Breeze 4/6/19 Western Itinerary: Excursion Must-Dos with boys and ship must-dos

DH and I are taking our boys (10 and 16) to Cozumel, Belize, Costa Maya and Mahogany Bay next April. What are the must-do excursions and excursions to avoid? Also, anything super special we should make a point to do with the boys while onboard? TIA!! :D

DH and I are taking our boys (10 and 16) to Cozumel, Belize, Costa Maya and Mahogany Bay next April. What are the must-do excursions and excursions to avoid? Also, anything super special we should make a point to do with the boys while onboard? TIA!! :D

Hi! I will give my suggestions for the ports. Belize, I would suggest either tubing or ruins. More towards tubing unless your sons like history. Would book with a local vendor (check out Port of Call Belize) on the tubing. Did so with one,smaller group and didn't feel herded like the ship tour,big bonus for me cruising solo. Now for the ruins, while I prefer local vendors,this is the one case I would go for ship tour,especially the more remote ruins. Costa Maya. Maya Chan beach if you can book it!! While the water is not the best compared to Rotan or Cozumel,more seaweed. The atmosphere, food and service is top notch. Another option is if you opt from Maya ruin tour in Belize, local vendor Native Ways is excellent. There are various restaurants and vendors along the beach area. I enjoyed Pea Quantro before discovering Maya. But the vendors are aggressive at times. Roatan, I suggest a private driver. There are several excellent ones,I used Rory. The pricing is reasonable and you can set your day on how you want it. From zip lining, snorkeling, island tour,visiting local wildlife,good option and the price for me solo was very reasonable so with a family also.

Cozumel also have some good options. Several beach resorts, snorkeling. The ship has a speedboat (can't think of it's actual name) to a wonderful beach. The food and drinks were ok, but not to have vendors hawking and a nice beach equal out. Now you won't have shopping time as we got back in time for boarding.

I would still head to port of call and look around.

As for your ship can't comment.

Happy sailings

Roatan, I used Victor Bodden for a private driver for the day. $25 per person for the day. You can add what you want: sloth sanctuary, snorkeling, zip lining... they cover it all

Belize is a tender port, book your excursion through Carnival

Cozumel take a taxi to Paradise beach. $3 per person for lounge chairs $18 for arm bands for the kids to play on all the water toys

In Costa Maya, I recommend "Maya, Lost Mayan Kingdom". It is a fantastic water park with water slides, zip lines, a zip coaster, a lazy river, pools and more, in walking distance from the port. You can see it when the ship docks. Everyone in my group (ages 9 to 49) loved it.

At Mahogany Bay, "Arch's Iguana and Marine Park" and "Daniel Johnson's Monkey and Sloth Hangout" are lots of fun for boys. If they like snorkeling, West Bay Beach is a must-do. The reef is just a few yards from the beach and teeming with colorful fish.

In Belize, your boys will likely love the river and cave tubing trips. Enjoyable Mayan ruins in Costa Maya. Some beach or snorkel trips you could do in Cozumel and Roatan, either through Carnival or on your own. Those are some beautiful ports, they will certainly enjoy their trip!!

If you all are a bit more active, I'd suggest cave kayaking over cave tubing in Belize. We used Maya Guide Adventures and they were amazing. I can't recommend them enough.

For Roatan: I loved the Pirates Zip lining (with option beach excursion after).\

In Cozumel we hired a driver who took us to the ruins, lighthouse, cool off the beaten path restaurant, grocery store, and back to the boat. It was nice and cheaper than a tour.

Cozumel: Paradise Beach (just grab a taxi there and back)

Belize: Cave Tubing followed by Altun Ha ruins (went through King David tours, Oscar was our guide and was fabulous)

Costa Maya: Lost Mayan Kingdom (great water park with zip lines)

Roatan: went snorkeling with Bay Island Adventures (communicate with them via Facebook) and also stopped at Monkey Business to see sloths and monkeys.

Use the cruise critic "Ports of Call" page and trip advisor website to get ideas of what is available. We have never booked thru ship and always had great experiences.

