Best shop/excursion/location for Discover Scuba?

[gryffin123]

Hello:

 

My husband and I are going on a Celebrity Cruise in February. We will visit the following ports- we've never been to any of them:

 

St Thomas

St Kitts

Barbados

Dominica

St Martin

 

The ship has Discover Scuba excursions at St. Thomas and at St. Martin. My husband is nervous about it, but is willing because I have always wanted to try scuba.

 

We were planning to snorkel at St. John during our St. Thomas port visit and to do the Discover Scuba in St. Martin. I'm wondering now if we should do the Discover Scuba on St. Thomas instead. Is it worth giving up Trunk Bay/St. Johns for this? If not, is there a shop on St. Johns that might do a Discover dive? Or is there a shop at one of the other ports that we should consider?

 

Any advice would be welcomed!!!

[Dabaras]

A Discover Scuba excursion is what got me into diving 10 years and 650 dives ago. If you or your husband is extremely nervous about it, try and find a discover scuba at a local dive shop before you go and try it in a pool first. Many shops will do it for $25-$50, and some will do it for free. I haven't done the Discover Scuba excursions in either place, I do know that the cruise lines only use shops that follow established PADI or NAUI guidelines for these types of activities.

[omeinv]

I agree with Dabaras. If you find a local dive shop they'll do your discover scuba there. If you hate it (not likely) you won't waste a day of your vacation. If you love it, you have plenty of time to get your open water certification so you can do "real" dives on your trip.

 

Most shops will credit the cost of your Discover SCUBA class against the price of your full course if you decide to go that route.

 

Harris

Denver, CO

[gryffin123]

I've looked into the options for getting certified near home, and there aren't really any good / realistic options (too far away to go for a weekly class).

 

We could do a day trip for a Discover Scuba experience, but I just thought it would be more fun somewhere where we could actually see interesting things.

 

I did just change our cruise to a different itinerary:

 

Aruba, Curaçao, Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia, Antigua, St. Martin & St. Thomas

 

On this cruise, there is also a Discover Scuba excursion in Aruba. It is in the morning and we are in port until 8pm, so we would still have time to do something else in Aruba in the afternoon. The first part of the training is in a pool, so in that respect, it would be better than St. Martin.

[omeinv]

Given that set of facts, it sounds like Aruba would be your best option. The more complete (pool and ocean) discover SCUBA should be better, and you'll have the rest of the day as well.

 

I'm not sure where home is, but come next summer, if you like the experience, you can likely find a way to do your classroom, pool and open water in a more condensed form, that may make it possible to do locally.

 

Harris

Denver, CO