Diving in Belize

[kellyshantz]

I have some friends on the cruise with me in June that would like to do a diving excursion. I saw Hugh Parkeys Belize Dive and Sea Sports. Hugh Parkeys said you have to book through the ship. Has anyone booked their own diving excursion?

[Tina-Ann]

I have some friends on the cruise with me in June that would like to do a diving excursion. I saw Hugh Parkeys Belize Dive and Sea Sports. Hugh Parkeys said you have to book through the ship. Has anyone booked their own diving excursion?

 

I just booked a private dive excursion in Belize today for our family of 4. We will be on the Crown in February and Hugh Parkey does that ships dive excursion....he told me that I would have to book through the ship....anyways, I booked through Belize Seasports. They have been great with their correspondance, have gotten great reviews, prices are better than the ship and take a max of 8 divers....we'll see. I also booked a private dive in Roatan through Scuba Roatan and they have been super to correspond as well, now I just have to book a dive trip at Cozumel.

[kellyshantz]

Thanks for your help on this one. Have a wonderful trip.

[malon55]

Has anybody tried the Belize Hol Chan One Tank SCUBA Dive and Shark Ray Alley Snorkel Excursion by Air ?

[beckyjohns]

Belize is the one port where we do actually use the ship excursion and here's why. The tender ride in Belize is long, maybe 20-30 minutes, including loading and unloading. In order to use a local operator, you have to tender in 30 minutes, then catch the charter that takes you on a boat right back out to sea again. When your dives are done, repeat that process again. It's a LONG day and depending how long you're in port, you may be cutting it close. Not to mention, the first tenders take the ship-sponsered tours first which means you won't even get the first few tenders and you may be late meeting your dive operator. The ship sponsored dive trip will have you board the dive boat DIRECTLY from the ship (no tender) and deliver you back DIRECTLY to the ship. In my opinion, well worth the little bit of extra money.

[divinmule]

belize is the one port where we do actually use the ship excursion and here's why. The tender ride in belize is long, maybe 20-30 minutes, including loading and unloading. In order to use a local operator, you have to tender in 30 minutes, then catch the charter that takes you on a boat right back out to sea again. When your dives are done, repeat that process again. It's a long day and depending how long you're in port, you may be cutting it close. Not to mention, the first tenders take the ship-sponsered tours first which means you won't even get the first few tenders and you may be late meeting your dive operator. The ship sponsored dive trip will have you board the dive boat directly from the ship (no tender) and deliver you back directly to the ship. In my opinion, well worth the little bit of extra money.

 

ditto!

[jcpelly]

Belize is the one port where we do actually use the ship excursion and here's why. The tender ride in Belize is long, maybe 20-30 minutes, including loading and unloading. In order to use a local operator, you have to tender in 30 minutes, then catch the charter that takes you on a boat right back out to sea again. When your dives are done, repeat that process again. It's a LONG day and depending how long you're in port, you may be cutting it close. Not to mention, the first tenders take the ship-sponsered tours first which means you won't even get the first few tenders and you may be late meeting your dive operator. The ship sponsored dive trip will have you board the dive boat DIRECTLY from the ship (no tender) and deliver you back DIRECTLY to the ship. In my opinion, well worth the little bit of extra money.

 

Plus you get to go to Turneff Atoll with the ship sponsored cruise. At least that is where we went when I did it.

[Catalina309]

What cruise line was that?

 

I'm going to Belize on Norwegian in April. They don't offer a SCUBA excursion there anymore. They stated that since 9/11, they are no longer can permit any excursion boats to come along side of the ship. Therefore, you have to tender ashore first. Very disappointing for us. But if other cruise lines take you out to Turneff, I would like to know for future plans

[Tina-Ann]

What cruise line was that?

 

I'm going to Belize on Norwegian in April. They don't offer a SCUBA excursion there anymore. They stated that since 9/11, they are no longer can permit any excursion boats to come along side of the ship. Therefore, you have to tender ashore first. Very disappointing for us. But if other cruise lines take you out to Turneff, I would like to know for future plans

 

We cruised on the Crown Princess. And in Belize we dove with Sea Sports Belize. We tendered to shore, walked 5 minutes outside the gate to their shop (on the waterway, dive boat right there). however....we did NOT dive at Turneff. We had two great dives (saw a pod of 6 dolphins), but not Turneff...

[Tina-Ann]

One more thing...even though we did not have a ship sponsored tour we easily got on the first tender to shore. We were done with our 2 dives and dropped off by dive boat right in the tender area by 2:30.

[SucalT]

Has anybody tried the Belize Hol Chan One Tank SCUBA Dive and Shark Ray Alley Snorkel Excursion by Air ?

 

I will be doing this dive and snorkel in 2 weeks!

