Cozumel is a pier port, so no need to take a ferry in. Get right off the boat and walk down the 1/2 mile pier to the port. DO NOT shop at the shops at the pier! Exit the pier and ask a cab driver to take you downtown (more on this below). Pier shops are overpriced and shop owners don't negotiate and likely have a kick-back paid to carnival, as they ask you what ship you're on when you stop there. You only want to shop at places that don't have price tags on anything :) 
I have always loved Cozumel. We have snorkled there before and loved it. However, on this trip we decided to skip an excursion at Cozumel and do some shopping instead - we were very glad we did this. 
One big mistake we made was thinking we could walk to the downtown shopping area from the pier. We walked about a mile and gave up and got a cab. Cabs are only $7 (we had 4 in our group) to take you to the downtown area. So, I suggest you do this immediately directly outside the pier gates. 
Your cab driver will likely drop you off at a jewelry store at the end of the downtown area where someone at the jewelry shop will open the cab door and invite you to their jewelry shop. Of course, the cab drivers have an "in" with these shop owners and probably get some kind of kick-back on purchases. 
After being dropped off, you can slowly make your way back to the pier area and stop at all the little knick-knack places up and down the street. Cozumel downtown is basically one busy street with the ocean and beach on one side and stores on the other side. We also walked on the arterials and found some really good deals on jewelry. We didn't spend much, but my brother bought an awesome white gold and beautiful heart-shaped red ruby ring for $45 (dealer was asking $180) and I bought my mom a beautiful mother-of-pearl bracelet for $20 (dealer wanted $85). Remember to ALWAYS negotiate a much lower price; walk away from counter offers and they will follow you out the store. You can get your lowest price almost always! Dealers will act offended at first. Also, many stores carry exactly the same stuff, such as the medium sized onyx elephants. They will tell you they are $75, but you CAN get them for $20 if you keep asking at different locations. 
Also, shop owners will tell you things like "This is my father's store - come see" and "hey lady, I'll give you discount!". These shop owners play on American values and politeness to try to get you to enter their stores. Be on the look out for fake silver - anyone can stamp "0.925" on any type of metal, so know what you're looking for before you go, and be careful not to show too much interest in anything or it will hurt your negotiating! Simply say "Oh, this is kind of neat...hmm..." and make sure they hear you. 
Warning: CHECK YOUR CHANGE. We got several Nicaraguan nickels (exactly the same size as American quarters) as change at several shops. OF course, they are NOT worth 25-cents, but we found out that if you get stuck with them, most vending machines in Mexico that take American quarters will take them. 
I'm a Realtor by trade, so I love negotiating. If you're not into that, you'll probably want to skip the downtown area at Cozumel. 


Cozumel

Rotan is an island off of Honduras and is probably owned by Carnival Cruise Lines (Similar to Labadee, Haiti owned by RCI). The pier is very short and ships port very close to shore. The shops at this pier are terrible in comparison with those off-pier in Cozumel. We did not venture off the pier-security, as from what we understood, there is no "downtown area" as it's not really a town. However, for $5 p/person, there is a large sky-tram that will take you to a private nice man-made beach owned by Carnival where there are lots of little stores (we didn't check them out) and restaurants (why would you spend the extra money when food on the boat is free?). 
There are also lots of beach chairs and cabanas at this beach, it's a nice place to sip on an $8 pina colada and watch people swim. 
Honestly, there didn't seem to be much to this island. This was probably the most relaxing port we stopped at, and definately had the best beach front of all our stops. 


