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I have gone to AKR and just visited without any fee.
I paid for my diving (boat and shore), arranged through a friend- an accompanying island DM, I paid for meals, cash on the spot.
The resort is rather porous, they are used to Pod People and the (very) occasional ex-pat who comes for food. There are any number of other weeklong visitors from other AI resorts who arrive at arranged times for the Flipper Pester. The bar up the hill's steps is open to anyone with cash.
The mainland portion of the resort is actually part of a local island road, the only access to a small settlement to the NE. People flow through with regularity- being a North American in a cab, the "security" will hardly notice you at "the gate". (the inferred fluidity there was intentional and accurate)
If you want to "lay on the sandy beach", that will involve getting a ride on the shuttle boat that is required from the food/beverage/dive op (mainside) to get to Anthony Key itself. Would it be a problem for you? Likely not (ask at the office), but there are no "guest services" once you get over to that far shore. I do not recall a public toilet other than the one at the pool that was not open. My only visit to the Key was to try the AKR shore dive (skip it) a few times. The AKR lagoon muck dive is arguably the best such dive in Roatan, certainly a grand night dive that nobody ever does. Under their pier is spook-a-licious.
Altho I am a CCV devotee (and have suffered the appropriate slings and internet arrows for this bias that has resulted in approx 75 weeks there), I highly recommend that anyone on Roatan take that last off-gassing day (Friday) and visit other resorts. Early on in my visits, I began diving at other resorts and dive-ops mid week, just to see. (More than a few are g-o-n-e) Go see the other options while you're at CCV. Getting to AKR and doing a "site visit" will take 1/2 day, you could roll it in with a visit to West End. Opening up your horizons, it is a simple matter to take a CCV kayak over to FIBR and take a look there. If you do these two things, you'll be light years ahead of most other visitor's breadth of experience. I have recenty visited RHR, PBR, HMR, MLR, BFK and a bunch of smaller day dive ops. Enter, act dumb, have a good look around at everything. Listen to the conversation, the staff, look at the rental gear (beyond the fading and bleaching), pay attention to the boats... and take pictures!
Again, I usually suggest to those with wanderlust to do this on off-gassing Friday. Since I have visited the other places previously, I am still usually doing very shallow dives at CCV up until Friday early afternoon.
When you do "site visits" to any property, your experience base will expand, conversely, early on in that process, you gotta know what it is you're seeing. Think about click link-> Dunning if you want to really delve into the psychology of how we see.Roatan, for being such a small island, is a very diverse place.
No one resort (day dive op/ AI) can be all things to all people. Beware the operations who infer or outright claim that they are. Read between the pop-up ads. Beaches on Roatan are the perfect example of this- there are two tourist accessible natural beaches on the Island, one (West End) is over-run with pod people, the other (Paya) is fairly private and extremely remote. But... if you read the internet~ everybody has one. Almost.
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