Blue Grotto Dive Resort

A group of us chose this place to come get our open water certification dives completed and glad we did. The grounds are very well kept and you can tell they take pride in the place. The staff was friendly and attentive as well. We visited the place down the road and it wasn’t nearly as nice.
We rented a few of the rooms on site and I will give a couple of tips for you:
1. They are price well for what you get and extremely clean. I uploaded some pics but they don’t do the place justice. They are very new and clean. The pics make it appear as though they are older rustic cabins, but I can assure you they are not.
2. They only thing to be careful of the size of the rooms because there are some that have twin bunk beds, a shower and sink… NOTHING more. Not that you really need more as you probably wont spend much time in your room but rather outside at one of the picnic tables or pavilions.
3. The ones with kitchenette’s come stocked with everything you need to cook if you so choose.
4. There is a on site pool if you chose to complete any close water certifications while there
The spring was a great choice for our first dive (accept the cold water). The other divers were respectful and courteous. The spring is beautiful too with the exception of the silt. if there are any inexperienced divers that can’t control their buoyancy, then the visibility goes down quickly.
We thoroughly enjoyed our stay and would come back anytime!

The cabins are VERY clean and well-​maintained, as is the campsite. Also, the customer service is excellent. When scuba diving, visibility underwater isn’t great on days when it’s crowed (I.E. weekends). I would avoid weekends like the plague if planning a visit here. When there are fewer divers, visibility is great. The caves are awesome to explore. The fish are curious and their resident turtle came over to say hi more than once. I’ll be back!

Blue Grotto was recommended to us by our scuba instructor as a nice place to dive in northern Florida with comfortable water temperatures during the winter months. This was our first time at Blue Grotto and we enjoyed our experience. The instructor and employees are friendly and helpful, the facilities are extremely clean and nicely cared for and the diving was enjoyable. The grotto is beautiful and the visibility is great… we even received a visit from the resident soft shell turtle, Virgil. It can get quite crowed at times with a number of students in the water. Since the bottom is silt you must have good buoyancy control to avoid reducing your visibility. I had a great time and would consider coming back to dive if in the area again or for additional certifications from their instructor, Ken. You can stay onsite in one of their cabins or just hang out for the day in one of their picnic areas. Since Blue Grotto appears to be a popular dive site I would recommend diving on weekdays or later in day on Sunday for less traffic and crystal clear visibility.

I hadn’t been to Blue Grotto for years, but I heard that it had new owners and had been totally remodeled. My friends said that it now had nice, clean, well laid out facilities and the folks running the place were super nice. So, my friend Bob and I paid them a visit yesterday. Well, everything they told me was true. What a great place to spend a day diving. All the facilities and grounds are clean and well maintained. All the parking, staging, and travel area have fine gravel so you and toe gear stay clean. All facilities are fully handicapped accessible. They have a number of covered picnic areas with gear racks to set up your gear and keep our of the weather. Their air/​Nitrox fill station look state of the art and they’ll gladly pick up and return your tanks to your staging area. Buy some fish food to feed the Koi, bluegill, and resident soft shelled turtle.
Hint: go early and/​or on weekdays if you can as divers are now flocking to Blue Grotto. The bottom is silty and a group of new divers can quickly turn 100 of viz to 30.

I really wanted to like it here, since the marketing materials were great. But my experience here left me a bit underwhelmed.
I came here with a group last weekend at 9 AM. I wish we had gotten here earlier, since the visibility was bad by the time we got in the water. A lot of classes and groups come here on the weekends, and some of the divers had kicked the bottom of the grotto, stirring up silt and algae. Also, there were so many divers last weekend that it was very tricky to get to a platform.
Some Positives: This place is really beautiful, filled with koi fish and a friendly turtle named Virgil. The picnic area is ideal for groups. And the drive here from Orlando was fantastic. Williston and the surrounding area is rustic and lovely… it reminded me of my hometown in NC.
I think weekdays may be the best time to come, when visibility is better and crowds are a bit smaller.

Really popular dive site so it might be crowded when you go. Only $ 40/​person for entrance fee + rentals if necessary + instructor if necessary. Our instructor was Phil and he was awesome about helping us out.
Water’s really warm at 75 °F in the winter — and the temperature is consistent regardless of depth as the Blue Grotto is a spring. Not much to see down there apart from silt, a turtle, some fish, and lots of rocks.
I had a great time but I doubt I’ll return as you can see everything in one dive.

If you are not going here to learn to dive, stay away and save your money. The place had many newbies learning to dive and was crowded leaving very little to see expect for people learning to clear their masks. Disappointed.

