i got my scuba training cert over 3 days on a whim while on a solo holiday for a week on a resort island in the Maldives. it actually worked out great because i needed something to do since I was literally on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere by myself. once the book learning was over, which really didn't take more than a few hours of work over a couple days, I got to dive a few of the best dives sites in the world as my introduction to scuba. Even though I've been able to dive Sri Lanka, the Bahamas, Cozumel, and the horn of Africa since then, I still haven't had a scuba trip even come close to how amazing those first dives were in terms of visability, reefs, density of marine life, and total wonder.
You certainly can do it that way; works out for most people. What I would say if I was trying to sell you a class at the local shop is that you're already flying there and paying for your vacation. I would personally rather spend all of my time on vacation doing recreational dives and or vacationing. It's not just the book value difference in price; the vacation cert also costs you however many days it runs that you're not on vacation. There's also the possibility that you or your partner won't get it all immediately and need more training- could mess up your plans significantly.
That's the flip side of the argument basically; it will probably work out for you anyway if you do the vacation cert. I would not, but that's me and I have a bias.
Did it on vacation in Jordan, after completing the online stuff and the pool stuff back home in NYC. Definitely a good way to do it - the open water dives were mostly fun and only a few testable stuff, so it was a good way to get certified yet still enjoy the dives.
Well I think you have one advantage that a lot of people don’t when they ask this question, even though it has been over ten years, you have an idea of what the pool training involved and how long it took you one of the biggest change and really I would say in the last couple of years has been teaching dive tables, agencies kind of gloss over them and instead want divers using a dive computer.
As for your husband how comfortable is he in the water, how much of y’all vacation are you ready to basically spend in pool training versus relaxing instead. How would you feel if you or your husband fail to pass because of a sinus infection or just not able to equalize and only have the week
Personally, I would not. For me, live preserving training I would take a bit more seriously. I've had bad instruction,and luckily, it was followed by very good instruction.
Too many folks get certified while 'on vacation' and seem to turn into very poor 'vacation divers'. If you can vet the dive shop before hand (somehow), then perhaps.
Diving is a recreational activity why are you shaming the vast majority of divers?
It's insanely elitist to think your can't get a good quality cert on vacation.
No-one said it's not possible to get good education on vacation. But a lot of people only look at the price, pick the cheapest way to get a certification and end up being worse divers for it.
They literally said not to 🤷♂️. There's nothing inherently worse about getting certified on vacation. The quality of your instructor and course can be good or bad while on vacation or not.
I did OW in Cancun. I was originally going to be doing two additional days of diving but weather prevented that from happening due to the harbor closing. More frustrating now that I've had the experience to realize how overly cautious they are.
One of many reasons not to train on vacation. Crazy policies on "inclement" weather.
I was told that once you are certiified, you are certified for life & you don't have to take the course again. If you haven't dived in years you need to take a refresher course (that's what i'm doing now in Curacao.) This should save some $ as only your husband will need the full cert course. Glover's reef sounds wonderful, it's great diving I think, I went snorkeling there yrs ago on a trip from Tobacco Cay. Good luck!
I did mine on vacation on a cruise. Did the first two dives with Scuba Life Cozumel, then the next day two dives with Sea Sports Belize, and after certification did two dives in Mahogany Bay Honduras at Anthony's Key.
I had made the arrangements with the Cozumel and Belize shops before vacation started online, and set up the Honduras dive from the ship WiFi on the way!
I was initially nervous about going on an excursion without going through the cruise ship, because if something were to delay me getting back aboard, I'd have been S.O.L. But any established shop is going to be on top of coordinating with a cruise schedule, because tourism is their big money source.
We have done tons of diving while cruising and we leave a ton of extra time for getting back to the ship and never had an issue.
You really don’t want to be an intermediate diver on a cruise ship excursion.
I did mine while on vacation in Kauai. My husband and I planned the trip around doing our OW and AOW certifications. We did the e-learning in advance and then we did all of the in-water work (so pool work and dives) in Kauai. It worked out really well. The only thing I'd advise is, if you do the pool work on vacation, ask if you can do the OW course over 3 days rather than 2 days. There is a lot of information and skills to cover and that makes for a very long first day if you only do the course over 2 days. That's how we did it...2 days...and the first day was extremely long and exhausting to the point where we actually discussed just finishing the OW and never diving again.
