Beach Cities Scuba 34283 Pacific Coast Highway, Dana Point, CA 92629

"Some aspects of this place are five star and others are one star. I’ll start with the good. Perry and Chuck and Bill were all great and very helpful and understanding. Thank you for working with me and my wife to get us both through the course. The boat Captain and his assistant were great too and I had a great time during my open water course. Now for the bad…My wife and I went into the Dana Point location to sign up but were accidentally scheduled for orientation in Newport Beach. Then when it came time to do confined water dives or ocean dives, my wife’s equipment was wrong on three separate occasions, even after we called ahead to make sure they corrected the mistake after the first time. And finally for my biggest issue, there was a different staff member on the boat who assists the boat captain and the divers, for my wife’s third and fourth dive (which I couldn’t be there for) who yelled at her, refused to help her and told her she had no business scuba diving. That’s an absolutely unacceptable way to treat someone learning to scuba dive, not to mention a customer. My wife immediately went into the shop afterwards to complain about the incident and hasn’t heard anything back. She came home crying because of this person ruining her experience instead of coming home to celebrate becoming a certified diver. I really wish this had gone differently because there is really good staff there. Not to mention I live less than a mile from the shop. But I’ll drive the extra distance rather than have somebody think they can treat a learning diver and customer that way. If you don’t like your job of teaching and helping people, do something else for a career."

"Really disappointed in our sole experience with Beach Cities Scuba. We booked a boat dive starting at Dana Point on a Sunday and flew into San Diego from the east coast for this boat dive. We paid for an AirBnb and plane tickets to attend. The day before the boat dive, we get an email saying Beach Cities Scuba decided to cancel the dive because not enough people signed up. How disappointed would you be if you planned a vacation only to have the reservation revoked less than 24 hours before the event after having flown in? The worst part is that when I asked for some help with referrals to maybe another local boat dive or local dive site, they completely ignored my questions and responded that my refund had been issued. If it were me, I would've at least attempted to help recommend some spots, especially since we aren't local. Really a negative experience. The trip ended up being wasted because of their last minute cancellation. If you are thinking of booking a boat dive here, just be aware that the event may be canceled just a day beforehand without notice. [Replying to the owner response below] To make a reservation on your boat charters, you all take a payment. Days before the rsvp, you must either have had enough participants to run the charter or you failed to let us know otherwise in a timely manner. If you had enough people and they cancelled last minute, then there should be a no refund policy within however many days to still allow for the others who have paid to go. That way it is still economic to run the charter. So either you chose to refund folks last minute, taking the opportunity to dive away from the remaining folks, or you should’ve been in the right to keep the money and run the charter anyway, but simply decided not to. Either way, I would advise people who are not local to this area to avoid booking with beach city scuba because of the way you all run your charters. There could be a cancellation 24 hours before the trip with no reasonable alternative (I can’t just dive the next weekend if I’m not here)."

"The staff were all 4 and 5 star employees, really great people, however, equipment we used during charter was pretty beaten up, they didn't have fins to rent (you're a dive charter, come on), and they use weight belts instead of integrated weights. The BCD's seem old but still any dive company should be using integrated weights. Equipment just seemed very dated. I have was certified 15 years ago and honestly this was the first time I have seen a dive belt since the drills using them in class. The charter was ok but doesn't compare to others I've had. strangely employees don't set up your equipment, and the dive master stays in the boat. I was from out of town and completely unaware of the site conditions outside of temp. Perhaps I am spoiled. Again the employees were great, really liked them, gear was garbage and felt that the dive itself was over priced for what was offered."

"May and William were extremely helpful and spent time talking equipment and necessary items. I wasn't rushed and prices were all fair and reasonable. I'll definitely return to purchase more supplies and hopefully book on of their upcoming trips. Thanks for great customer service."

"My husband and I got our open water diver certification here and we would highly recommend beach cities scuba to anyone! We did our 4 open water dives from the Riviera boat that docks at Dana Point Harbor. The staff was amazing, knowledgeable, patient and kind. Brittany was a super awesome instructor. She was extremely thorough and helpful. We truly appreciated her patience and wonderful instructions! Thank You to the entire staff for a great experience!"