Beware: Late arrival for Rhone Dive....

[Warmbluewater]

We just finished our first cruise, on the HAL Westerdam to the Carribean. We had my 14 year old son along who doesn't dive, so we planned only one dive, The Wreck of the Rhone on Tortola.

 

We were due in at Noon but were rescheduled to 2 pm due to port congestion. This was frustrating as the 5 ships scheduled to be in port that day was a problem had been discussed on it's own thread here on Cruise Critic starting several months before the cruise, so this should not have been a surprise to HAL. We did not dock until after 2:30. Once we were off the boat, we stood and waited for at least a half hour for our shuttle to the dive shop. One of the other divers asked if we would make the two tank, and was assured we would. We assumed that we would be offered a night dive (this was our first and only shore excursion through the cruiseline) Once at the dive shop, we were told it would only be a one tank dive.

 

The dive itself was good, but we were only down for 36 min, and had a fair bit of air left.

 

When we got back to the ship, we found they had granted us a credit for the second tank...$20. The original price was $129, so we paid $109 for a one tank dive. I would be fine with that if we were told at the dock of the change, the price, and allowed to make an informed decision if we wanted to go forward with the dive, but we were not.

 

We went to the front desk to ask for a reduction, and were put on the phone with someone who told us our only recourse was to take it up with HAL after we got home.

 

We will be pursuing this, and will let you know if they reduce the fee. Since this was our first cruise, it really put a cloud over over the day, and the end of the cruise as we tried to resolve it.