Silverswift — Attraction in Cairns City

I had expected a professional experience with life memory photographs and diving instructor and instead got nothing close. This had been a terrible disappointment that I will share online If I could give this tour many zero stars , I would . I really had a very terrible experience. I paid for diving and requested a professional photographer for a simple picture with coral or fish or a Great Barrier Reef sign before I went down under water . I really depended on a photographer to guide me having one nice picture . But when I went down , I was not allowed to take a photo by myself even for one second , I must be held with an asian instructor, it was totally fine with me as I understood , then I requested to take a photo with a Great Barrier Reef metal sign who there was many peoples had when they went down to water , but I was not allowed by photographer and instructor as well, I really was so upset . And then when I went down more , I kept asking to have a photo with Coral and fishes because I saw many down there , then instructor told me that photographer already went away . When I came up , I asked why u did not take photos for me , photographer said that instructor did not let me and if u wanted coral you had to go down more … ah yes that’s why i paid for diving to go down . Anyway they explained to me that I can’t take my hand out of instructor because I’m not certified diver . Before I decided to dive , I showed a photo with Coral and asked one photo by myself but nobody told me that I could not take alone . they just explained to make me cool down , I saw many new divers with different instructors that was allowed to dive by themselves. A asian instructor was not great who took away my adventure . I really had a bad luck having her as instructor . This was a terrible trip that I had saved for my entire life.This has been a terrible experience with unprofessional instructors and photographers crews who did not know how to work professional for customers having a nice memory photo . I’m not sure why they offer a photographer at other side for what while customers was diving down all the way but took a photo without coral , my photo was just in a sea water and i paid for 80$ for diving and ready for pay for a simple picture with coral . There were many chance to have a great simple photo but i was not allowed and wasted of my time , energy, money and unprofessional team who was my instructor and photographer . I lam really disappointed . I paid for a small plane to see reef before , it would be better to spend money on that to see a beautiful amazing view than snorkeling and diving to see reef . Believe me , snorkeling would not see anything . And diving would not fun for me , probably i was so bad luck having an instructor today Thank supervisor for not taking...

We are 2 certified divers booked for 3 dives on different sites over the GBR.

We received a text the day before asking to arrive at the marina between 7:30-8am. We arrived at 7:45am to check in and was then told boarding doesn’t actually start until 8am. So we were waiting 30mins before we even got onto the boat.

Firstly the ‘dive briefing’ took 45mins and was catered to non-certified divers. It was going over how to use your BCD, maintaining buoyancy etc… The whole briefing felt very patronising and felt like an open water theory session, which is not necessary for certified divers. Nothing was discussed about the actual reef we were diving (ie. direction, predicted current) and I didn’t even know the name until the end of the trip.

They then told us that each dive would be a maximum of 40-45 minutes… every dive we finished with around 100-120 BAR left. Luckily our dive guide let us continue around the boat for an extra 5 mins bringing the total dive time to 50mins for one of the dives.

There seemed to be a huge rush between each dive. All the staff seemed frantic. Admittedly they did change our tanks for us (refill system) but it didn’t justify the level of urgency. The attitude of some of the staff was blunt and negative, which is a shame. The people on the boat snorkelling got their lunch before us whilst we did our second dive. We got onto the boat after and was told we only had 30 minutes for lunch before it closed. We were not allowed to enter the inside of the boat when wet so after drying off and removing our Lycra suits we only had 20 minutes for lunch before we had to return for our final dive.

After our last dive, we were told there would be ‘afternoon tea’. After drying and getting on the boat all that was left was a few cubes of cheese. No crackers, no cake, no tea and coffee. After complaining they gave me a muesli bar to make up for it.

It was advertised as 3 different dive sites. The boat moved for 5 minutes between each dive… It was the same reef just different parts of it. It felt like the same dive each time, no different corals or species of fish seen.

Overall we were very disappointed with our experience, especially considering the price we paid. This is the high end of what you would expect to pay for a triple dive day and to not have enough food for the divers and rushing is not acceptable when charging this price.

This trip seems suitable for inexperienced divers / intro diver and snorkellers. I would not recommend for divers with more than a few dives under their belt.

On a positive note, our dive guide, tried to make the most of our situation and was very pleasant...

The outer reef is beautiful and an idyllic place to snorkel and dive but all of the beauty we were excited to experience was sullied by this well below average bunch of 'cowboys' running this charter. The charter was running late for departure and the captain in her 'wisdom' decided to drive the dive boat as though it were a speedboat out to the outer reef, setting off several of the passengers with seasickness (I have a very strong stomach for seasickness and even I was starting to feel queasy). My husband was a part of the certified dive group and was spoken to extremely rudely by one of the dive instructors and publically embarrassed because he was not in the spot he was meant to be for a dive briefing even though there were no clear instructions given about locations etc upon embarking and no announcement over the PA for him. After speaking with the extremely rude and piggish 'Mex' about how his 'announcement' was perceived he gave us attitude and was a smart ass the for the entire day to our group. We didn't pay hundreds of dollars to do this tour to be spoken to in this manner by some alpha male who is obviously making up for deficiencies in his personality by being a bully. The dive instructors do not follow correct PADI procedures and the dives were badly managed. At one point one of the scuba divers was not being looked after by the instructors on the dive and got lodged in between two reef structures. This would have damaged coral as well as been very frightening for the diver. The diving instructors, in particular, 'Marcos', were more interested in chatting up and flirting attractive women on the trip rather than focusing on the diver safety and proper dive planning or instruction. We will be writing to PADI to report the negligence we observed. Having said all of this there was one lovely young woman who is the marine biologist on the boat named 'Sam' who was friendly, knowledgeable and personable. I really felt sorry for her as the rest of the crew spoke down to her and belittled her in their talks etc. I actually feel sorry for any females working on the charter. It seems that sexism and bullying are still alive and kicking with the staff on this charter. We were really disappointed. I hate the fact that this is something that tourists will see as an example of Australia and think that this is how Aussies are. Abysmal. If I could give Mex and Marcos a zero star rating, in particular, I would. What a couple of...