Daddy - Daughter Diving Day was Magic - I wanted to let my daughter get her PADI Open Water Dive Certification while we were on vacation in Belize. The concierge at our resort got us in with Splash Dive Center in Placencia, Belize, CA. Patty Rodriguez, the owner and dive operations executive greeted us like family upon our arrival the first day. Her dive staff was amazing taking every opportunity to put us at ease with their professionalism and courtesy. The smiles and mannerisms of the entire crew, George, the boat Captain, Jose, the chief dive instructor, Moses, Nivia, & Sam the Divemasters were attentive and kind. Day one was shallow water check-out dives and instruction for my daughter. I have been certified for years and it brought me great joy to see her absorb each lesson Jose offered. Diving at Laughing Bird Caye was incredible with 86 degree surface water temperature and the same at 60 feet. Jose made sure that my daughter was both comfortable and knowledgeable as she made her way in this underwater paradise. The coral reef has excellent visibility and hundreds of species of fish, coral, and sea life to watch and explore. The highlights of the day one dive came on tank 2 dive with about 75 feet of visibility, as the "man in the grey suit", a lemon reef shark, made a cameo appearance with his ride-a-long sidekick, a beautiful remora. Day 2 dives just became more exciting on tank 1 with the discovery of a 12-pound rock lobster poking out from under his shelf. With slightly reduced visibility from the day before, only 45-50 ft., the Big Boy came out to play and allowed us to swim along with him as the Goliath Grouper at about 200 pounds swam out of his cave and into the channel in search of the lobster we had seen yesterday. This was a picturesque island setting for a delicious chicken & rice lunch with balmy breezes and turquoise blue water encircling the coral reef and island. At the conclusion of Day 2 my daughter successfully earned her Open Water Certificate and is now eligible to dive anywhere in the world with a qualified Divemaster. Papa is very proud. Together we swam and dived and explored an underwater wonderland. Hand in hand as we shared the joy and magic at 45 feet.

Expensive and not a great experience - The summary for my review is: do not choose this group for your dive experience. My friends and I had really high expectations when we booked with Splash. We started talking to Splash about a dive trip over a month in advance and planned to only do one epic dive and it was the main reason why we came to Belize. Some big red flags you should be aware of: First, we took a smaller boat due to mechanical issues and we did not get any money back. They said we would take a bigger boat, but then changed it last minute. Obviously, the ride was a lot more uncomfortable than we expected and it was ~2.5 hours to get to Glover's Reef and the same amount of time back on a really small boat with about 10-12 divers plus the staff. It's the right call to take a safer boat, but there should have been some money given back to customers. Second, the staff was not caring at all...only the lead dive master on the trip showed any kindness to brief us. When you go diving you want to make sure the dive staff you go out with is caring so that you feel at ease when you go down and you have fun when you are down there. The staff we were assigned to did not care about us at all, they CONSTANTLY rushed us, forgot our names, and barely said a word to us aside from barking orders to hurry up. They did not actually help us look for anything interesting when we were down there and didn't really teach us about marine life. Third, the dive site we went to felt exactly the same as the 2nd dive, but it was shallower. The brochure is NOT truthful in that you go to 3 different unique sites where there are a lot of animals. They say you can see rays, turtles, etc. and that they will take you to Pinnacles. This did not happen for us, we stopped for lunch and went 2 min away from the beach to do our third dive. Then they cut it short even though I still had half my tank left. We did not see anything aside from reef fish, which is fine because you cannot control how much marine life you see. However, what you can control is the experience you provide your customers, and the staff on our trip clearly didn't care about us at all and seemed like they wanted to be in and out even though this was a full-day commitment that we were looking forward to for months. I will say that the lunch on the island provided was nice and the lead dive master also put in effort. The rest of the staff though was mean, careless, and barely spoke. I do not recommend their dive experiences and urge the staff to improve the quality of how they treat customers.