[Maria2Madea]

Belize is the one port where we do actually use the ship excursion and here's why. The tender ride in Belize is long, maybe 20-30 minutes, including loading and unloading. In order to use a local operator, you have to tender in 30 minutes, then catch the charter that takes you on a boat right back out to sea again. When your dives are done, repeat that process again. It's a LONG day and depending how long you're in port, you may be cutting it close. Not to mention, the first tenders take the ship-sponsered tours first which means you won't even get the first few tenders and you may be late meeting your dive operator. The ship sponsored dive trip will have you board the dive boat DIRECTLY from the ship (no tender) and deliver you back DIRECTLY to the ship. In my opinion, well worth the little bit of extra money.

 

Great info! I was considering booking outside of the ship but this helped me decide to stick with the ship's excursion. Thank you!

 

Now on to search for diving in Roatan!

[mdrobtx]

Has anybody tried the Belize Hol Chan One Tank SCUBA Dive and Shark Ray Alley Snorkel Excursion by Air ?

 

We did the snorkel with them. Excellent experience and operation. They hand walk you through the whole day including the flight over to Ambergris and back. Even had time to hit the Wet Lizard for a couple of post excursion beers.

 

Search this forum and my user name and you can find the whole review with pics and video.

Michael........

 

Here. Found my review:

 

We snorkeled Ambergris Caye in Jan. I've dove and snorkeled all over the Caribbean and it was in the top five. We used ecotoursbelize to book it. Great outfit and great people. Here's my review. Be sure to check out the video link at the end of the reiview for several short videos of the trip.

 

Next port was Belize City. Now here we got even more adventurous. We booked an excursion where we flew over to Ambergris Caye for a snorkel trip to the Hol Chan marine reserve and then over to shark ray alley to swim with the sharks and rays. This was done thru ecotoursbelize. This excursion had to be one of the best excursions we’d ever taken. Search the cruise critic members list for my user name and look for the post on this excursion and you will find a full review with pics and video. But here are the highlights. First the tender ticket process with Carnival. They start handing out tender tickets between 7:30 and 8am in the Follies theater. I arrived about 7:15 as we needed to get off the ship as soon as possible to catch our flight. The Carnival reps showed up about 7:30 and informed me that it would be about 20 minutes till they handed out the stickers. I was the only guest in the Follies. They let me stay and closed the doors and the other guests started lining up outside. A few realized they could go to the balcony seats on deck 3 and walk down the stairs inside the theater so they got in early and the Carnival reps let them stay. At 7:35 the Carnival rep asked me whether I was on a ship sponsored tour and I relpied “no”. He gave me a sticker with a number 4 on it. This is a numerical value only and does NOT represent when you will get off the ship. They will start with a number (4 in this case) and then go in numerical order after that. So it does not mean you will be the 4th group getting off. We went up to the cabin and got our snorkel gear together and headed back to the Follies theater at 8am where all persons wanting to go to shore or on tours have to depart from. After reading the previous reviews I figured we had a long wait. We were scheduled on a 9:30 flight (ships time) so we had an hour and a half to get off the ship and make it to the municiple airport. WOW!! They started calling the Carnival sponsored tours just after 8am. They called number 4 for all persons who wanted to go to shore on their own. COOL, we were off the ship about 8:25am. They tender took 15 minutes exactly. We were met directly on the pier with a rep from the tour company and they took us to their office on the pier to issue us flight vouchers and take care of the paper work. After a few minutes they drove us to the airport (7 minutes) and we arrived there right at 9am. Caught the 9:30am flight over to Ambergris on Maya Island Air (14 minutes). We were met at the airport shack by a rep from the snorkel/dive shop and he walked us over to their shop and we got our fins and gear. I’ve dove and snorkeled all over the Carribean and the Hol Chan marine reserve is some of the best snorkeling I’ve ever done. There are park rangers in boats right there to make sure it remains pristine. I jumped into waist deep water, stuck my head in and right there was a green sea turtle and ray. WOW again. Within 10 minutes we’d seen rays, turtles, two morays and nurse sharks. It was hard to get out of the water. Next stop was shark ray alley. On the way there we ran into a pod of dolphin. A rare occurance in the shallow reef area our dive master told us. He pulled right up to them and for 5 or 6 minutes we had a great photo and video ops. Our dive master encouraged us to jump in with them but then we’d missed the photos and videos. Besides they were moving pretty fast and I figured you’d only have a few seconds at most before they were out of sight or touch. It was a very exciting experience. Once again look for my full review and videos by searchng Ambergris Caye in the Belize forum. This excursion is done every day ships are in port and they have never had any guest miss the tender back to the ship. All I can say is BOOK IT! You will not be dissappointed. It is $115 per person and this includes everything. They hand walk you thru the whole day, flight and everything. After the snorkeling we grabbed a bite to eat and walked back to the airstrip for our 2pm fllight back to Belize city. It is a beautiful flight with great views of the many Cayes. The last tender leaves at 4pm and we were back on the pier at 2:30 with plenty of time to have a couple of Belikins at the Wet Lizard.

 

videos. click on the link and they will play automatically back to back. First two short ones are of just tendering into Belize City. Or use the arrows at the top of the video screen to jump forward thru the 19 videos.

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[SailingDeanna]

Thanks for posting your review. I think we will do that in Jan!