This was one of my top 2 experiences of our trip. Was traveling with my wife and 80 year old father (first time to Hawaii). We decided to fly over from Oahu to show him the volcanos and found this on the internet and had to do it!
We booked by phone the morning of our flight to the Big Island. There was nobody else booked on our time slot, so I booked my wife/father as riders only. They said they would call if anyone else booked, and if I wanted to, I could drop the riders as there was a minimum requirement of 3 passengers to confirm the time slot. Sure enough, they called and another couple had booked, so I was able to drop my wife/father and save some money. In my opinion though, they should have gone anyway as they use high powered LED lights to light up the ocean floor, both from above and below.
Hunter and Dillon were great. Hunter managed things up top and was a nice young man with lots of confidence and excited about being around the water. Dillon was in the water and told us was to do, what to expect and shared information about the area and rays.
The rays literally swam right up to you doing loops to eat the plankton directly under the light board. We had about 6 rays, each probably between 8 - 12 feet across. They have the rays named and could recognized at least 2 of them, but if you had pictures, you could go home later and look them up on the registry to see their names.
Awesome experience. Would absolutely do it again. Fun for all ages. There were young children both the time slot before/after mine. I'm sure they had visions of the Manta Ray in Finding Nemo as they were wide-eyed and full of excitement about what they had just experience.
Thanks for the wonderful evening.
Jon H.
Corinth, TX