Royal Caribbean Cruise Diving - Roatan and Cozumel

[BlowBubbles]

Looking for feedback and advice:

We have a cruise coming up in April with Royal Caribbean. It is a “Western Caribbean” itinerary: Roatan, Honduras; Costa Maya, MX; Cozumel, MX; and Nassau, Bahamas.

We are planning on diving in Honduras and Cozumel.

Questions: what can we expect from the dive operators, Anthony’s Key for Honduras, and, does anyone know who affiliate dive operator is for Cozumel?

What type of diving should we expect? Level of difficulty? I have read about drift diving in Cozumel - is there anything specialized we should know about this? Our experience is checkout dives in freshwater lake and 1 OW liveaboard with about 10 dives.

Advice: we also want to take some young family members snorkeling when we are at the other ports - any recommendations for the best way to do that but not through a cruise excursion? I.e. local beaches or resort areas with reef access, or trip operators that will be OK with 5, 6 and 12 year old kids snorkeling? Is one port better for this than another?

Thanks in advance for your input!

 

[diversteve]

AKR picks up at the cruise port and shuttles you across the island to their north side location - about 20mins?

You'll get your own cruise dedicated boat and they often dive Overheat Reef. I think its even mentioned on the Carnival website.

I was on their dock once when the cruise boat returned, quick stop at the AKR store and they loaded up for the ride back. I think it was around noon. I believe that wouldve been one dive but IDK.

Another dual option could be take a cab to the West End - dive with a shop that's going out within your schedule and the snorkelers can go right off the beach on the east side of Half Moon Bay near Half Moon Resort. We saw someone snorkeling there daily - the Stanley Sub guy dropped a small sailboat wreck there - he cuts pieces out of the keel for ballast. The reef looked decent but I only saw it as we rode over it. It was shallow, in places coral broke the surface at low tide.

If you go off the beach east past Sundowners and swim about 50yds. out - it's the same spot. A cab should be about $20/25 and for the return they park across the street from the main road into the area - a 5min walk.

We dove with Coconut Tree Divers all week twice there was a cruise diver on our boat. Most West End shops return to the dock between dives so depending on your schedule you could dive the 2nd morning and 1st afternoon dive and still have time for lunch in the West End - there's also some tourist shops there. I think quite a few of the shops work with cruise schedules, I've heard West End Divers does also.

Other dive options - Barefoot Divers/Cay has a program. They're on the south side a little west of Mahogany Bay (your cruise port) They'll set up a cab for you, IIRC it's $20 each way. Dives off a smaller boat, lunch, nice resort. Really valet service, I didn't touch my gear once I dropped it on their dock.

Subway Watersports also has a cruise program. The only thing I know of it is they pick you up also.

Roatan is pretty easy diving. The boat moors in 20-30' and you swim out to the drop which is pretty gradual. Given the general level of your fellow cruise divers they don't go anywhere to difficult. Although the challenging dives are the drift dives off the far west end and you won't be taken there. Or the deep wrecks near AKR. They don't know you and have no time to evaluate you all that morning.

 

[diversteve]

I'm going to guess there's no good snorkeling off Nassau. It has a lot of nice, flat beaches which usually extend out. There are snorkel operations that go to Goulding Cay - about `1/2 hr. boat ride.No idea on the age limit.

The kids might like some of the Atlantis attractions - there's sort of a pseudo ancient ruins complex with Sharks and Mantas in a big aquarium. Also a Dolphin encounter.

The logistics of cruise diving there make it a good place to do something else. Stuart Cove's has the cruise contracts and shuttle you 45mins. to their south side location. Bahma Divers is the only other option and they won't pick up at the cruise port.

Someone posted in another thread that they felt that Cove's was driven by the cruise departure schedule so they did nearby dives with short times. We cruised there once - on Caenival but did not dive - and our ship was 1/5 moored. It's a nice tourist port, you walk off the ship and past the tour operators and are downtown. The ferry to Paradise Island (Atlantis) is about a block away or there's shuttles that run between downtown, Cable Beach and Paradise Island.

I did read somewhere that the Melia resort has some reef nearby that you can snorkel on a day pass - no details.

 

[noj3333]

I've spent 2 weeks diving at AKR, and I've also done a cruise stop dive with Barefoot in Roatan.

I really loved Barefoot... they keep you on a different boat then their resort guests, so when we were with them my wife and I had a private boat with our own DM. They're located right on Mary's Place, one of the better known Roatan dive sites as well. Lastly, if you ask they'll do three dives with you (at least they did with us). Being able to squeeze the third dive in was nice.