Roatan

We LOVED Belize, mostly because of our awesome excursion there. 
Unfortunately I don't remember the exact name of the excursion, but I believe it was "4x4, boat ride, suspension bridge, rainforest and cave tour" or something like that. IT was $99 p/person and completely worth every penny. This was the only excursion we took, and it was very awesome. 
Belize City has shallow waters around it, so ships must use tenderboats to ferry you into the city. Again, a pier area has been built around the pier where security officers check everyone coming in and out of the pier area. Belize is kind of rough, so this made us feel much safer (however, after our excursion we did venture out into some of the other shops outside the pier - lots of mahogany crafts. We didn't buy anything, though, as it was mostly just trinkets and junk.) 
This tour meets early (about 7:45 AM ship time), so you're one of the first tender ships to leave the boat, so there is very little wait. The crew of the Dream has the tender boat situation set up great when porting at Belize - if you're on an excursion, you are assigned a tenderboat number and time to meet in the theater. (By the way, your excursion tickets are delivered to your stateroom the night before your excursion) When your number is called, a crew member directs you to the proper embarkation deck and area. It was all very non-stressful and didn't take long. 
Once your ferryboat arrives (about 1/2 an hour), your group will be greeted by a tour guide who takes you to a speedboat. Although this speedboat looks small, it fits about 25 people and goes quite fast. A seven-mile trip near the shore of Belize in the speedboat shows you the country from the ocean. We saw dolphins and manatees. The speedboat then goes upstream down a large river at a slower speed. On both sides of the river are dense rainforest filled with egrets, birds, enormous dragon iguanas, all kinds of excellent wildlife. We felt very safe with our tour guides, and it was obvious that they have been giving this tour for years. The scenery alone was worth the $100 excursion price! 
After the boat tour, you land on a small peninsula upstream from the ocean to drive the 4x4s. This peninsula has lots of citrus trees and unusual vegetation which I had never seen before - enormous flowers, bushes, trees - it's all very beautifully landscaped. Also, there are well-maintained bathrooms with running water. Drinks are complimentary at this stop as well. After a short orientation (And I mean SHORT!), the tour guides asked us to get into groups of 4-6. Each 4x4 has a driver and passenger seat and four additional riders can ride in the back of the jeep. We were able to claim one jeep for our family of 4. There was very little in the way of instruction, and all jeeps are manual-drive stick shift jeeps. In other words, if you haven't driven a stick, don't even attempt it, as it these are difficult to drive. The tour guides asked for IDs and allowed my 17 year old brother to drive. The first part of the drive is through small village and rural areas on a "road" (I use that term loosely, as we have farm roads in Nebraska which are better maintained than these roads!). It was awesome to see the way people live in Belize, the types of houses they live in, the poverty and the overall lifestyles of the Belize people. We saw lots of stray dogs and cats, huge trash heaps on sides of the roads, people burning things, chickens everywhere, etc. Then we drove on a highway for about 15 miles. This did make me a little nervous (because rules of the road in Belize must be much different than in US and they were never explained to us), but since we were caravaning it turned out fine. After getting off the highway on another "road", we had the option to change drivers. Now came the reason we had the 4x4s - this rocky and rough dirt road traveled near mountains, through a rainforest next to a river, and we had a great time hitting puddles and going up steep hills. At one point, we were on the upslope of a hill and the jeep quit. Since there was a vehicle in front of us and behind us, it took some serious manouvering to get it started and over the hill, but we eventually figured it out. Driving through the jungle was amazing, we loved it. 
Once our 4x4 trip was over, we were at another "landing" area where nice clean bathrooms and free bottles of water awaited us. Also, we were given the option to put bags into free lockers, which we were glad we took advantage of. Another tour guide divided us up into groups of 8. We were then given head lamps for our cave tour and crossed over a large shaky suspension bridge (looked safe, felt scary!) over a large river to the rainforest trail. Our tour guide pointed out plants, animals and insects in the rainforest and explained their medicinal properties. Our tourguide grew up near this rainforest and told us about his family and their great health because they use the rainforest for all their medical needs. In fact, many pharmacutical companies in the US purchase plants from this rainforest for some of their products. The trail was easy to walk and was about a mile in length. 
At the entrance of the cave, our guide gave us some historical Mayan information about the cave. It's about what you would expect - we saw a couple small bats in the ceiling of the cave. The cave is very warm inside; about 15-20 degrees warmer than the outside air. There was some difficult maneuvering where you have to "walk like a duck" or get down on your hands and knees and crawl through some tight spaces. This was somewhat unpleasant for me because I was suffering from a couple of cracked ribs on an injury I got before our trip. However, it was quite worth it and wasn't extremely difficult. The cave is about 1/4th mile in length and opens to another trail through the rainforest where our guide told us more about the plants and trees. The trail led us back to the 4x4 landing. 
After another bathroom break and retrieving our items from the lockers, we were shown to a large covered open hut where some women had prepared lunch for us. Lunch was a typical Belizian lunch and included fried chicken, caw slaw, red beans and rice, and a fried plantain (interesting!) as well as bottled water, canned soft drinks or orange rum punch, if you wanted to get really excited. 
After lunch, we boarded a party bus which took us on the 45 minute trip back to Belize City. Rum Punch was allowed on the bus and we were served lots of it. Music was played on the bus and it was a fun atmosphere. The driver was even nice enough to pull over to the side of the road to let some of us take a much needed leak after drinking so much rum punch. The bus left us at the pier security gates. 
This was just a great excursion, I highly suggest it, especially if you have kids over 10. 



Belize City

Costa Maya is a pier-port, so again - no ferryboats (yay!) The short pier ends with several shops. Again, you'll want to walk the distance of about 1/2 mile to the edge of the pier gates and get a taxi ($2 p/person for 3 mile trip) to take you to the downtown area (Trust me - you won't want to walk!) 
The downtown area is similar to Cozumel, but the shopping isn't as good. Mostly small hut-type shanties line the inland side of a walk-way with a large public beach on the other side. The huge beach looked really fun but unfortunately we didn't know it was there so we didn't take our swimsuits or towels. Although we had fun at Costa Maya, it was in some ways just "more of the same". However, we found plenty of fun things to do and shopped for about two hours, and didn't buy much. We took a cab back to the pier and took a big nap before dinner. 


Costa Maya

Interior room towards back bottom of ship.  Very little rocking or movement.  Not too far from the elevators, and close to "Scarlet" dining room just a quick trip up the steps one floor.  Far away from the "Encore" theatre.  Worst thing about this cabin:  When porting, entire room shakes and vibrates violently and wakes you up early in the morning.  This is especially bad with a hangover!  Storage:  Really awesome - 3 huge closets; 2 with hangers (limited number of hangers - about 6 per closet so you might want to bring some of your own as room service won't bring any more) and the other closet with lots of shelves.  Desk has 5 large drawers and two small nightstands store something small.  Beds are high enough to stuff luggage underneath.  Lots of shelves built into the mirror in bathroom allow for plenty of toiletry storage.  
Two single beds can be either pushed together to make one large bed or can be separated with beds on sides of walls with night stands in the middle. Flat-screen TV mounted from ceiling over safe cabinet.  Medium sized safe is free to use and works great.  Lighting is very good in these rooms.  Entire room design very well thought out and very nice. Florescent lighting takes a bit to turn on.  Switches also located near beds for convenient shutting off.  Artwork inside room is tacky like the rest of the ship. Single beds are somewhat uncomfortable and small, pillows are nice and fluffy and there are two extra pillows located in bottom of stateroom closet for a total of 6.  Large bottles of water 
The minibar was locked when we checked into our room, which was fine because I wanted to avoid the temptation of spending all that extra money.  Staterooms also include two nice terrycloth robes which you can take out of your room to walk to the pool or hot tub in.  You can also take these home for $34 (If I remember right), but who has room in their suitcase?!

We told our waiter the first night that we would like a large glass of milk with our dinner each night, and they were happy to do this for us.I hope you have a great time on your next cruise, too!

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