We were recommended Nemo Water Sports, so booked direct through their website with ease. Initial deposit is taken & you pay the balance on arrival at the harbour. When we arrived, we quickly completed a form & the final payment was taken. We were told to hurry, even though we had arrived well before our actual booked time (we had booked an 1 hour tour at 12pm but my family & I were in the water by 11.30am). I assume we were hurried along so we could join another group that had booked & were waiting to leave.
The guide asked who had never driven a jet ski before, I explained I hadn’t (luckily my husband had & our 15 daughter was his passenger). The guide basically explained the on/off button, go slow through the harbour, don’t get too close to each other and lastly, jet ski’s don’t have brakes!! I was hoping for a little more instruction or a small trial around the harbour area to make sure we were all safe to drive but no.
The next moment we were pushed off the jetty & expected to go out into the open sea. I can’t lie, I was very nervous. I found the very large 2 seater jet ski very difficult to steer/control for quite a while. As time went on, I did begin to feel a little more confident. I did still feel very rushed to keep up, which I guess was down to my inexperience & lack of confidence. The guide did race on ahead & didn’t check if I was okay. Thankfully my husband & a person from the other group that was in the other group did. The guide was also a little ‘shouty’ & abrupt (but this could be because he was speaking in English for us).
After all this though, I must say, my family & I did have a wonderful time. We made some fabulous memories to treasure. We saw some amazing sights of Dubai like the Burj Al Arab from the sea. The guide also takes lots of photos & videos during the tour & forwards them through to your mobile phone at no extra charge, which is great! The cost of the tour was very reasonable too. The jet ski’s appeared to be well maintained & there was a small changing facility on site, which was very handy.
Maybe if the Nemo tour guides were just a little more friendly and patient with new/inexperienced drivers, like myself, I would have definitely given 5 stars.