I really liked the shopping here!!! Of course would have liked more time in port since we were on an excursion most of the day..but overall very good port, I don't know if we were even allowed to go past the gates or not into "civilization" but we didn't because of time...Very friendly people in Belize, hope to go back one day!! 


Belize City

Truly Carnival's Million Dollar Hole!!! It was nice and very well thought out! We did not book any excursions this day, and by the time we got off the ship, it was too late in the day for us to really go anywhere else so we just stayed on the "beach" and ate late lunch at one of the restaurants there...We did have a good time here..Gift shops in this area are alot of the same stuff and kinda high priced, so I didn't really do alot of shopping in this area at all..The "beach" was sand & grass, so I didn't look into snorkeling here, there may have been another spot to do that near by as I did see people with gear, but not sure where..Oh I will tell you from our experience at Mahogany Bay there were drunk people everywhere!!! If I had children I would NOT have wanted them around all that, from the beach areas to the shopping areas, we personally didn't care, we are in our 30's and it actually made the day more entertaining, if you have children with you and want to stay in that area maybe consider going early morning and back on board before things get wild!!! Otherwise have a good time!! 


Roatan

I have been to Mexico before, so the area was typical stuff, but this port is where our vacation took a big turn south, including the loss of the cell phone!! There were at least 2 cruise ships ported at this location, pier was total chaos, but even just getting off the ship here was crazy, I don't know if they weren't ready for us, or what the deal was, it just seemed like it took forever to get off that morning and of course we are in a hurry because we are booked on the Carnival excursion to Xcaret. 9 am is excursion time, we are literally running down the long pier to get "inside" the gates, when we get thru, we have no clue where to go, its overwhelming with all the tour operators from lots of companies, and many holding signs for the same excursion, so you really have to look for the name of the company you are booked thru..Thank goodness my husband spotted Carnival's Xcaret sign (Carnival excursions I think should really be "inside" the gates for their passengers) so Yeah we made it-so we thought. We run over to them and check in just a few minutes before 9am!! They then tell us we have to walk down to another pier (its maybe like 2 city blocks, but I just don't know how any elderly or handicap guest can get this accomplished in that amount of time, with the chaos and the heat alone) and go directly to the yellow/blue water taxi!! So we are making our way thru a sea of people, and get half way down the dock to this boat, Yea we made it again-so we thought!! Hubby said he wanted to have a smoke before we got on the approx. 45 min ride to the mainland, So I stopped the nearest person in "uniform" she was some sort of pier security, Mexican, & apparently didn't understand what I was asking and didn't speak English very well..I asked her (pointing at the boat and my watch) what time does the ferry actually leave? Wanted to make sure he had time,even though we were gonna just stand right there. She said "No, No more" I asked her, what do you mean, no more? No more room on that one?? "Si" she says..& as we are having this conversation the boat literally is pulling away from the dock!!! So then I run down the dock to the guys that were standing there, and explained to them that we need to be on that ferry company so what time does the next one come? He looked at the paper bracelet on my wrist (that we got when we checked in) and told us we should have been on that boat, I told him what the security officer said about it being full, and he said nope there was plenty of room and that was the only ferry and we needed to go back to where we checked in at and talk to them! So here we go again, running all the way back over there..get there, out of breathe, cant talk, throw my wrist in his face LOL, the guy says UH OHHHH and then another older couple comes running up to them too, they also were not able to get on the ferry...So he told us to follow him and another guy, they get on their phones and are talking to people and he takes us up to 2 ladies in bright orange & blue shirts, I looked at their name tags, they were shore excursion specialist from Carnival, so they ask us what happened and I explain all the confusion..she writes down all of our names and cabin #'s, and then the guys get off their phones and explain to us how we are going to get there, in front of the 2 ladies from Carnival... We have to follow him to the backside of this shopping center, take a cab ($7) pay for it ourselves to get down to the public water taxi, pay for our tickets ($12 per person) for that ride as well, then when we get to the mainland one of their reps will meet us and put us in another cab (they think they can cover that charge, but wont know for sure till we get there) and the cab will drop us off at Xcaret to meet up with our group or whatever (we ended up being about an hour behind from the rest of the group), and at the end of the day just ride the bus & water taxi back with our group (other carnival passengers)...He asked, Can we & are we okay with paying those cost upfront to get there now, they will then reimburse us our out of pocket cost ($31) & give us some sort of discount credit on the excursion since we would miss some of it and for all the confusion, he said if you all can do that go with this guy now (the other rep from the tour operator) and I will stay here and talk to these ladies and we will get it figured out & make it right for you because it wasn't your fault the officer gave you wrong info regardless if she understood what I was asking or not, she knows what time that ferry leaves, she should have taken us right over there to it or at least tell us to talk to the other guy from their company standing right there by it since we were literally steps from the boat... So the carnival ladies verified our info, asked us if we agreed to that, apologized on behalf of Carnival, told us they would work it out with the tour operator and make it right, she told us she wasn't sure what percentage of a credit we would actually receive on our sail & sign, it would be like 10% or even up to 50%, but we would definitely get our out of pocket cost reimbursed and she would discuss the discount on the excursion with the tour operator & take care of it and we could go ahead and go as long as we felt satisfied..That was perfectly fine with us and the other older couple agreed too so we left...I will say the 2 gentleman from the tour company and the 1 lady from Carnival who basically did all the talking with us, were Very helpful, nice, & very apologetic to all 4 of us, so we indeed felt taken care of and could go enjoy the excursion.. 
