Diving Excursions?

[two-foxes]

Has anyone done any scuba diving excursions (either booked on your own or through DCL) for the Eastern or Western? We are getting certified in May and headed out on our cruises in Sept/Oct. The internet has given me some companies, but personal experience is best! Also, if you have done some, are they "newbie-diver friendly?"

 

[hydster]

We've done them but they have all been ship sponsored dives. A great place to ask questions is at Rodales. They have a really nice community of good divers who pretty much have dove everywhere you could possibly think of! They have always been very nice at answering my questions but sometimes it takes a day or two to get a response.

Here is the website addy

http://dive.scubadiving.com/talk/list.php?f=1

Heidi

 

[christinou]

My husband went diving with the disney excursion on our Eastern cruise in February 04, he dove in both St. Martin and St. Thomas, St. Thomas was nicer. He will also dive in February 2005 when we go on the Western, but I can't comment on that yet.
He was the only one diving and it was a lot easier to let Disney take care of it.......

 

[tpseller]

Hi two-foxes -

We are on the May 8 Western. My DH and I are fairly experienced divers and booked our own excursions for diving. I found the name of Eagle Ray divers for Cozumel on this site. I checked out their website and it looked pretty good. We were very interested in not getting into the "cattle-boat" situation.

Chellie from Eagle Ray was very responsive with emailing and said at most they would have 8 divers on the boat. They were very reasonable and accommodated the times we would be on the island. We will be doing two afternoon dives and one night dive.

I would also echo what hydster said about Rodales website. GREAT info there! Watch out though - they are not really excited about Cruise ships!

Just say you are looking for a dive shop that caters to new divers in the locations you are thinking about, they will give you great info.

For diving - I would say that the Western would probably be a better choice for you. Cozumel and Grand Cayman are both known for thier diving.

I will post a report about the diving and dive shop when I return from the May cruise.

Have a great time whichever itinerary you choose!!!

 

[two-foxes]

tpseller-
Eagle Ray was one company that I had researched and I emailed Chellie this past weekend. PLEASE PM me or post a report of how it all went! We are doing Western/Eastern back to backs, and I want to do one dive excursion on each. I heard St. Thomas has good diving as well, so I am looking at the DCL excursion and doing some calling on my own, too. We are also going to do DiveQuest at Epcot for our first "real" (well not so real!) dive.

Rodales looked like Greek to me....I couldn't figure out how their boards worked....the Dis has me either brainwashed or spoiled!