My visit here was my first Diving trip in North FL. This place is pretty amazing and so is fresh water diving and Virgil (the friendly turtle)— In sum, Holly Cow! In talking with some other divers during my visit, they mentioned that the resort is under new management and that they made some serious improvements/​renovations. This could explain the really nice cabins on the grounds for rent and the UBER clean and spacious bathrooms and showers. The bathrooms are very nice with showers inside and out. They built a very nice deck leading down to the diving area.
They have installed what seemed like brand new stairs along with a ramp leading down at a nice shallow angle (great when walking down to the water with al of your gear). The deck the built around the entry point is great so you can stow your gear out of the way and not have to walk all the way back to the top. The guy who bought Blue Grotto put in a lot of thought, time and money into making this place awesome — Well done sir. Tip of the snorkel.
Based on my uncalibrated dive computer you can dive comfortably up to about 50 feet before reaching the cave which goes down to about 95 feet. At around 40 feet there’s a dome for nice safety stop that you can take without your reg.
I am a HUGE fan and would definitely make this a priority if I lived closer…(I’m looking at you Unilocal Gainesville and Orlando)

I really wanted to like it here. The facilities are impressive, the new pool is great for those needing to run through their pool training, and the springs seemed convenient for check out dives without having to charter a boat, etc)
While the facilities were nice and accommodating, the actual diving was not. On a rathe unremarkable Saturday in April it felt like every «Diver-​Supply» store in Florida brought classes here. The springs were insanely crowded but worse yet is that the springs floor is silt, not sand. This might not be an issue if this had experienced divers in the area, but there are far too many instructors here clearly not informing their students TO NOT KICK THE BOTTOM. By the time we stepped in (about 2p) visibility was completely wrecked. At 40ft we had a maximum of 5 – 8 feet vis. Making our way further into the grotto and the darkness exacerbated the already abysmal conditions. Combine that with novices that still struggle to control their buoyancy and you have people descending on your head at the most unexpected of times.
If the management here really wanted to improve the experience and not just churn the students in and out, they’d impose daily restrictions on number of divers drop in.
Bottom line? Avoid on weekends. The massive crowds ruin the spring due to the silt clouds that get kicked up.

We had a very nice experience here taking some of our bsa seabase crew on their checkout dives. The campground is super nice. New bath house is a great asset to the facility. Kurt an Darin work very hard and are friendly and helpful. looking forward to another visit. Saturday was very busy. If you can swing a visit during the week you can avoid crowds.

We had two very nice, relaxing dives here on 5 Nov 2013. The staff was attentive, helpful, and genuinely seemed to care that we had a nice time. They are constructing a new bathhouse that will greatly improve the experience although the existing facilities are adequate. The construction should be done around Dec 2013.
The dive center has regular and Nitrox air fills and all the gear you might need if you forgot something or have a failure of some kind.
The dive itself is lovely with 72 degree water and virtually unlimited visibility, but the bottom is easily silted so buoyancy control is a must. The platforms would make a great training ground too. I was with a friend who had just finished his Open Water course so we stayed above a depth of 60′ but still saw plenty, including a visit from the friendly and curious Virgil the turtle. If you’re in the area Blue Grotto is definitely worth the visit.

The next step for many new divers is getting specialty certifications to go to other dive sites.
Had an amazing time at Blue Grotto for two reasons:
1. The guys at Mac’s Sports who had lined up the trip in the first place who were professional and great.
2. The staff at Blue Grotto who were friendly and helpful.
The water is clear and clean and you can work on both limited visibility and deep diving at this location because it goes down to 90 feet. If you are nearby, go. I happened to be in town and it was a great option for me.

We just got back from doing this dive a couple of days ago. This is a fun place to dive. It isn’t too expensive at around $ 40 per diver. It’s a divers only site. No swimmers or snorkelers allowed. If you go in the winter like we did, it’s less crowded on most days. We had the place to ourselves. Perfect!
This site has an air bell at 20′ of depth. The bottom is at 30′ under the bell, so you hover inside the bell breathing compressed air in an open sapce. Very cool. It enables you to talk with your buddy and get a break from diving. That enabled us to prolong our dive.
They provide restrooms with showers. So you can warm up after the dive in winter. Once you check-​in, you can drive right up to the picnic tables and gear up. It’s a short walk down some stairs to the water. Entry and exit into and out of the water is very easy on a floating deck.
They have 3 platforms underwater for you to use. They ask that you do not settle on the bottom. Apparently it gets stirred up very easily and clouds the water pretty bad. We avoided the bottom and had great visibility the entire dive.
Advanced divers can go all the way down to 100′. Open water divers can go to about 60′ before losing light. You start getting into the crevices at about 40′. There were lots of minnows, or killifish, between the surface and about 10′. We saw a few as deep as 30′. We also saw a brown bullhead (looks just like a catfish) at about 30′. It was maybe 18 — 22 inches long.
If you have never dove in a Florida spring before, this is a great place to start! It’s an easy, fun dive. It would also be a great place to get certified.