padimi

We dove with Anthony Key in Roatan off of the ship one time. The dives had a lot of coral, but few fish on that side. The last two times we went with Fantasy Island and Sun divers both of which were a much better experience than Anthony Key.

A nice thing about Fantasy Island is that you can do shore dives off of their gazebo to the Prince Albert wreck and the wall near the Coco View resort. This is important for new divers who may not be ready for more demanding dives.

On the last trip when we used Sun Divers, they actually repositioned their boat on the south side of the island as the sea conditions were rough on the north side by Anthony Key. According to one of our fellow passengers who did the Anthony Key excursion with the cruise ship said they were subjected to very rough conditions on that side of the island.

We've done Hugh Parkeys a couple of times off of the cruise ship and have found them to be ok. They actually brought the boat back to the resort between dives because one of the divers became seasick. One curious thing about their cruise ship excursion is the difference in price. Princess was charging 199 while Norweigan was only 119. Royal Caribbean was somewhere between.

It was Dreamtime when we were there. If I was in Costa Maya again, I would seek other options.

They didn't keep any weights on the boat, you had to get them from the shop across the street and take them yourself to the boat. At the shop, the staff refused to strip weights off of a weight belt so I could use the proper weight size in my integrated weight BCD. They would not let anyone take a mesh bag on board the boat. I ended up putting my wet suit on standing up in the pouring rain because I couldn't take my bag on the boat and there was nowhere to get dressed. We had to leave our gear bags unattended out in the parking lot. Their staff was too busy standing under an umbrella that day, too help out any of their customers.

On board the boat most of the tanks were only filled to 2800. They said that was ok. They did not have a single extra tank on board. Our second dive was delayed because the dive guide could not find the single remaining unused tank. Not a good situation in the event of an emergency.

A second group from the ship that was on another boat only got to do one dive because their boat was sinking. They returned to the dock after discovering this problem at the first dive site. The second boat couldn't get the engines started. By the time they got a third boat running, they could only do one dive.