Is RCCL different?

[Fam_Cruise]

wcdive,

 

Sorry to hear you had a bad cruise. As a fellow diver with a few hundred dives under my belt, I find that mainline cruises are NOT the place to go diving for a variety of reasons. Mainly because you are going to lug dive gear to the Caribbean for a week to get in 2-6 dives depending on your ports of call. When I go on mainline cruises I go for the relaxation, entertainment, and activities are fairly lowkey, maybe a little snorkeling. My scuba and ski trips make up for it though.

 

Another alternative if you love scuba diving are Live Aboards where your will literally eat, sleep and dive. Most in this forum will have absolutely no interest in this type of cruise, but perhaps you and a couple others may. The Aggressor Fleet is worldwide with an especially large presence in the Caribbean. There is also Peter Hughes which is also worldwide, and Nekton Pilot which is in a couple locations in the Caribbean. Googling their names will locate links to their web sites. The nice thing about Live Aboards is once you unpack your dive gear and set it up, you are good to go for the week. Your tank is filled by the staff with gear intact, so literally all you have to do is go out and put on your BC and fall overboard. Warm showers on the aft platform, fresh baked snacks between dives, and up to 5 dives per day. Oh and the swimming pool is huge (the Caribbean).

 

The other options are land based trips which can also be nice if their a dive operation associated with or convenient to the lodging you choose. For many diving locales, like Belize, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, and the GBR and Coral Sea Live Aboards are better or may be the only way to visit the better dive sites. In Belize, from land, the daily boat ride will be a hour each way. On a Live Aboard you are moored on top of the dive site. You can dive the small Cayman sister islands of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman by land, but other than the dive lodge there is not much there so you might as well do a Live Aboard and unpack and set up your dive gear once and not have to deal with lugging dive gear and taking the dive boat each day. It is definitely the way to go for the obsessed scuba diver like myself.

[hankboy]

I did book an all inclusive dive vacation for over my Christmas school break and am very excited! I liked the idea of cruising because you get to see many different ports and I LOVE the ocean.

The vibration in our cabin didn't bother me so much as the noise - just engine noise that seemed to amplify when your head was on the pillow! And I talked to a lady in the elevator one night and she said she paid just over half of what I paid for her balcony room, and she did not book much earlier than I had. Well, at least now I know where NOT to book a cabin and I know what is NOT a good price!

I know it sounds like it, but I'm really not very picky at all, I'm more of a go-with-the-flow type of person, so I think I will give cruising another shot.

Thanks for the info guys!

By all means, give cruising another try! We've cruised on Carnival, Norwegian, Holland and Royal, and thoroughly enjoyed Holland and Royal (especially Royal). DO get in touch with a good Travel Agent, though. He/she should be able to get you the best price and cabin location (that may be how "that lady got that good price"!)

[Ephraim]

Not exactly true...But almost.On Voyager class...On whatever floor Ice rink is on..You have to go up one floor,through the Promonade,then down...

That might not be exactly right..But close...But other than that...yes.RCI ships flow wonderfully....

 

I stand corrected in relation to Voyager class ships. I had forgotten about that. There are two second floors, for and aft with the conference rooms and the skating rink in the middle.