PADI Dive cert onboard?

Hi all,

I just discovered that they have a PADI suba certification on board Liberty (maybe others) and the checkout dives are in Cozemel. Has anyone done this? When do they do the classwork and pool dives?

thanks,

Steve

Steve - First, I'm a diver so I can speak from experience. Don't take the class on the ship. You will lose too much of your vacation time. There are several hours of class time, several hours of pool time and several hours of "homework" that needs to be done between classes. It would be a shame to lose so much of your vacation. Find a dive shop at home and get certified before you cruise. If you take the class on the cruise and the weather is bad so you can't dive, what have you gained? Also, if you take the class on the ship, I believe it is a "resort" certificate that you get which means you can only dive if you have an instructor with you. If you take the class at home, you will have a full open water certification which means you get to choose where and when you dive. At the very least do all of the classroom and pool stuff at home and do your dives on the cruise. It's a great sport, you'll love it!

I have to echo what cruiseguy said. We had considered doing this on our Liberty cruise so that my husband would be certified and could go diving with me. However, when we tried to gather further information from Royal Caribbean, all we got was a royal runaround. What we were able to discern from what little information they were willing to provide is that you have to split the check-out dives between two ports and if you happen to have bad weather that forces your dives to be cancelled at one or both of the ports, then you're SOL.

We decided not to chance it and found a great dive shop in NYC that was able to get my husband certified, even though we only started thinking about it about a month before the cruise. They gave my husband the book and DVD, which he took home and read/watched. Then he took all of the quizzes at home and spent an afternoon at the dive shop going through the answers and taking the final exam. After that, we spent an afternoon at the pool for the pool dives, followed by a weekend at Dutch Springs. It was really cold and the visibility was terrible, but he managed to make it through.

Although the diving at Dutch Springs was certainly more difficult/less fun than in the caribbean, I'm glad we didn't waste our vacation time on getting DH certified while on our cruise. Also, since he was having ear trouble the first day (Saturday), he missed the second check-out dive that day and had to do three on Sunday, something he would not have been able to do if he had attempted to get certified through the ship.

All told, I would only recommend the cruise ship dive course for those who are looking to get only their resort certification or to try out diving before spending additional time/money on their open water certification

Thanks for the replies. This explains how the course can be so much shorter than my local dive shop. I couldn't find anything on the PADI web site about a "resort certification". Could you point me to a definition? Does this mean that we would be able to go on other group scuba dives with the cruise line or only if they had a certified instructor as the group leader? I'm OK with only being able to dive with an instructor. My expectation is that this will be something my son and I will do when we go on cruises not (yet another) new hobby :o

I talked to RC this morning and they said that both of the dives would be in Cozumel and the on ship training would be on the first sea day which would be our second day out.

thanks again for the advise,

Steve

Steve - I'm not sure if PADI uses the term "resort" certification. An open water certification requires 4 dives. The course you take on the ship is only two dives which is why you are required to dive with an instructor. You say you would be happy diving with an instructor. That's all well and good if you have an instructor willing to to dive with you! As I said earlier, by getting your open water certification at home, you can dive where and when you want. Even if you plan on diving only while cruising, there may not be an instructor available for the time/place that you want to dive. Most dive operations have dive Masters but not dive Instructors. So depending on where when you want to dive on your cruise, you may not be able to due to the availability of an instructor.

Steve - I found this on the PADI web site. The class you would take on the ship (I think) is called Discover Scuba Diving which is what PADI calls it. Another disadvantage of this class is that you will only be able to dive to 40'. That may sound like it would be sufficient but most of the excursions that I have done have been two dives, one to 35' - 40' and the other to 60', 80' even 100'. The marine life varies at different depths and you'll want to see it all.

http://www.padi.com/padi/en/kd/dsddetail.aspx

Ken,

Perfect! That's just the answer I was looking for. If an instructor isn't along on all the dives this cert isn't worth much. We leave on the 25th so we may be out of time to get certified before the cruise. They do have a Fri/Sat/Sun thing for 2 weekends that might work. If not we'll just settle for the discover scuba dive in Cozumel.

Steve

I had a similar experience when I wanted to take my certification course aboard a ship during my vacation because I live in NY and it is too cold up here to dive. This was a few years ago.

Royal Caribbean only offered the "resort" course which consisted of partial classroom and 2 dives. This would not qualify myself as a certified diver.

