What to do in Roatan, with a Toddler?

[octaviocloss]

Greetings fellow cruisers, its been such a long time since we've visited roatan. Time goes on fast and now we got a child, haha!
Our small toddler is 15months old, he walks slowly but crawls insanely fast and can go away in a matter of seconds.

What would you recommend us to do in Roatan? Is there any Day-Pass hotel you'd mention, or a nice and peaceful beach close to the port we could hang a 1 or 2 hours before heading back to the ship? 

We are aiming to wake up early and spend a couple hours before it gets too hot, because our toddler has rosacea. 

Thanks in advance 

[PhillyLady]

I was just there this Spring, and sorry, my recommendation would probably be just to stay on the ship.

I found the shopping area a little scruffy, and the pool area there requires the purchase of food/drink to use.

I went to the other side of the island and took the underwater "submarine" cruise, which was quite interesting,  but your child is probably too young to appreciate looking out the glass windows for a half hour or so.

Well, husband went scuba diving, but I declined to go to a "free" beach because I did not want to encounter any biting bugs, but some of the beaches the cruise ship uses for excursions should be of higher quality. I know a lot of people just ask taxi drivers to take them to a nice beach, but there is no guarantee.  You might also want to check the weather forecast, because we did have afternoon showers.

Some people with children used to go to the nearby zoo and get a photo with a sloth, but the Honduran government now prohibits that practice.

Overall Roatán is pretty safe, so you could just stroll around and see what interests you or catches your eye. 

 

[ScottD]

Check out Little french key?  We are going this spring after lots of  research, but we do have a teen. It looks like it would be fun enough for a toddler... a little zoo type area where they rehab animals, beaches, a short boat ride...  watch a youtube video or two and see if you think it would work.  Make sure if you do check it out, you go to the actual site which is littlefrenchkeyresort.com,  there are apparently other ones trying to sell passes but aren't always legit... the actual resort includes the transportation to and from!   A few years back we just did a private tour around town but I doubt that'll be very fun for the kid, lol 

[wordell1]

Roatan has very nice beaches but they are not close to the ship.  Roatan is a poor island so just wandering around the town is not recommended.

The good news is that it is very cheap to book a private tour.  A car and driver for the day will run about $100 total and then you would just pay for whatever you want to do.  The driver will stay with you.

You could head to the beach in the morning and then hit one of the animal places, the chocolate factory and lunch.  There are a lot of options.

I use Ronys Tours. HOME - Roatan Tours, Cruiseship Activities, Excursions, Zipline Canopy Tours with Ronys Independent Tours, Roatan

You will see prepackaged tours or you can just pick the private tour and tell them what you want to do.

[JFCruise]

On 9/3/2025 at 4:49 AM, wordell1 said:

You will see prepackaged tours or you can just pick the private tour and tell them what you want to do.

Can I jump on this comment and ask something?

I booked a private tour with them. I am doing the buggies tour. But how much flexibility am I allowed to expect? Can I tell the driver "you know what, we'd like to go to the beach. Can you take us there?" or something similar? Or "hey we're hungry can we go eat something"?

I remember a few years back I booked a tour with another company. It wasn't supposed to be private but we were the only ones in the group so the driver pretty much gave us his whole time. Ended up in the chocolate store factory and he did insist on us to go to the beach but we just weren't prepared.

[wordell1]

11 minutes ago, JFCruise said:

Can I jump on this comment and ask something?

I booked a private tour with them. I am doing the buggies tour. But how much flexibility am I allowed to expect? Can I tell the driver "you know what, we'd like to go to the beach. Can you take us there?" or something similar? Or "hey we're hungry can we go eat something"?

I remember a few years back I booked a tour with another company. It wasn't supposed to be private but we were the only ones in the group so the driver pretty much gave us his whole time. Ended up in the chocolate store factory and he did insist on us to go to the beach but we just weren't prepared.

Yes, and I have done that but I would let them know in advance that you aren't sure so they don't make any commitments.  Just tell them you want to be flexible but are thinking that you want to do the buggies in the morning. Remember that Roatan is pretty much cash only, so make sure you bring enough.  There are some restaurants that will take card, but you need to tell the driver.

