My husband and I were excited to visit Aruba, Bonaire, & Curacao. While we have been scuba diving on numerous occasions in the Caribbean, we had never visited the Netherland Antilles. We are both certified PADI divers and both have over 1000 logged dives each. While my husband has more expertise in equipment repair & calibration, my experience is as both an IDC Staff Instructor & in Open Water Certifications in Monterey, California. As a side note, my husband was certified to use Enriched Air with PADI in 2012 & I have been certified to teach Enriched Air classes with PADI since 1999. We booked 2 tank boat dives, with Nitrox, on 4 different shore excursions. It was not to be.

#1 Your C-cards don't matter. We showed our cards to both the PADI shop onboard & each & every shore operator - as required prior to diving. Each shore operator had a different set of rules. 1st stop: "We don't allow cruise ship divers from to use Nitrox. They get confused. That's the agreement we have with Royal Caribbean." Yet all the other shore operators had no problem with renting us Nitrox tanks. #2 Royal Caribbean makes other arbitrary restrictions. "Max. Depth is 18 meters." Yet different shore operators had different rules. For example: "45 feet for 45 minutes, both dives." #3 Undisclosed limits & conditions of advertisements. Wind was significant in 2 locations. 30 to 35 knots. One operator takes us out (as we had booked) on a 2 tank boat dive. It was a bit choppy, but we're from California. Think: Monastery Beach. So, wind to us was not a factor. Another operator doesn't TELL us that we GOT 2 shore dives, until it was too late to do anything about the change of plans. It was a 20-25 minute bus ride from the ship to the staging area, then a short walk to the dive shop & beach entry. After we arrive, we are then told "too bad it's so windy." We had booked boat dives. #4 No notice, choice, or refund. We were not notified of the changes, given an opportunity to do something else, or even offered a refund for the arbitrary changes. #5 Rental equipment. Our gear did not arrive to our room until late the following morning from our initial embarkation. Too late for us to make the 8am meeting time for our 1st dive. We were at the front desk & the shore excursion desk numerous times the night before, as well as the following morning. Looking for our luggage, as well as telling them we cannot dive without our gear. RC refused to refund our money. Their answer: "You can use rental gear." Excuse me?? We did not bring thousands of dollars of our personal gear (Zeagle BCD's, Regulators, Gauges, Computers, Masks, Fins, Booties, Snorkels, Shortie Wetsuits, Flashlights, Save a Dive Kit, Nitrox Analyzer, etc....) to use RENTAL equipment.

The food was OK, not spectacular, but OK. Read more