Princess offered the full "open water" course which consisted of the full classroom and 4 dives. This was a full course but cost $449 (I think) at the time as opposed to RCCL which was charging $249 (I think) for the partial course.

We decided to cruise with Princess for that vacation because it gave us full certification (which is what we wanted most out of the cruise that trip).

Princess sent us the book and DVD in advance which you had to read and do on your own.

When we got aboard the ship we met with the scuba people and they discussed the plans for the week. It consisted of a meeting that first night (maybe an hour at most) to review the book. A pool dive (freshwater thankfully) early the next morning during the sea day (literally at 8 or 9am) then classroom part 2 at night (same time about an hour). Another pool dive the next morning before we went to our first island (princess cays). A classroom session the next night after Jamaica (1 hour again). 2 dives the next day in Grand Cayman. 2 dives the following day in Cozumel. Then a final classroom test after Cozumel that night. Then the last sea day we had an afternoon meet where the instructor threw us a party and gave us our temporary certificates.

I would say in total we spent 3 hours at the pool early morning, 4 hours at night for class, and had 2 dives in great locations (which we counted as our shore excursions on those islands since we payed for the course and it came with the dives). To me...this was a wonderful way to take my open water certification and I didn't feel like I missed out on anything during my trip.

Of course we had to switch from RCCL to Princess in order to do this certification. I thought they had a great ship just like RCCL (we were on the Caribbean Princess). Originally we wanted to take the course on Voyager or one of the other of that class (this was pre-Freedom)...but since RCCL didn't offer the full course we cruised Princess instead.

I would say if you really want to get your certification then do what I did...it really was worth it and a great way to do your certification.

We're thinking of taking this course (the proper name for the certificate is PADI Scuba Diver certification) while we're taking our TA on the Independence later this year. We'll have plenty of sea days so don't feel we're losing out on any vacation time. Any other time of year, we wouldn't have the time to go take the lessons. Also, we don't mind spending some time of our vacation learning new things. The dives in our case would be in St Maarten. We've done this port before and couldn't really find anything that really appealled to us so again, don't mind spending it learning how to dive.

I've looked into it quite a bit on these boards and like has been said, it isn't a full open water PADI certificate. You do indeed need 4 dives for this, and with the onboard course you only get 2 dives. What I did learn is that you can upgrade to the open water certificate at a later stage with the necessary lessons and extra dives obviously.

We just think it will give us a nice taster of what it's like at a fairly cheap price (cheaper than lessons at our local centre!) and give us something to do on our sea days.

Steve,

I hope you can get it done before you go. I have been diving for 33 years. My son got certified 3 years ago at age 14. I dove in Cozumel last year with him and loved it. It was his first dive in the Caribbean (we're upstate New Yorkers) and seeing the expressions on his face was one of the greatest father/son moments I have shared with him. We saw moray eels, turtles, lobster, octopus, and so much more!

We were just on the Adventure and I spoke with the dive staff. They offer the full Open Water course, but they only have a few spots and it sells out quickly. I didn't see it listed anywhere, so I don't know if it can be reserved in advance. I was surprised because all I saw on the website was the Scuba Diver certification.

We did our PADI course in our home town because of what was said by other posters about all the class time ect.

Then we went online and found some dive shops to let them know when we would be in their ports to book check out dives.

We did 2 in Cozumel with Dive Paradise res# 1800-308-5125 and 2 more in Grand caymen, the place was called Ocean frontiers. Sorry dont know their #. But you can look it up online. Both places were great. All we did was take a taxi from the port, got our gear and jumped right in.

We found it to be much cheeper then through RCCL.

So you could give that a try.

Cheers, and happy diving.

Aside from the loss of cruise time to get certified on the ship, if you do get certified at home you will usually get more time to practice your skills in the pool if you want the extra practice. Also, if you certify at home, you will likely find a home dive shop that can help you find good dive operators at various destinations possibly saving $$$ over what the ship offers.

You can easily take your check-out dives at destinations which gets you an instructor on those first true open water dives for added comfort at a new destination. That will let you get the ground work done at home, establish a relationship there, and then have dives while aboard the ship adding that feature to your vacation.

Get out there and Enjoy your Diving!!! That is one fun activity. If you are a Disney Fan, you should know that it is possible (for a fee) to dive in The Living Seas at Epcot!

