CN Diving Cost Question

My wife and I will be back to CN in June of 2013. I was open water certified the last time we were there by Richard. Very good instructor by the way! I highly recommend him. Anyways, I wanted to get my advanced open water and my wife, open water, certified. I know it is $365 for the open and $265 for the advanced, but I have been trying to figure out from someone what the cost would be if we were to do the book part of it online before we go. We just don't want to waste anymore time than we have to reading on vacation. I had hoped to get all the book work done ahead of time. I sent an email to the dive shop directly, with no response, so I'm not sure if anyone here can help me out.

Thanks for any info.

Jason & Ann

The online portion through PADI is $130.00 for either the open water or advanced open water. Not sure if they would just take that amount off the staring amount or not. If Couples does not do this, that is fine. I would like to just find out one way or another. Besides the dive shack is there anyone else who can answer this?

Thanks
Jason

I got my AOW certification at CN a few years ago (btw, I agree that Richard is a wonderful instructor). I would recommend doing everything at the resort. The amount of book work and reading is next to nothing, and not near as much as OW certification. I did not find doing the coursework between dives or with my afternoon cocktail to interrupt the vacation at all (and I'm not much of a reader).

We just did our AOW certification at CSA. I would just do it at the resort, because it's nowhere near the amount of work/reading required for open water. You have to do 5 specialty dives and only read the chapters corresponding to that dive, not the whole book. There is also no final test. It was much more laidback than the original certification, it's more about refining your skills on the dives.

Thanks for the input. I guess my wife can study off of my open water book before hand and I will do my part at the resort. Hopefully it doesn't involve too much study time. But hey, on the beach, I guess its all irie, right?

I missed the part that your wife is getting her OW certification. For this i would recommend getting as much done as possible before the trip including checkout dives. That way, she can start enjoying dives - with you - as soon as you arrive and not worry about getting through the checkout at the resort (would take half a week I would think). I also believe that there are benefits in learning diving skills in a longer time period. Either way would work, just my two cents. Enjoy the trip!

She will be able to use all my materials from when I was OW certified. So just getting all that reading out of the way ahead of time will make a big difference. The pool work and open water testing is not a big deal. I thought I read at one time someone doing the online portion and getting a discount at the shack. I have not been able to find it by searching, so that is why I asked. Like I said, not a huge deal, but would have made it much easier mainly for her, since the OW takes so much more reading and studying.