As far as COZ, I've also done some cruise diving in here... be aware that it's drift diving... in my earlier days as a diver I had issues with that, and was unfamiliar with it. Do some google searches and you should have a good understanding what your getting into. With my current experience level, I LOVE a nice drift dive... but it wasn't always the case.

All and all you'll do fine at both those ports. I'd suggest you book outside the cruise ship to get the best value, and allow yourself an opportunity to pick your operator. It's my experience that the cruise operator assumes all the divers are incompetent, and schedules dives as such. When you book outside of the boat the operator will put you on a boat, that more then likely, has experienced dives on it, and they'll make their 'regular customers' happy and do 'normal dives'... I much prefer the 'normal dives' compared to quick, shallow, cruise ship dives... YMMV...

 

[Altamira]

In Roatan, I dove with AKR on three cruise stops (ship's dive op), one with Black Pearl (ship's dive op), and one with Barefoot Divers and another with Coconut Tree Divers. All were excellent dive ops, and I felt the quality of the dives was pretty much equal between the four. I would not hesitate to use any of those operators in future trips to Roatan. I have found that most dive ops, whether ship excursions or not, will generally break up the group into somewhat compatible experience levels. However, I have also found that in those situations, a diver's experience level on paper does not necessarily equate to skill or competency. Some of the worst problem dives I have seen were spawned by "experienced" divers.
In Coz, I generally try to use off-ship operators if the ship arrival/departure time is compatible with the dive ops' schedule. There are a lot of excellent dive ops in Coz to choose from, and you can find a lot of recommendations in the Cozumel forum. As far as drift diving is concerned, I have taken my grandson to Coz at least four times when he was a very new Jr. OW diver and he had no problem with the current. I know the current can vary greatly, but we never experienced anything that would have deterred me from putting a 11-15 year old grandson in the water.

 

[BlowBubbles]

I want to thank everyone for their input so far. You’ve offered a lot of excellent information.

 

[Kevin Floyd]

If you are diving on Roatan see if you can hook up with Subway Water sports. We dove with them for a week and they were great.... nice boats, badass/knowledgeable DMs.

 

[Saltyhawg]

If you are diving on Roatan see if you can hook up with Subway Water sports. We dove with them for a week and they were great.... nice boats, badass/knowledgeable DMs.

We stayed at Turquois Bay and dove with Subway for a week. Maynor was one of the best dive masters I've been with. He's the big guy at about 0:50.

 

[Diver below 83]

Great post. I’m actually diving in COZ with RCCL in feb. doing the 2 tank drift dive. I did book directly with Rccl but I’m also new to diving so Booking with royal made things slightly easier. I just got of symphony of the seas at the beginning of the month and I dove in st marten. We did have a stop in Nassau as well but the dive crew onboard said Nassau was a bit of a waste compared to st marten.
In oct I dove in great stirup cay at cococay which is royals private island in the Bahamas chain. That was a beach dive though. So far all of my experiences have been positive booked through the ship. I did have rough seas on my st marten dive and got extremely sea sick. Had my first experience of throwing up below while on air. Glad I experienced now rather than down the road.

 

[robint]

In Roatan, I dove with AKR on three cruise stops (ship's dive op), one with Black Pearl (ship's dive op), and one with Barefoot Divers and another with Coconut Tree Divers. All were excellent dive ops, and I felt the quality of the dives was pretty much equal between the four. I would not hesitate to use any of those operators in future trips to Roatan. I have found that most dive ops, whether ship excursions or not, will generally break up the group into somewhat compatible experience levels. However, I have also found that in those situations, a diver's experience level on paper does not necessarily equate to skill or competency. Some of the worst problem dives I have seen were spawned by "experienced" divers.
In Coz, I generally try to use off-ship operators if the ship arrival/departure time is compatible with the dive ops' schedule. There are a lot of excellent dive ops in Coz to choose from, and you can find a lot of recommendations in the Cozumel forum. As far as drift diving is concerned, I have taken my grandson to Coz at least four times when he was a very new Jr. OW diver and he had no problem with the current. I know the current can vary greatly, but we never experienced anything that would have deterred me from putting a 11-15 year old grandson in the water.

Ditto on everything here....
AKR does a great job in Roatan. We are using them again for our cruise in April also, Carnival Vista.

Cozumel...if your going to dive there, you might as well use the cruise dive arrangement as the ship arrival times do not usually coincide with boat schedules there.
The current in Cozumel can be crazy, but they won't take you anywhere that is too bad, that is why they don't guarantee a reef as it all depends on conditions for that day...and sometimes a dive site known for zero current can have crazy fast current, and vice versa. The dive ops know and they want big tips so they will take you where you are guaranteed to have a great dive.