I thought this experience was incredible. I will be writing with hopes of helping other people who have claustrophobic tendencies, and who may have some reservations about choosing this adventure. After hearing about this experience from numerous people during our 6 month stay here in Belize, it was placed on our "must do" list. Once we booked the trip with the tour guide company, I began pouring over the reviews for evidence as to what may trigger one of my (somewhat rare and unpredictable) panic attacks. I have overcome numerous obstacles in my lifetime. I am 52 years old, and enjoy scuba diving, rock climbing (multi-pitch sport), mountain biking, snowboarding, climbing 14er peaks, and even jumping out of an airplane. In other words, I am no stranger to adventuring. I have had panic attacks in very specific places-wedged too tightly in the back seat of a car, crammed into a packed elevator, free-climbing one of the flatirons in Boulder, CO (really bad spot to have an attack btw). The ATM Cave experience was not one of them. I had some anxiety leading up to our trip, which is basically fear of the unknown, and trying to gauge how people were quantifying the frequently mentioned "most adventurous experience of my entire life" (it wasn't for us). For someone with claustrophobia, the areas that could be potentially problematic are in the beginning of the cave (fortunately). To be clear, there is more than one way through this section, and we took the "easier" way going out, and the "harder" way as we were nearing the exit toward the end of the tour. The majority of the cave is very spacious. It was only in those areas near the entrance of the cave that I felt nervous-and hoped it would not continue like that for long (it didn't). I grew up a swimmer, and though you definitely walk in a lot of water, there really isn't any actual swimming once you pass the entrance of the cave, where you swim several feet to a boulder. If you are short in stature, or don't like putting your feet on the ground in the water, sure, you can swim a little bit. Most of the time, however, you are just wading through the water. The stream was comforting to me, I appreciated that it was there pretty much the entire time. I did tell our guide that I was a bit nervous before we started our tour, particularly about the tight spaces, and therefore was a bit surprised when, toward the end of the tour, he led us through the tighter (harder) passageway, and had us turn our lights off (he did this periodically to demonstrate something with his own light-often shadow play on the walls as the Mayans may have seen it-really cool), and then he disappeared, playing a trick on us. Fortunately, I had already made my mind up that I was safe, and fine, and therefore was only a bit surprised that he would do that when someone expressed that they were nervous (not cool). It was pitch black, cannot see your hand in front of your face dark, when you turn your headlamps off. The bouldering was understandably easy for my partner and I, given our experience with climbing, but we did see other people struggle with it a little bit. My advice would be to sit down in areas that appear scary because it looks to be too big to safely step down to. The age old "sit and scoot" works pretty well throughout this cave. We went at a time when the tourism is extremely low (September), and were among only a small handful of other groups. I may have had more difficulty had the cave been packed with a lot more people. They do limit the number of participants to 125 total each day, but the idea of having to wait my turn for long periods of time may have induced some anxiety-I like to have a means to "escape" quickly in order to feel most comfortable. I do get cold fairly easily, and wore a long sleeved rash guard and yoga tights, and did feel a little chilly at times. I had on running shoes, which were perfectly fine, you do not need to buy special shoes for this adventure. It is super fun, and definitely worthy of pushing personal boundaries!