First...I wish I knew that they did offer (although not listed on the website) the full open water course through RCCL. When I asked them at the time (that was back 4 years ago) they didn't offer it at all and the only line that offered the full course was Princess. RCCL should really put this on their website as it would encourage people to take the full course on one of their ships and make the trip a scuba adventure.

As far as The Living Seas...being a Disney employee (well ABC...but it's the same company)...I did the dive last year when I was down in Orlando. It is the most fun you can have on a 40 minute dive in your life. Interacting with the people in the observation booths as well as at the Coral Sea restaurant is something not to be missed. They take you down to an underwater bubble where you can take off your mask and regulator. Then it is a free swim in the tank to explore where you really are a part of the show for the guests. Lots of video taken and a wonderful experience.

I looked again at pricing...just to make sure...and it was actually...

RCCL: $249 for Basic Scuba Diver

Princess: $359 for Open Water Scuba Diver

I wonder how much RCCL charges for Open Water since Aqua said it is offered on the Adventure.

Steve...since you are on Liberty in a few weeks...you should go up to the sports deck right when you get on the ship and check with the dive staff to see if you can take the full course with them during the cruise. The RCCL dive staff on the Liberty is great...I took a cruise last year with them and had a great time on both my dives...and if you like the water...I would suggest trying the Flowrider as well...lots of fun. Like I said...I did my certification with Princess and it was very easy and didn't hamper my cruise at all.

Get out there and Enjoy your Diving!!! That is one fun activity. If you are a Disney Fan, you should know that it is possible (for a fee) to dive in The Living Seas at Epcot!

I'm a total Disney fan and I didn't know about a Living Seas dive. That would be very cool! We haven't been to WDW in 12 years. Disneyland is much closer for us.

Steve

ISteve...since you are on Liberty in a few weeks...you should go up to the sports deck right when you get on the ship and check with the dive staff to see if you can take the full course with them during the cruise. The RCCL dive staff on the Liberty is great...I took a cruise last year with them and had a great time on both my dives...and if you like the water...I would suggest trying the Flowrider as well...lots of fun. Like I said...I did my certification with Princess and it was very easy and didn't hamper my cruise at all.

Thanks! We were on Liberty last year, hmm it will be a year next week, and got to know the Flowrider rather well :D

I have one more issue to sort out before I dive anywhere. I took my son on a Discover Dive at the local shop. He has Epilepsy which has been controlled for years with medication. We knew we had an issue with him and the medical forms so we took them to his Dr and got him signed off.

What we didnt' expect was my issue. Are you over 45? Yes. And have a family history of stroke or heat attack. Damm Yes. Well not me but my mother. So my son went on the dive while watched. I've done the Dr thing but they want to run a stress test before signing me off. Everything else was fine. That's scheduled for 7/10. The last chance for us to get into a cert class locally is 7/11. Cutting it a bit close?

Steve

I have seen both these offered. With padi there is onboard coursework, which we wouldn't mind as my DH is really interested in this, and you get a certificate. Can this certificate be upraded to open water at our local dive shop? DH works alot, so never has the time to do this. Will discover scuba just leave him thirsting for more? I did scuba diving maybe 30 yrs ago and not deep at all. We live on the coast, but I was never certified, just instructed. I would be willing to take the coursework with him though. DH wants to scuba dive, what do you think?

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=40

My two cents... get certified before you go. That way, you will be enjoying your dives instead of learning how to do them. However, be warned: diving is addictive!

Welcome to the beautiful underwater world.

Wendy

dive pix

http://community.webshots.com/user/wendyandkeith

website

http://www.freewebs.com/wendyandkeith

My 18 yo son took the PADI Open Water certification course on board the Mariner in April 2007. It was the full class. He left the ship with an PADI Open Water cert. The course work was done on sea days. Since he wanted to dive in port, the 2 days of diving to do the 4 cert dives were excellent. I think they were included in the course fees. He found the instruction to be excellent and since he was too old to hang with his sister in the teen club and too young to hang with the club crowd, he found it too be a great way to spend his days at sea. He never missed a meal or any of the activities we wanted to do. He had a great time.

Here is the info on the Living Seas

http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdw/parks/tourDetail?id=EpcotDiveQuestTourPage

Hi all,

We just got back from the Western Caribbean on Liberty and getting our PADI Open Water Cert. Here's the schedule for the scuba dive cert.

Sunday 7:30 - 11:00 pool training (at sea)

Monday 3:00 - 6:00 classroom (Labadee day)

Wednesday 8:00 - 1:00 2 ocean dives (Grand Cayman)

Kenny and I decided to continue with the the open water cert. Here's the additional schedule.

