Padi Open Water Diver

I became a Padi Open Water diver at 58yrs old. I took the course with The Scuba Trust. This is a charitable organisation that teaches or retrains disabled people to Scuba dive. It always needs volunteers to assist or teach. It has trydives on the second sunday of every month at The Lord Mayor Treloars College, Alton, Hamps. Check out their website. The course can take as long as you like with them. There is no hassle. They are very patient and everything is explained but they do like you to help out wherever possible. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met. Finally getting to swim in beautiful blue water and view the fish as you have never seen ...  Read the complete review

First things first, SCUBA is not any more dangerous than any other activity you might care to do on your time off work, as long as you have been trained and take care to follow the things you learn training there is no reason you should suffer any injury greater than the odd broken toe (dont drop weightbelts on your toes!) or bruises (try not to fall over the rocks when hopping around on one foot having just dropped a weightbelt on your toe). For many people the lure of the ocean is great and a large number of people will take those first steps abroad somewhere nice and warm, others will choose to learn back home, where they can take their time and not spend ...  Read the complete review

I have just completed my PADI Open Water certificate and have to say WOW what a feeling you get when you experience the sensation of weightlessness (is that a word) under water. Hanging there watching the fish go by as you breathe underwater is like nothing I have ever experienced before it is totally amazing. This is to introduce you to the PADI Open Water qualification that allows you to travel the world and scuba dive to a recommended maximum depth of 18 metres using compressed air with a buddy (friend or partner) of the same standard or higher. PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) PADI is the worlds largest diving ...  Read the complete review

I recently completed an Open Water Course with Maidstone Scuba and found them to be brilliant! I did call a few of the others locally, including Blue Ocean, but overall found Maidstone Scuba were the best price. Others including Blue Ocean DO add extra bits on like another £150 or so for mask and fins making the course VERY much more expensive! Maidstone Scuba DO HAVE a classroom at Maidstone Leisure Centre (at least they did have when I did my course) so don't know what the other reviewer is talking about! Personally I didn't join their dive club as I don't intend diving in UK but if I had the cost of the course would have been ...  Read the complete review

Last year I and my fiancé booked a PADI Open Water Diver Course with a diving centre in Maidstone (Blue Ocean Diving). On the phone they were quite pleasant and I went ahead and booked up at a cost of over £600 for the two of us. The pleasantness however stopped as soon as we had paid out our cash! On the first day of our course we were told to attend their class rooms for our theory training. This turned out to be a full day of just hard (VERY HARD) sell! – We were captive in their class room in the worst ‘time share’ type nightmare you could imagine! We were told we should buy this or that or had to buy something else. We were the only two in the group ...  Read the complete review