PADI Qualification

Hi There

I'm looking to find anyone that has done their Padi qualification on a RCI ship.

Obviously I have questions etc, but I'll wait to see if anyone responds before I post them! :-)

My wife did the PADI course on Allure a few years ago. Lots of early mornings and studying. I think if she had known how much time it would take from her cruise, she would not have done it.

We didn't do ours on a ship, we did our classroom and pool time over two weekends at home, then got our certification dives in Aruba over I think two or three days. For me, I wouldn't want to paying for a cruise I wasn't enjoying because I had two days classroom time and lots of pool time practicing. I'm not sure how they would do the certification dives as it would be with different dive shops. I liked the fact that we had one instructor (Unique Dive Aruba) who was super great (can't remember her name at this time) and she led us through all three dives. The other thing is that we did more dives after we certified (we were there for two weeks) so we were able to get more comfortable with diving as during your certification dives you are being tested. Even then, we haven't dived for just over a year and before we go on our cruise we are going to do a "refresher course" in Florida to make sure we are comfortable to dive during our cruise. Just my three cents....

I would also recommend getting the classwork out of the way before the cruise. You don't want to be studying on vacation, and that way, you can focus on the fun part of diving.

I got my Scuba Diver cert on the NV. I did the book work at home before the cruise, and then the pool dives and first two OW dives on board. I finished up the OW cert after I got home. I enjoyed it. It was kind of fun having the pool all to ourselves. Boy, were those chair hogs ticked :-p

Hi everyone

Thanks for the replies. I only noticed the Scuba classes yesterday and we really are interested in doing them. It looks like you can do the entire thing for $250 whereas in the UK the course is £400+ and even if you only do the theory segment over here without the dives they want £250 for a 'referral course' which then allows you to just to the dives abroad.

It therefore seems almost too good to be true and we are considering doing the whole thing onboard even if that means a little bit of reading!

Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding the 'times' that the course would be held on and that makes planning excursions very difficult! I took a guess that the dives would likely be held on Haiti (purely because its their resort etc and that would make sense) but if anyone else could share their experience that would be great. We're on an 8 night eastern carib with stops at St Maarten, St Kitts, San Juan and Labadee.

My wife did the dive in St. Maarten.

Also, the type of ceertificate she received requires her to dive with an instructor. Additional certification would be required to dive without an instructor.