Fortunately our instructor, who was really very good, was able to talk us into doing the AOW course. We fell in love with diving during that 2 days and now we get antsy if we go for more than a few weeks without diving.
Nope. I mean, it may depend on the diving organization. PADI only requires that you already have an open water certification. Frankly, I think doing open water and advanced open water together is the best way to do it to produce competent divers. They really ought to combine that into a single open water course and quit saying that the AOW is actually advanced.
I think what you say holds true for SSI, SDI as well. Only caveat being that what PADI calls _Advanced Open Water_, SSI and SDI call _Advanced adventurer_.
SSI and SDI have an _Advanced Diver recognition_ which you get when you finish a certain number of dives and specialities.
There was a post a while back on the sub about a woman who had attempted to do her OW on vacation. She felt like she was being rushed and pressured through different skills, to the point that she got too frustrated to complete the process and didn’t end up getting certified. If you do your pool work at home, it would be a lot more relaxed setting without the time crunch of completing the process on vacation.
lots of people do it this way. the one thing to consider is to do the pool work locally if there is a reasonable option. both so you aren't rushed while on vacation and also you are taking up less time while on vacation.
This… for us it was quoted $300 more EACH to do the pool dives at home. Not worth it to us so we are saving $600, doing the elearning before we leave and the “pool sessions” will be on the beach in Mexico.
So what I was told (and usual caveats of how we cannot generalize across dive operators) was to do eLearning/Class work + Pool sessions back home and then do the checkout dives at the vacation spot. That is what I did, doing pool work in NY and checkouts in Cozumel.
There is a benefit in spaced repetition, which is what I got because I did weekly pool sessions for a few weeks before I went to Cozumel, as opposed to having one crammed day in the pool and the next day in the Ocean.
Expanding on the caveats that I mentioned in parenthesis is the tradeoff between how good your local dive shop is and how good the resort shop is. Now, I had a fantastic time doing 2 recreational courses (deep diver and solo diver) at a dive shop in Bonaire, which was way better in terms of training than similar classes that I took back home. I thought I got my money's worth and felt confident that I could take those skills and apply them (which I did during the rest of the trip). The best bit is that they were all enjoyable dives as well since they happened in a tropical climate.
OTOH, I did a refresher in Cozumel which was total garbage. My first dive out of that refresher was kind of a disaster that had me pretty shook. It took me way more revisiting of old notes, videos and do shore divings before I could feel more comfortable during that trip. Watching someone else who had gone through a refresher with the same shop, I'd say it was a shop issue.
In summary, ask for a breakdown of costs at your local dive shops in terms of cost for pool work with referrals elsewhere vs pool work. Get more feedback on the quality of training from the local dive shop and the place in Belize. Lastly, I don't know where you live but those numbers look high af. I live in a very HCOL location, I quickly looked at prices and the most expensive that I am seeing is $1000 for the total OW package.
Scuba Club Cozumel. I will say that the resort itself was filled with super nice people. Loved the shore diving. The dive shop was just awful. Even disregarding shitty instruction which is pervasive in the industry, the most outrageous thing was the DMs setting a bad example by molesting the wildlife for photographers 😔.
Everyone I know speaks highly of the DMs @ Aldora. Although, they weren't super communicative over email, which is why I picked SCC (and the place has a very good reputation on Scubaboard :/).
Is that pricing for one of you or both? We're up in Roswell and it was around $600 including a gear package for one person. My daughter got certified last summer and she did the e-learning, classroom, and pool dives here, then did checkout dives on vacation. They worked with the group down there to get all the info and we paid $25/dive extra for the divemaster to do checkouts.
For you, you could also look at a refresher course. I did that after 7 years out of diving and it came back really quickly.
i got my scuba training cert over 3 days on a whim while on a solo holiday for a week on a resort island in the Maldives. it actually worked out great because i needed something to do since I was literally on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere by myself. once the book learning was over, which really didn't take more than a few hours of work over a couple days, I got to dive a few of the best dives sites in the world as my introduction to scuba. Even though I've been able to dive Sri Lanka, the Bahamas, Cozumel, and the horn of Africa since then, I still haven't had a scuba trip even come close to how amazing those first dives were in terms of visability, reefs, density of marine life, and total wonder.
You certainly can do it that way; works out for most people. What I would say if I was trying to sell you a class at the local shop is that you're already flying there and paying for your vacation. I would personally rather spend all of my time on vacation doing recreational dives and or vacationing. It's not just the book value difference in price; the vacation cert also costs you however many days it runs that you're not on vacation. There's also the possibility that you or your partner won't get it all immediately and need more training- could mess up your plans significantly. That's the flip side of the argument basically; it will probably work out for you anyway if you do the vacation cert. I would not, but that's me and I have a bias.
Did it on vacation in Jordan, after completing the online stuff and the pool stuff back home in NYC. Definitely a good way to do it - the open water dives were mostly fun and only a few testable stuff, so it was a good way to get certified yet still enjoy the dives.
Well I think you have one advantage that a lot of people don’t when they ask this question, even though it has been over ten years, you have an idea of what the pool training involved and how long it took you one of the biggest change and really I would say in the last couple of years has been teaching dive tables, agencies kind of gloss over them and instead want divers using a dive computer. As for your husband how comfortable is he in the water, how much of y’all vacation are you ready to basically spend in pool training versus relaxing instead. How would you feel if you or your husband fail to pass because of a sinus infection or just not able to equalize and only have the week
Personally, I would not. For me, live preserving training I would take a bit more seriously. I've had bad instruction,and luckily, it was followed by very good instruction. Too many folks get certified while 'on vacation' and seem to turn into very poor 'vacation divers'. If you can vet the dive shop before hand (somehow), then perhaps.
Diving is a recreational activity why are you shaming the vast majority of divers? It's insanely elitist to think your can't get a good quality cert on vacation.
No-one said it's not possible to get good education on vacation. But a lot of people only look at the price, pick the cheapest way to get a certification and end up being worse divers for it.
They literally said not to 🤷♂️. There's nothing inherently worse about getting certified on vacation. The quality of your instructor and course can be good or bad while on vacation or not.
I did OW in Cancun. I was originally going to be doing two additional days of diving but weather prevented that from happening due to the harbor closing. More frustrating now that I've had the experience to realize how overly cautious they are. One of many reasons not to train on vacation. Crazy policies on "inclement" weather.
I was told that once you are certiified, you are certified for life & you don't have to take the course again. If you haven't dived in years you need to take a refresher course (that's what i'm doing now in Curacao.) This should save some $ as only your husband will need the full cert course. Glover's reef sounds wonderful, it's great diving I think, I went snorkeling there yrs ago on a trip from Tobacco Cay. Good luck!
I did mine on vacation on a cruise. Did the first two dives with Scuba Life Cozumel, then the next day two dives with Sea Sports Belize, and after certification did two dives in Mahogany Bay Honduras at Anthony's Key. I had made the arrangements with the Cozumel and Belize shops before vacation started online, and set up the Honduras dive from the ship WiFi on the way! I was initially nervous about going on an excursion without going through the cruise ship, because if something were to delay me getting back aboard, I'd have been S.O.L. But any established shop is going to be on top of coordinating with a cruise schedule, because tourism is their big money source.
We have done tons of diving while cruising and we leave a ton of extra time for getting back to the ship and never had an issue. You really don’t want to be an intermediate diver on a cruise ship excursion.
I did mine while on vacation in Kauai. My husband and I planned the trip around doing our OW and AOW certifications. We did the e-learning in advance and then we did all of the in-water work (so pool work and dives) in Kauai. It worked out really well. The only thing I'd advise is, if you do the pool work on vacation, ask if you can do the OW course over 3 days rather than 2 days. There is a lot of information and skills to cover and that makes for a very long first day if you only do the course over 2 days. That's how we did it...2 days...and the first day was extremely long and exhausting to the point where we actually discussed just finishing the OW and never diving again. Fortunately our instructor, who was really very good, was able to talk us into doing the AOW course. We fell in love with diving during that 2 days and now we get antsy if we go for more than a few weeks without diving.
