Ship dive vs private dive excursions

[Hilary]

After a lot of reading and snooping on the internet, I finally made a decision about how to book our dive excursions on our upcoming December Celebrity cruise. One of my biggest concerns was that I've heard that ships will cancel dive excursions if there isn't enough interest, and since we're on a smaller ship (1300 pax), it won't surprise me if we're literally the only divers on-board. Because of this, I began researching who to dive with and where, which was quite an extensive process but lots of fun.

 

This is what I came up with:

Bahamas-Nassau Dive Centre

St. Thomas-Blue Island Divers

Tortola-UBS Dive Center (Thank you Rich!!)

Key West-ship excursion

 

I have to say that each of the private operators were incredibly helpful and professional when I asked my questions before doing my bookings. Kathryn and Tony at UBS were particulary helpful and personable on the phone (and in e-mail), and as far as I'm concerned, saved my entire cruise. I had wanted to dive the RMS Rhone badly and the ship isn't offering diving in Tortola, so I thought we were out of luck because of our short port time. Thanks to Rich, on this board, I was able to book a private dive charter UBS which will get us back to the ship in plenty of time. :-)

 

The people at Blue Island Divers came in a close second to the customer service I got from UBS. Although I only used e-mail to communicate with them, they answered all my questions and wanted to know what we wanted to see on our dives.

 

Key West isn't the greatest dive destination (we just dove Key Largo in June), and with our short port time there, the ship's excursion will work just fine. If it gets canceled, I'll be disappointed, but it won't bug me that much.

 

Since making my decision about booking privately, my cruise's available excursions have been posted on-line. So far they aren't offering diving at either Tortola or Nassau, so it's a good thing I'm not relying on them. Now the only 'worry' is that we make it into port on-time!

 

I'll post a full review of the dives and operators when I return in January.

[bruce-r]

Thanks for the update. Look forward to your review in January.

 

Hope you have a dive circus :)

[Tarkus]

imo, you made the right call. as you've found, independent operators WANT the opportunity to serve - and you usually will find a less-crowded dive boat and (frequently) better quality divers (i.e. experience) and divemasters that will give more latitude to these "better" divers. add to it that you likely saved 10%-20% in the process, and you're in a win-win.

 

i too will eagerly await your dive report (esp since today i got invited to go on the zuiderdam next may with planned dive stops in nassau, road town, and stt. have fun blowing bubbles! :)