DH and I are taking our boys (10 and 16) to Cozumel, Belize, Costa Maya and Mahogany Bay next April. What are the must-do excursions and excursions to avoid? Also, anything super special we should make a point to do with the boys while onboard? TIA!! :D

If you want something educational, we really enjoyed Altun Ha and River Wallace in Belize; it's less than 1.5 hours on the bus, and doesn't have the all day commitment of say Tulum from Cozumel (which I am not even sure they are offering because last I heard, they were suspending all trips that required the ferry to the mainland after the ferry bombing). You can climb one of the structures and thus it was a better trip than Chachobben from Costa Maya. Plus, you get the great trip down the river where we saw manatees, monkeys, iguanas, dolphins, crocodiles, bats etc.

In Cozumel we have always enjoyed an animal encounter at Chankanaab (a dolphin or sea lion encounter is pretty special IMHO) and have recently started going for a cheap snorkel/food at Money Bar.

We preferred Island Marketing to Victor Bodden in Roatan, but everything from monkeys to sloths to zip lining to iguana sanctuary to local food to Tabayana has always been wonderful. This island just screams fun for animal and nature lovers.

Goffs caye in Belize was awesome. Its a private island in the middle of the ocean and they do a snorkel tour while you are there.

Roatan we snorkeled from tabyana beach.

Costa Maya we wanted to do the ruins but kids got sick. The water park looks fun.

cozumel we go to paradise beach. They have floating toys in the water... trampolines, climbers, slides, etc. you can kyak swim in pool, etc.

Lots of great suggestions, the only other I can think of is Little French Key in Roatan. Was of the best days we ever spent on a cruise. You book directly through them, check out their website. Have fun!

In Belize several years ago we booked an excursion through Carnival that included cave tubing and zip lining. It was a great trip. My kids were 9 and 11 at the time and they loved it and would not hesitate to do it again. I will say the excursion took up every minute of the time we had in port so for this reason I would suggest booking through Carnival.

Many great responses for excursions are posted above.

For on-board I recommend you encourage both boys to attend the first night meeting of their respective clubs. It's mostly a meet and greet, and a schedule of all activities throughout the duration of the cruise will be available.

The camp schedules will allow them to choose which are important, and allow you to schedule family time.

Happy sailing.

We just got off the Breeze with two boys (10 and 13) with similar ports. After some research, here is what we did.

Cozumel-took a taxi to Chanknaab. It was good as in intro to snorkeling for our boys as they had never done it before and we didn't know if the younger one, who isn't very adventurous, would do it. We had a great sun/hang out in the sand/snorkel day.

Belize City-Did a Mayan ruins and river boat excursion by Carnival. It was good, but a long day, especially when you include the tender boats! Our boys expected to really enjoy the ruins (they like history/museums) and I think they liked the boat ride better.

Roatan-We did a half day island tour with Daniel Johnson's and went to their Monkey and Sloth hangout. We really enjoyed the monkeys and sloths and the island tour was good, too. Nothing special, but it was a good way to see the island. We then went back onto the ship for a relaxing lunch and then went to the beach within the cruise port area.

On the ship, we did Your Time Dining so that we could have flexibility and ate in the dining room most nights. The boys enjoyed trying new foods in a no-pressure situation and it was a good chance to chat as a family. We went to the all ages comedy show at 8:00 after dinner 3 times. We watched some poolside movies--one night we hooked the boys up with Lido dinner to watch Wonder Woman and then we at in the Dining Room without them.

They weren't really interested in the youth activities at all-everyone is different, but spent a ton of time on the Sports Deck (mini golf, ping-pong, ropes course, pool, etc) and that is where they liked to just sit and hang out as well. They also spent a lot of time at the water park/slides/splash pad.

We also found the HUB app to work well for messaging. Things did not go through 100% of the time, but the app always told you if it failed so you knew it didn't go through. Overall, was well worth the $5/person.

One other silly highlight for them was that we bought the Bottomless Bubbles soda package. We are generally more conservative on soda and they really enjoyed the unlimited soda. I've heard some say that their kids have had trouble getting served soda at the bars, but we did not have that issue at all. They got to know the bartenders on the Sports Deck and regularly used 2 other bars on the Lido deck near pools and had no problems.

Enjoy!