Diving Instruction Aboard Ship

[GlennPgh]

We are going to be crusing the Caribbean Princess the 21st of Aug. We would like to do some diving instruction on the ship before arriving ther port of Grand Caymans. Has anyone found this availabe? If so do you do it, what was the cost and how did you sign up?

Glenn

[paulli]

Check out http://www.newwaves.com/. There are several ways you can do it. One way is to do all your book work at home, pool sessions on ship and open water dives in port. I believe you can also use a local PADI dive shop at you home to do class and pool work and do the open water check out dives in port with the ship.

[cindersue]

I would recommend getting certified BEFORE before you cruise! I wouldn't want to spend most of my cruise studying .If not do the "new waves program".Get the bookwork out of the way before you leave on your cruise.I'd only want to do the pool work onboard like paulli suggested... You must be Certified to dive in Grand Caymen. I did a refresher course onboard. It was a good course...Good Luck! Cindy

[GlennPgh]

Thanks for the info. I think I need to be more specific. We're doing an Intro to Diving with Absolute Divers on Grand Cayman. They call it a "resort course". We were wondering if there was a resort course on the boat that would save us some resort course instruction time in Grand Cayman.

[005flyer]

Both my wife and I learned to dive on the Grand a few years ago. It was great - we know most of the instructors and they all do a great job.

 

Loved it so much I'm in the middle of my Divemaster certification.

 

Let me know if you have any specific questions.

[spingal]

Glennpgh,

 

Even if you do a resort course on the ship (don't know if they even do this), I think you will still have to go through the instruction in Grand Cayman. The only way to avoid instruction is to be a certified diver. Resort diving operators need to ensure for themselves that they teach you the basics and can not rely on the fact that you have done previous resort dives.

 

I was certified by Princess and I did exactly what Paulli mentioned in his post. I did all my course work and pool work at home before I left for the cruise and then did my open water dives when we were in port. That worked well for me but you would only do that if you knew you want to get your certification.

 

Hope this helps!

[GlennPgh]

Thanks to everyone for providing extremely helpful information. I can't tell you how informative these threads are for relatively new cruisers like us.

 

We're going to talk to the local dive shop and see if we can't get the pool work done before we go.

[cindersue]

Great Idea! The more you can do beforehand the more comfortable and relaxed you will be in Grand Caymen! They have some great dives there! If you can get certified before your cruise then you can dive in other ports as well. Talk to the folks at the dive shop they may have different options..Or if you were certified beforehand you could just do regular dives in port. There is also a snorkel and scuba section somewhere on the CC boards Burbunny and Bruce Jr are really helpful! Best of Luck Cindy

[tom-n-jules]

Sorry for coming in late on this thread... Hope my 2 cents aren't too late for you, Glenn.

 

I'm certified, and we're taking our niece on a cruise for HS grad next June, and we wanted to do diving. (DW isn't certified, so now I'll have a dive buddy!! :D )

 

We called the New Waves program to ask about getting her open-water portion done during the cruise; we were going to do her class and pool here first. We found out that on our first two non-Princess Cays ports of call days - in our case Montego Bay and Cayman - would be spent entirely on her open-water work and leave no time whatsoever for "real" diving. :mad: One of the reasons for picking the Western itinerary that we did was so she (and I) could dive Cayman and we didn't want to miss it. We decided instead to get everything completed here locally.

 

I know a lot of certified divers, and they typically have a less than positive take on so-called "resort courses" in terms of gaining all the knowledge - and more importantly - level of psychological comfort you should have before diving for real the first time. It's a very real possibility that you can accidentally get your reg or mask kicked off your face by someone's fin at 60 feet - it happened to me my first time down :eek: - and having been fully immersed in hours of training, I was able to deal with it calmly and not panic. Don't know if that would have been the case had I only had resort course training.

[ccrain]

The new term for the old "resort" course is Discover Scuba. Its a great way to see if you even like SCUBA before spending loads of money on certification. However, cruise line discover SCUBA has its drawbacks.

 

We discover SCUBAed in Cozumel on a Princess Excursion. It was a shoreline dive, ok, but like previously stated it is extremely safe and tame and will not prepare you for the knocked off face mask at 60'.

 

On the other hand, we Discover Scubaed in Hawaii on a personal trip with pool time and two 40' dives off the coast. One was in caves with sea turtles. There were three certified divers with us. This was a real kick and a great dive.

 

So I guess the bottom line is if you want to try SCUBA, try a cruise line discover dive. If you want to try something a little more adventurous, try a private company discover scuba you arrange yourself. And finally, if you want the whole enchilada, get certified and arrange a certified dive at your port of choice.

 

If I had the time, I would get certified before our next cruise. At the Cozumel dive, I was not enthused, but after the two Hawaii dives, I really like it. Only problem is, my wife loves SCUBA, but gets sea sick on the dive boat!