Dive Review of Atmosphere Resort & Spa in
Philippines/Dumaguete

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Atmosphere Resort & Spa: "A lot to like, but a few annoyances", May, 2023, by David E Reubush, VA, US ( Top Contributor 71 reports with 36 Helpful votes). Report 12474 has 2 Helpful votes.
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Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	My buddy and I followed our visit to Crystal Blue with an additional 9 days of, mainly, muck diving at Atmosphere Resort in Dumaguete. While Crystal Blue is a relatively small resort solely focused on diving, Atmosphere is a much more expansive resort with, a significant number of rooms, 3 swimming pools, and other available activities in addition to diving. As with Crystal Blue the staff were all very friendly and attentive. Larry, one of the bar waiters was over the top friendly and attentive. Every day they had 3 happy hour specials at the bar. We often stopped there to sample the drinks before dinner. The food was great. Perhaps the best dive resort food since Pirates Point in Little Cayman. Dinner had more food than I could eat. I either had an appetizer and the main course or the main course and dessert. I couldn’t eat both an appetizer and dessert along with the main course. They brought out bottles of cool water for the table, unfortunately it warmed up quickly which was not my favorite thing to drink. I finally figured out that they would bring me a glass of ice if I asked, which fixed the problem. Otherwise, even iced tea cost extra. Our room was huge, A/C worked fine, and the bed was comfortable. My issue is that the bathroom was outside the A/C which meant that you couldn’t get dry after showering until you got back inside the A/C. It also meant that you got attacked by mosquitos every time you got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. There were a number of pluses and minuses with the dive operation: 1) Having the compressor room ventilation exhaust through the room with the wetsuits and gear was a good idea to help them dry more quickly. 2) Gear-up area would be more comfortable if they installed ceiling fans like in the dining room. 3) Camera room would be better with power strips and a light at each station. They should also plumb high pressure air into the camera room if they want you to blow off your housings. Now all they have is a scuba tank hooked up to air guns that leak. More than 50% of the time the tank was empty when I went to blow off my housing. They should also supply towels for each station to finish the drying process. 4) There is only 1 place on the shore that they bring the boats into to load up the tanks and gear and it is a long way from where the tanks are filled and the gear stored. The staff have to push the carts they use through the sand to get there. It would be better if they poured a concrete walkway. That would also help eliminate all the sand that gets dragged up into the rinse tank/gear up area by divers coming back from the boats. Also, only having 1 spot meant that, if you weren’t the first boat back for lunch, you had to wait sometimes more than half an hour to get off the boat. They need some floating docks which would allow them to service more than 1 boat at a time and eliminate the walk on rocks to get on and off the boat. 5) If they don’t add some docks, you need to bring hard soled booties to deal with the rocks on the shore and in the water. It was painful with regular 3 mm booties. 6) We started out on one of their big boats with, nominally, 4 dive masters and 3 divers per dive master. The big boats were good in that they had a head and the larger number of folks in the water meant that more stuff got found. Unfortunately, it also meant that the divers with poor dive skills could impact others. Things came to a head one day when a couple of divers who were up slope from us were totally oblivious to what their fins were doing and browned out what we were trying to shoot. My buddy blew up when we got back on the boat. The dive masters didn’t want to deal with it and neither did the trip leaders as nobody wanted to offend someone who was going to either tip them or potentially go on another trip. The solution was to put the 3 of us who were diving together and another couple on one of their small boats. This worked, but they missed a teaching moment and these people will continue to be terrible divers. Plus, they do a check-out dive off the beach as your first dive. One would expect that this was to see what kind of diver you were, and work on areas that need improvement. This did not seem to be the case. 7) We had some really great sites and some that weren’t so great. There were 2 sites that they took us to twice each that were just so-so. There were other sites that we only got to once that we would have loved to go back to, but didn’t. 8) They do night dives off the beach. The night we did it the viz was terrible. We stopped to shoot a cooperative snake and didn’t see the dive master again for 20 minutes. 9) Having the staff take care of moving and setting up the tanks, BC’s, etc. was nice, but I learned a long time ago to make sure that everything was right before starting a dive. On my first boat dive I discovered there was no tank O-ring. On a second boat dive one of the guys I was diving with discovered that they had not changed his tank, but not until he was already into the dive. Overall we had a good time and I got to see my first sargassum frogfish and mototi octopus, but things could have been much better if the various annoyances got fixed.
Websites	Atmosphere Resort & Spa
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	Over 1000 dives
Where else diving	Australia, Belize, Bimini, Bonaire, Caymans, Curacao, Fiji, Galapagos, Indonesia (Wakatobi, Raja Ampat, Komodo, Lembeh, Bali, Banda Sea, Ambon), Philippines, Red Sea, Solomon Islands, Southern Bahamas, St. Thomas, Turks & Caicos
Closest Airport	Dumaguete	Getting There	Fly to Manila and then fly to Dumaguete. We flew Cebu Pacific which seemed to be somewhat cheaper than Philippine Airlines.
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, dry	Seas	calm, currents, no currents
Water Temp	80-85°F / 27-29°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	20-60 Ft/ 6-18 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	Dive time nominally 1 hour, but we often went over.
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	None	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals	N/A	Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish	N/A
Large Pelagics	N/A
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	The staff carefully carried your camera onto and off the boat where they were all placed on a big, flat area and then carefully handed to you once you got into the water. The camera room back at the resort was generally good, but could use some improvements - see my previous comments.

Report currently has 2 Helpful votes

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Dive Review of Atmosphere Resort & Spa in Philippines/Dumaguete

Atmosphere Resort & Spa: "A lot to like, but a few annoyances", May, 2023,

Photos Submitted with this Report

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Atmosphere Resort & Spa in
Philippines/Dumaguete