Warning- Antigua & Scuba Diving with Princess

[kitty555]

This is a "just in case warning".

We just got off the 5/30/04 sailing on the Golden Princess. The scuba diving trip offered by Princess was canceled last week and the week before and will more than likely be canceled for the next month.

Someone on these boards told us right before we sailed that Princess canceled this shore excursion on them last minute when they first got on the boat. Same thing happened to us. We asked the dive people on Princess why they canceled for Antigua and they said that the tour operator they were using didn't meet Princess Standards so they had to fire them. They are in the process of looking for another dive operator but it will probably take a month and they also have a lot of paper work to get together after they select one.

So... just my warning. Go with Dive Antigua or someone else you feel comfortable with and plan it ahead of time. Princess notified us as soon as we got on the ship in San Juan but of course we had to use the ships Internet to book another trip and this cost $$ to use the internet. I would personally cancel this excursion with Princess now and re-book with someone else. I would highly recommend Dive Antigua. Big John (was the guys name) in charge there and it was a very nice dive trip. The cost is also a little cheaper than Princess. We took a taxi over to Dive Antigua place. Cost- 10.00 for taxi ride. It is located at the Rex Halcyon Resort.


Now on another note. We did book the scuba trip through Princess for St. Lucia and they use Sandals. That was very fun and I would highly recommend this trip.
Good luck

[brucejr]

Glad things worked out for you in the end.

Canceled shore excursions are just another reason to make your own arrangements when diving from a cruise ship.

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if there's a way to construe my post as non-argumentative, please do so.</font>
Cruise photos on my [url="http://www.brobertson.org/"]Home page [/url]<font color="990066">
Spring Break was on the Grand Princess </font>21, March 2004
So when is the next cruise?

[susmith1]

True... it's good to make your own excursions, but sometimes that could lead to a problem too.

I was on the Brilliance of the Seas in December and had booked the stingray city dive directly with Bob Soto's and unfortunately, our ship didn't make to Grand Cayman (seas too rough to operate the tenders) so I had to quickly go on the ship's internet and send an email to cancel. Fortunately, they did refund my dive trip, so I wasn't out anything. But... I'm sure it's less frequently that the ship misses a port than a shore excursion is cancelled.