I will be going on a carnival cruise in a few weeks that goes to Caymen Islands, Costa Maya, Cozumel and Belize. I love to dive and was wondering what sort of experiences people have had diving with boat packages. Can you get excursions off of the boat, if so, do you save much money and is it worth the effort?
Any info appreciated.

If by "boat packages" you mean taking the ship's shore excursions, then I think you can pretty much always save money by arranging excursions direct with local suppliers.

Now that there is such fierce competition between cruise lines on the headline price of a cruise, the lines have turned to the ship's bars, casino and shore excursions as their big profit centres. It's not unusual to be able to get a shore excursion for half or even a third of what the ship would charge for a similar trip. There's no reason why diving should be much, if any, different from that.

However, I would make sure that you have good reason to be confident about the quality of any operator you book directly with, for obvious safety reasons. I've looked into arranging diving trips at ports of call myself, and thought the best time was spent on specialist cruise message boards looking for operations that were repeatedly recommended by several other posters, so that the "recommendation" was less likely to be just disguised advertising.

That was my first cruise 12 years ago, although then it stopped in Jamaica instead of Belize. As a cruising & diving virgin, I did an "Intro to Scuba" excursion on Grand Cayman, and it was an incredible experience. If you are a certified diver you have MANY more options. If you wish to take a cruise sponsered scuba excursion, sign up early (first day of cruise) or risk being shut out.

The Caymen islands are world renowned for their diving...I highly recomend you do it!

I agree with the above...you can save a lot of money by planning on your own.

But there is an upside to using the ships excustions...you will not be left behind.

I have been on 4 cruises and have heard of people being left behind on 2.

annerj

Hi i plan to take the same cruise in a few months. What was your experience on the diving??? Did you book on the ship or on your own???

Thanks
Rudgie

there should be web sites for diving in the ports you mention...check them w/google.

I had the same questions Rudgie

Was wondering if anyone had any new info on diving experiences with cruises. I suppose the best way is to scout out your ports of call and find some good dive companies beforehand. Can anyone recommend any outfits in the Caribbean in any of the usual ports?

Undercurrent is a subscription based (ie no advertising) dive newsletter with reader recommendations for most dive operators. Some are publicly available on the website. For the full list, one must subscribe. http://www.undercurrent.org/

That's where I'd go first to check out dive operations. I don't like cattle car diving, so I usually try to find small operators.

When diving, and only when diving, we use the ship excursions. For diving, it's really not that expensive. Carnival charges $99.95 for a two-tank dive on grand Cayman. I doubt you'll save much by going local and those port stops in GC can be pretty short, cutting the time close.

Sounds fantastic, and I want to dive next time I get to the Caymans or any islands in general. Might plan out a certification locally first though if I can squeeze some time in.

$99 for a two tank dive is certainly a fair price. Do most cruise lines offer scuba as a shore excursion? My one and only cruise was with Windstar several years ago and we were able to do it from the ship.

The big-ship cruise lines will all offer scuba shore excursions in the appropriate ports.

Normally we avoid ships' excursions like the plague, but for scuba diving I think it's the smart move, for the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post.

My wife and I just returned from a cruise that stopped in Cozumel, where we did a 2 tank dive with Cozumel Sports (cozumelsports.com) for $99 pp. It was our first time diving, and we had our own instructor... much better than the large groups on the ship excursions. We went down about 40 feet and saw a lot of cool fish and coral. I would say it was the highlight of the cruise.