And Stingray City sounds great! I understand that there are actually two "Stingray Cities" and the deeper one is better for divers and less crowded.
There's the Stingray City dive or the Sandbar snorkel nearby. On the dive you'll be on a regular dive boat and dive to 15' (the bottom) and feed the rays squid. Usually it's just you and maybe 1-2 other dive groups there. When the squid is gone, so are the Stingrays - they move to the next boat over. There's a couple small patchy coral reefs nearby - you might look for "Psycho" (Green Moray) or one of his descendants b4 you surface.
About a 45min. dive total - plus maybe 1/2 hr. from the cruise port via the diveops van - it's a shorter distance than that but Georgetown is small and gets crowded when all the cruise tenders land at once.- everybody keeps a boat in the North Sound for the trip since SRC is just north of there.
At the Sandbar snorkel, the other 500 people from all the cruise ships - usually 2-3 ships are in per day - will be on one of about 10-20 excursion boats - standing in 4' of water and feeding/interacting with the squid. IMO the dive is better - just depends on the experience you're after.
The dive:
The snorkel:
Thanks for your message! Do you have any recommendations for a dive operator in Roatan?
Barefoot Divers. They're 5-10 mins. by taxi from either cruise port. If you contact them in advance, they'll help arrange a cab also. Excellent operation, small boats, small groups and there's some really excellent dives nearby. We did a double on Mary's Place and the Prinz Albert off Cocoview with them one morning. Six of us were their business, the resort is small, pricey (for Roatan) and not everyone staying there dives.
Barefoot Divers - day dive packages|cruise shippers|full valet service
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Taking a similar cruise in January/2013 on Norwegian. We have already signed up for the Dolphin Dive at Anthony's Key (we've heard it's worth it) plus my wife is BIG on doing this one. I think I'd rather reef dive, but when mama's happy ... everyone's happy. So, Roatan is set.
We liked it, you get to meet "your" dolphins in the pens at RIMS first then it's about a 5min. boat ride out to the dive site - sandy, flat, 60'. The dolphins will come by as soon as they've burned off a little energy - we got the better part of 40 minutes with 3 of them - 20mins. of close personal interaction when the trainer brought them over. It's not a great dive site but getting that up close to a dolphin is something that stays with you for a while. When they're first circling around, watch the perimeter of the divesite - the videographer and I (I shoot video also) caught two of them playing "tag" with a big strand of seaweed - the others in the group - including the trainer - missed it.
After the dive I was floating near the boat and one came up to me, put his face about two feet from mine and stared into my camera port. I
slowly reached out my hand to pet his chin (don't touch their foreheads) and he gently popped me in the chin before taking off. I swear I was sonared also - heard the clicks and felt something warm in my chest - but the DM laughed that off. I've got the clicks on tape.
My buddy shot this there: