Bad experience with Reef Raiders in Key West

Just got back from a diving trip in Key West and was referred to a dive
outlet called, Reef Raiders. This was the worst dive experience ever. He
over charged what he quoted on the phone, took us to a barren dive site and
only allowed us 30 minutes between dives. The first dive was to around 100
feet and the second dive was to around 60 feet. Small surface interval only
allowed us to dive for around 20 minutes. It really bites when you have to
surface with around 2000 psi because the dive operator will not allow more
surface interval because they want to turn the boat around.

Next time rent a boat and plug in GPS numbers into your eTREX. The reef
sites are published everywhere

CB
Merry Christmas

"Arnie" <arniew@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:z%4zd.1802$Fu4.1401@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
> Just got back from a diving trip in Key West and was referred to a dive
> outlet called, Reef Raiders. This was the worst dive experience ever. He
> over charged what he quoted on the phone, took us to a barren dive site
> and only allowed us 30 minutes between dives. The first dive was to
> around 100 feet and the second dive was to around 60 feet. Small surface
> interval only allowed us to dive for around 20 minutes. It really bites
> when you have to surface with around 2000 psi because the dive operator
> will not allow more surface interval because they want to turn the boat
> around.
>

If you go back down to Key West, use Subtropic. I was there back in
July/August and had a great time with them. No complaints whatsoever.
The worst part of the whole trip was the boat ride from the dock to out
of the waterway, it seemed to take forever and was actually the longest
portion of the boat ride. Fairly reasonable, very professional...
----
The Urban Terrorist Version 5.0 - for more info: www.subtropic.com

> If you go back down to Key West, use Subtropic. I was there back in
> July/August and had a great time with them. No complaints whatsoever.
> The worst part of the whole trip was the boat ride from the dock to
out
> of the waterway, it seemed to take forever and was actually the
longest
> portion of the boat ride. Fairly reasonable, very professional...

I've used SubTropic before in Key West and was happy with them.

Nice boats, good crew, included a few drinks and fruit between dives.

They gave a good safety briefing and the folks in the shop where
nice checking you in. They also have free parking, which is something
that most dive operators in Key West don't have.

The boat ride out ot open water was a little slow as you mentioned,
but because they had a long ride through the harbor in a no wake
zone and you pretty much had to circle half the island. But
I didn't think it was all that terrible.

They also limited dive time, but it was much more reasonable.
Like 60 minutes bottom time, etc. I'm sure this was to keep
them on schedule for the next boat load of divers.
If I went back to Key West I'd most likely use them again.

-mike