[JFCruise]

2 hours ago, wordell1 said:

Yes, and I have done that but I would let them know in advance that you aren't sure so they don't make any commitments.  Just tell them you want to be flexible but are thinking that you want to do the buggies in the morning. Remember that Roatan is pretty much cash only, so make sure you bring enough.  There are some restaurants that will take card, but you need to tell the driver.

Thank you. I will keep your tips in mind.

[Doug_Texas]

On 9/3/2025 at 4:34 AM, ScottD said:

Check out Little french key?  We are going this spring after lots of  research, but we do have a teen. It looks like it would be fun enough for a toddler... a little zoo type area where they rehab animals, beaches, a short boat ride...  watch a youtube video or two and see if you think it would work.  Make sure if you do check it out, you go to the actual site which is littlefrenchkeyresort.com,  there are apparently other ones trying to sell passes but aren't always legit... the actual resort includes the transportation to and from!   A few years back we just did a private tour around town but I doubt that'll be very fun for the kid, lol 

We’ve been to LFK 5 or 6 times, it would be toddler friendly.  The lagoon has no waves and is very calm.

[ScottD]

On 11/19/2025 at 1:37 PM, JFCruise said:

Thank you. I will keep your tips in mind.

We have done a tour around Roatan with a driver, the tour had stops listed, but we were able to ask them, can we skip the rum factory, can you  add a stop to a convenience store, let us hang a bit longer at the chocolate and crafts stores...do you mind if we leave the beach a bit early and stop for a quick lunch.... I'd assume they are all pretty laid back like that. 

[OCSC Mike]

16 minutes ago, ScottD said:

We have done a tour around Roatan with a driver, the tour had stops listed, but we were able to ask them, can we skip the rum factory, can you  add a stop to a convenience store, let us hang a bit longer at the chocolate and crafts stores...do you mind if we leave the beach a bit early and stop for a quick lunch.... I'd assume they are all pretty laid back like that. 

Same experience here... which happened to be with Rony's Tours (mentioned earlier) but there do seem to be several operators that I also assume act the same way.

[JFCruise]

2 hours ago, ScottD said:

We have done a tour around Roatan with a driver, the tour had stops listed, but we were able to ask them, can we skip the rum factory, can you  add a stop to a convenience store, let us hang a bit longer at the chocolate and crafts stores...do you mind if we leave the beach a bit early and stop for a quick lunch.... I'd assume they are all pretty laid back like that. 

My only other experience in Roatan was...weird, in a good way.

We had reserved a regular "go to the sloths" tour with a third party vendor. We fully expected to get in a van with 8 other people or so, do the thing, and be dropped back in the pier. So that's how prepared we were.

To our surprise, we were the only party in the group. So the driver told us: Well, we can do whatever YOU want, it's a private tour now. He suggested the beach (no swimsuits lol), eating iguanas (I'm big into trying new stuff but nah), and the chocolate factory (we went. No need to go a second time imo)

The guys at Rony's actually contacted me a week ago about how to find them and I asked back about flexibility and said that "yeah no worries". I basically just reserved the buggy thing but we wanted to maybe do something else.

[wordell1]

As an update we are just leaving Roatan now and booked Rony's for the day. We had initially wanted to do the horseback riding and then beach.

It was cloudy with rain threatened all day so we did the horseback riding but then switched up the whole plan and ended up touring the island with a few stops and then a fried shrimp lunch. There were no issues with switching up the plans and our driver had great suggestions along the way.

[JFCruise]

On 12/31/2025 at 4:47 PM, wordell1 said:

As an update we are just leaving Roatan now and booked Rony's for the day. We had initially wanted to do the horseback riding and then beach.

It was cloudy with rain threatened all day so we did the horseback riding but then switched up the whole plan and ended up touring the island with a few stops and then a fried shrimp lunch. There were no issues with switching up the plans and our driver had great suggestions along the way.

I also booked Rony last week. We did the ATVs and were amazing, after that we had to make some other stops along the way. Our driver heard our kid that he wanted Cheetos (because kids) and offered to stop at the grocery shop. He also suggested a few places to eat.

100% recommended.