I will preface this part with the fact that I have been to Xel-Ha (Xcaret's sister park) before and had the time of my life!!I did lots of research on Xcaret as well to make sure both of us would enjoy it..so lets see if it lives up to its reputation & reviews: 
So we make it to Xcaret, enjoy walking around and looking at things, start to get hot and decide to go rent snorkeling gear for myself, and find a spot in the shade near a bar on the beach for hubby..We find an okay spot there on the little beach, so he orders us drinks from the beach waiter standing right there and I take off swimming and swimming and swimming with my gear and don't see a single anything under water!! I am getting outside of the lagoon portion now, currents are a little stronger but I see other people snorkeling further out so I keep going..well not even half way there I am just exhausted (no life jackets or float gear offered anywhere that I saw) so I just floated for a few min on my back but the currents were just pushing me back to shore, so I gave up and just swam back to the beach...there may have been different spots to snorkel here, but I really didn't want to pay for any additional activities or be on a timeline here so I didn't look at what all they offered, it said you could snorkel from the beach so I was okay with that-and you can from the beach you just wont see anything unless you swim over a mile out from this location!! So I get back and poor hubby is dying of thirst because the drinks he ordered for us over 30 min ago still had not been brought by the beach waiter!! so a little more waiting and he brings them to us, hubby's was disgusting and all watered down (I think it was a long island ice tea or hurricane) and I ordered a mango daiquiri, mine was still frozen-Yeah! but he gave me no straw or even a spoon, so I asked for one and he had to get us change anyway so he said he would be right back- so we wait AGAIN literally another 30 min, so by the time he comes back my drink has already melted and I have finished it!! So we are done with this mess and want to go turn the equipment back in and find somewhere to sit down and have lunch.. There is a restaurant located right by this beach so we go right over there, its buffet and the sign says $29 US !!! Unbelievable!! No wonder there were less than 10 people in that entire place eating right at lunch time!! Soo much for lunch there!! We look at the map and only other "eating" place we can find is what they call like a Nacho/Drink Stand-so we head there. Along the way we finally run into our friends from the cruise!! They are headed to lunch at the restaurant we just came from, so I told her it was $29, needless to say she flipped out, there are 5 in her family, 2 kids under age 10!! So they too refuse to pay that ridiculous price and go with us, we find the food stand and its literally a stand that you can get drinks and junk food (chips, nachos, Popsicle's, etc..) so that's what we all had for lunch including her kids, junk food...so much for some good authentic Mexican food while we are in Mexico!!! There was absolutely no time when we got back to Cozumel to do anything else,in fact most of the shops had all closed up. This group of Carnival passengers from this excursion was one of the last to get back on board. 
As stated in Carnival's description of this excursion, lunch and any additional activities are own your own..only transportation and entrance fee to the park is what you are receiving with the purchase of this excursion through Carnival...I was and am completely aware of this fact but was completely caught off guard & extremely disappointed in the offerings at Xcaret and have suggested to Carnival that they need to put additional information in the shore excursion descriptions so that passengers have a better idea of what to expect especially so they know how much money to bring along as well..So for me personally I probably wont ever go back to Xcaret because of the lack of service and cost, unless an excursion offers meals & gear included. 



Cozumel

Our average wait time for room service any time of the day was about an hour, and breakfast scheduled for a certain time was anywhere from 15 min- 1 hr late and half the food ordered missing, in fact my friend 2 doors down with 3 kids never even got their breakfast one morning, scheduled 1 1/2 hrs before they needed to leave for their excursion, even after call after call nothing ever came, we ended up giving them some Debbie snacks that we had brought with us so the kids would stop whining LOL...I cannot even count how many of "those" people myself and another member of our party talked too while on board, bar supervisors, buffet workers & supervisors, pit boss's in the casino, shore excursion managers (who by the way did take down our information and said they would "take care of it" but because we didn't follow up on it back on the ship, no credit was issued to our sail & sign account, so I had to wait over 30 days,& tons more hours on the phone explaining the situation over and over again to numerous reps, to finally get our "out of pocket cost" (which was not our fault) related to our excursion finally credited back to the credit card!!

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