Wednesday 3:00 - 6:00 classroom chapters 4 and 5 and final

Thursday 7:30 - 9:30 pool training

Thursday 10:00 - 1:30 2 ocean dives in Cozumel

Friday finish paper work.

As you can see, it does take a lot of time away from your cruise. In our case, we got the PADI book from a friend and had read it before we sailed. Well my son did. I ready chapters 1-3 (suba dive cert) on the plane to Miami. I spend a couple of hours in addition reading and studying. Getting up early was a bummer as I couldn't convice myself to go to bed early. Sleeping in on Friday was real nice!

We had maybe 20 in the scuba dive cert class and 3 in the open water cert class. The instructors were great!

The recomendation from the folks on this board were to get certified before the cruise and I think in most cases, that's good advice. In our case there wasn't time. My wife had just had surgery and really needed to rest most of the cruise so this was a way for my son and I to do something together while Mom rested. For us, it worked. It was a great feeling accomplishing something on the cruise. This is the first time we'll come home with somthing other than souvineers and a bigger belt line :eek: .

I'd be happy to answer anyone's questions about the details.

Steve

Quick question, please. This thread deals principally with initial or basic certification. But what about those of us who hold a C card but haven't dived in a number of years? There aren't many dive shops in our area and only one appears to offer a PADI recertification course.

I've checked existing threads and found no discussion on recertification. Has anyone taken such a course while on-board to requalify for open water dive excursions? If so, would be interested in cost and time requirement (we're currently scheduled for Voyager in spring 2009 and I presume that such courses, if available, would be offered on Voyager and Freedom class vessels). Thanks,

T Lex

Quick question, please. This thread deals principally with initial or basic certification. But what about those of us who hold a C card but haven't dived in a number of years? There aren't many dive shops in our area and only one appears to offer a PADI recertification course.

 

I've checked existing threads and found no discussion on recertification. Has anyone taken such a course while on-board to requalify for open water dive excursions? If so, would be interested in cost and time requirement (we're currently scheduled for Voyager in spring 2009 and I presume that such courses, if available, would be offered on Voyager and Freedom class vessels). Thanks,

 

T Lex

There is a refresher course offered. I believe it is $49.95. Talk with the Sea Trek personnel and they can get you up to speed so you can go diving.

I realize the original post was from 2008, but I know there are others that may be interested in an Hybrid method of getting their Padi Open Water Certification on a cruise…

First we signed up with our local dive shop, DiVentures in Omaha, where we did the class work, PADI swim requirements, and did the confined water pool dives, quizzes, and test in November. We are very glad we did this step at a local dive shop, as Rena and Pat were wonderful to us.

We took our Diver's log & the completed paperwork for the referral dive with us to San Juan PR. We arrived a few days before the NCCL cruise and we did our first two open water dives with Caribe Aquatic Adventures that meets in the cove behind Normandie Hotel in San Juan.

Karen was great and the shore dive concept was excellent for beginners!

We then took the paper work she completed along with our freshly stamped Diver's logs, and relaxed for a few days. In Barbados, after walking around town a bit, we jumped in a cab for the Hilton's Barbados Blue Dive Shop and completed our third PADI Dive on an excellent reef area, with turtles and lots of fish, in about 45' of water. Our fourth and final PADI certification dive was done very near Barbados Blue office, in the Carlisle Bay Marine Park. In about 35 feet of water there were 3 or 4 good sized ship wrecks covered with coral and fish... excellent! Barbados Blue processed our C-Card registration on line and gave us a printed copy of a temp card, if we wanted to continue diving later on our cruise.

Recap: Plan ahead and give yourself a time buffer as well as a Plan B. Find a local dive shop you are comfortable with and get a clear understanding of their course plan. Tell them your intentions of doing the Open Water on your cruise. If you are not a good swimmer, get some practice in before you do the PADI swim test. Give yourself time to study, and do the pool dives. We got to PR a couple days early and did our dives the first day. If bad weather hit, we could have gone the next day. We did our final dives on the first island we arrived at,so once again if bad weather hit, I had a list of PADI dive shops along the way where could have gotten dives 3 & 4 in.

All in all a wonderful experience with all three PADI locations and was very happy we did it. We sailed on NCCL's Adventures of the Seas and loved it.

Hope this helps

Tom and Marilyn