Copy of Message I sent Stuart Cove's directly

I want to just share how much we enjoyed our dives on the 26 & 27 of December. This was the 3rd time we've been to your facility over the past 6 or so years and you by far have the best run operation.
I especially want to express how wonderful some of the team there is. Gary -- Manager/administrator. We stopped by on Christmas afternoon to check in and discuss dives as we wanted to talk about dive sites and which were best to explore to add to many of the others we've already been too. Gary was so helpful and pleasant. He took the time to review most of the sites and what each had to offer. I'm sure he had many other things to do!
Andrea and Daril were on the afternoon dive of the 26th were superb! In fact - I think we will compare every captain against Daril's ability to get us in and out of the boat safely with a constant smile! Andrea was so informative and attentive - even with another diver who hadn't been in the water for 14 years....??
Richard and Derek also ran a great dive on the 27th.
Marcus (who we didn't get a chance to dive with this time..) was a pleasure to meet along with his uncles
We will be back in March 2014 and look forward to new adventures

**One extra note -- I say this is the best operation for several reasons
1 - The staff
2 - The boats are all well equipped and have great ladders
3 - They have the best burgers/chicken/fish sandwiches at a great price for after dive
4 - Showers -- yes with hot water!

We did dive with one other operator during our visit to go to the Blue Hole -- they will not be getting that great of a review....

The Bahamas during the Winter Holidays is crowded, so we knew there would be a lot of people on the trip. The Dive shop was organized, on time and professional. 1 Adult and 2 teenagers (the 2 kids have very little snorkeling experience)- had a great time. In 1/2 day, there were 3 dives, the last one with sharks. Overall fun

Booked the snorkeling tour through the hotel's travel desk for 2 adults and 2 kids. Got picked up by the shuttle bus and reached to the site in 30 min or so. It took more than 20 minutes to charge for my credit card the balance prior to boarding the boat.

Once we got into the boat all seats were taken on the main deck as well as on the upper deck above. Despite repetitive asks on help on getting some seats at least for the kids, we did not get anything. Crew did gave us lip service. We eventually found space in the front of the boat and we sit on the deck.

Boat headed out and after 15-20 min or so we did the first stop, it was relatively close to the Stuart's Cove docking area. I was bit surprised to see that we did not even go sufficiently far. However the water had very good clarity with abundance of fishes around. After 30 min or so in the water, the boat headed to the 2nd stop. We rode for 5 min, perhaps a swimming distance and stopped by in the "2nd stop" area, we swam there another 30 min or so. It was very disappointing to see that this closeby area / stop was called the 2nd site for swimming and snorkeling.

Then finally we reached to the 3rd site and there was the opportunity to swim with sharks.

My overall impression is, the service was poor, guest relations were poor, boat was overloaded. The only thing that was good was the ocean and the nature. In my opinion this is an overly touristy snorkeling tour.

My family and I did a 1/2 day snorkeling trip. We spent about 60 minutes in the water during our 5 hour trip. The snorkeling itself was great but the overall experience significantly diminished by the facts that:

1) It took a good 40 minutes to get there from Paradise Island (Atlantis) and the shuttle buses are hot and stop and a bunch of hotels.

2) They load the boats to the max which took forever.

3) They didn't tell us that the third and final snorkeling stop was really just to see sharks, not fish. Most people were afraid to get in the water and those that did only had about 5 minutes in the water.

4) In late December the water is chilly...though the fish were beautiful it was hard to stay in the water for the whole 30 minutes allotted at each of the two snorkel spots.