Four stars because seeing the mantas was astounding, but three for the organization of the trip itself. First, while I do understand that there is some kind of local issue about how many dive operators can get licenses to take people to see the mantas and there is a limited area where the boats are allowed to go, etc. etc., I don’t feel like this should be the customer’s issue, particularly not at these prices. The evening we went out, we left way earlier than seemed to be necessary, and wound up sitting on the water for nearly an hour with nothing to do while we waited for the sun to go down. I imagine the point of that was to get a good spot before the other boats showed up, but, again, this is not something the customer should have to suffer through. In the event, even after all that waiting, the area where we were was crowded anyway, with other groups of manta snorkelers literally bumping up against us in the water. Second, you should be clear that this is not diving with the mantas or swimming with the mantas; this is hanging onto the edge of a PVC-pipe raft that is tethered to the boat and *floating* over the mantas. Third, the getting-into-the-water process was unnecessarily chaotic, and the crew ought to be able to come up with a better way to do this. Because the water was relatively rough, most of us struggled to get to the raft and to stay in the position that we were rather gruffly told we had to maintain. That position, by the way, includes keeping a pool noodle awkwardly positioned under your shins in such a way as to keep your body completely horizontal in the water (a precaution I did not notice people from other boats using). There has to be a better way. Once everyone was in, the captain then started shuffling people around the raft, which created another level of chaos. It was also unfair to the people who had to move because it took away time from seeing the mantas, which started to arrive almost immediately. Two groups of snorkelers on similar rafts from other boats were then brought over to our area — I guess because we had more mantas — and they began banging into our legs and into our raft because it wasn’t really possible to control the rafts in the water. When you’re in the middle of the ocean over deep, dark water, and something slams into your leg, you are probably going to experience a moment of ... um ... alert concern. It was a not a good move on the part of the tour directors/captains. Finally, our actual time in the water was pretty short — probably something like 40 minutes. We were back on shore less than three hours after we left. The first mate, who got into the water to help us out, did an amazing job, and I don’t know why he didn’t collapse from exhaustion. Nice snacks were provided, including fresh pineapple and homemade chocolate chip cookies, a welcome touch, but the advertised “hot showers” are when someone briefly sprays you down with a hose after you get out of the water. It wasn’t a bad trip, but was rougher around the edges than was really necessary. In my view, there was also not good control on whether people were able to swim and snorkel. We had a woman who literally panicked as soon as she got into the water as well as a young child who had to return to the boat for some reason I didn’t understand. Moving those people around also took time and confused things. I acknowledge that it’s a tough call; if people tell you they can do it, you don’t really have much choice but to believe them. The operator we really wanted to go with didn’t have snorkel tours on the night we had available, so we chose these folks. We were overall satisfied with the experience but were left ambivalent about whether the cost was justified for the trip we got. Read the reviews online and in the guidebooks and make your decision accordingly.