My partner and I booked a normal room for 2 days and 1 night and did a total of 6 dives. We had a great time - basically dive, eat, relax in the sun and repeat for two days - you'll be exhausted by the end. Dive guides and crew handled the gear setup, which was great. Food was delicious. The only things I would do to improve the experience is that it might be nice to have the same dive guide for each dive, just so they get a better sense of your style and what you're into. Also I really like when dive guides make a effort to seek out and point out cool stuff. Sometimes I felt like we were just going for a swim and following the guide. Either way, we saw cool stuff on every dive but fun when they can point things out. Saw tons of HUGE clams, a couple sea turtles, lots of reef sharks, clown fish, some nudi branches and of course plenty of beautiful coral. Frank the humphead Maori Wrass was probably the highlight of the trip for me.

I really can’t say enough about our Reef Encounter experience. My husband and I booked the Top Deck 2 day/1 night trip at the end of March. We looked at TONS of other dive companies and tours and chose the Reef Encounter based on its reviews and I’m so, so glad that we did. We went back and forth for a while about doing Top Deck due to the additional cost but it was absolutely one of the best decisions we made on our trip! We had both just been scuba certified a month before so we wanted to make sure we had a personal guide instead of a group (we didn’t want to hold anyone back as novices).

From the moment we checked in we were well taken care of. Kari was our guide and she was amazing. Friendly, patient, funny— and she anticipated needs we didn’t even know we had (like throwing our towels in the dryer so that they would be warm when we got out of the water!). She also knew where to look for everything in the reef which was incredibly valuable. We would have been swimming around aimlessly, although the GBR is stunning, obviously. I wasn’t feeling well the first day, but I was able to go out with another guide (Nick Paul was incredible, too!) so the staff’s flexibility was really appreciated.

It’s been said many times, but in addition to the service, the food was also outstanding. We wanted for nothing— except more time on the reef. It was an experience that we’ll cherish forever— book this trip, you won’t regret it.