invited questions. Is it possible there was someone in your dive group that needed a little bit of scaring? (I ask because we had a couple of divers in our week that seemed to simply ignore the briefings, as well as basic dive common sense, which caused a bit of angst among the rest of us. )
"Nitroxwell, you pay $150 to use it for the week, and its at 26%."
I believe their standard is 28%, not 26% (that's what is was last week), but otherwise I agree with you. Our max depth never exceeded 100 ft. - we could have done a 32% mix easily.
I agree with your comments on Rajmani's cooking - that was simply the best liveaboard cuisine I have ever had. In terms of the rest of the staff, there was no "Melissa", but the DMs were uniformly excellent, albeit quite different in their respectives styles. Ben, who you referenced, has an extremely dry sense of humoir that I quite enjoyed (especially his mock-serious admonishments to "remember your training and you'll be okay"), and Drew was a superb diver, an excellent manager (he seemed to be overseeing the dive organization and work assignment processes), and exemplified service culture. We hit him over the course of the week with a dozen or so requests, and he never failed to respond immediately.
It's unfortunate you didn't have a good time. But having read your plug for rival dive operators, your somewhat tasteless personal insinuations about some of the crew, and some frankly ridiculous assertions ("one or two sharks"? Oh, please...), I think it's important to state that we had a great, great time, and would recommend the Dancer without hesitation. 