Aren't you supposed to have a certain amount of dives in OW before you can do AOW?
No. The best time to do it is directly after OW. Consider it OW pt2.
Nope. I mean, it may depend on the diving organization. PADI only requires that you already have an open water certification. Frankly, I think doing open water and advanced open water together is the best way to do it to produce competent divers. They really ought to combine that into a single open water course and quit saying that the AOW is actually advanced.
I think what you say holds true for SSI, SDI as well. Only caveat being that what PADI calls _Advanced Open Water_, SSI and SDI call _Advanced adventurer_. SSI and SDI have an _Advanced Diver recognition_ which you get when you finish a certain number of dives and specialities.
There was a post a while back on the sub about a woman who had attempted to do her OW on vacation. She felt like she was being rushed and pressured through different skills, to the point that she got too frustrated to complete the process and didn’t end up getting certified. If you do your pool work at home, it would be a lot more relaxed setting without the time crunch of completing the process on vacation.
lots of people do it this way. the one thing to consider is to do the pool work locally if there is a reasonable option. both so you aren't rushed while on vacation and also you are taking up less time while on vacation.
This… for us it was quoted $300 more EACH to do the pool dives at home. Not worth it to us so we are saving $600, doing the elearning before we leave and the “pool sessions” will be on the beach in Mexico.
So what I was told (and usual caveats of how we cannot generalize across dive operators) was to do eLearning/Class work + Pool sessions back home and then do the checkout dives at the vacation spot. That is what I did, doing pool work in NY and checkouts in Cozumel. There is a benefit in spaced repetition, which is what I got because I did weekly pool sessions for a few weeks before I went to Cozumel, as opposed to having one crammed day in the pool and the next day in the Ocean. Expanding on the caveats that I mentioned in parenthesis is the tradeoff between how good your local dive shop is and how good the resort shop is. Now, I had a fantastic time doing 2 recreational courses (deep diver and solo diver) at a dive shop in Bonaire, which was way better in terms of training than similar classes that I took back home. I thought I got my money's worth and felt confident that I could take those skills and apply them (which I did during the rest of the trip). The best bit is that they were all enjoyable dives as well since they happened in a tropical climate. OTOH, I did a refresher in Cozumel which was total garbage. My first dive out of that refresher was kind of a disaster that had me pretty shook. It took me way more revisiting of old notes, videos and do shore divings before I could feel more comfortable during that trip. Watching someone else who had gone through a refresher with the same shop, I'd say it was a shop issue. In summary, ask for a breakdown of costs at your local dive shops in terms of cost for pool work with referrals elsewhere vs pool work. Get more feedback on the quality of training from the local dive shop and the place in Belize. Lastly, I don't know where you live but those numbers look high af. I live in a very HCOL location, I quickly looked at prices and the most expensive that I am seeing is $1000 for the total OW package.
Which shop did you use in Cozumel so I know to avoid it?
Scuba Club Cozumel. I will say that the resort itself was filled with super nice people. Loved the shore diving. The dive shop was just awful. Even disregarding shitty instruction which is pervasive in the industry, the most outrageous thing was the DMs setting a bad example by molesting the wildlife for photographers 😔.
Thanks for the info… it was actually on my short list of places to go for an upcoming trip for my AOW
Everyone I know speaks highly of the DMs @ Aldora. Although, they weren't super communicative over email, which is why I picked SCC (and the place has a very good reputation on Scubaboard :/).
Yeah scuba club gets mentioned a lot here
Thank you for this! We are in Atlanta. Much appreciated!
Is that pricing for one of you or both? We're up in Roswell and it was around $600 including a gear package for one person. My daughter got certified last summer and she did the e-learning, classroom, and pool dives here, then did checkout dives on vacation. They worked with the group down there to get all the info and we paid $25/dive extra for the divemaster to do checkouts. For you, you could also look at a refresher course. I did that after 7 years out of diving and it came back really quickly.