Fantasy Island Beach Resort, Dive & Marina

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Quick Verdict

Fantasy Island Beach Resort, Dive & Marina is the closest thing Roatan has to a private-island all-inclusive at a package-holiday price. The resort occupies its own cay — Cayo Ezequiel, off French Harbour on the island’s south shore — with three private beaches, 160 rooms all sitting roughly 50 feet from the water, a pool, a marina and a dive operation. Two people can typically stay here all-inclusive for around $180 to $280 a night in low season, which on Roatan buys you a lot less almost anywhere else.

It is also, clearly and unapologetically, a three-star product. The dining program is a single buffet restaurant, Las Palmas, plus a beach snack bar called La Palapa and two bars. Airport transfers are not included — the resort charges around $20 — and parking runs $15 a day. Construction is the classic dated wood-and-tile island build, and it shows its age. If you’re choosing between this and a polished West Bay property, be clear-eyed: you’re buying acreage, water access and price, not finish quality. For families who want the kids swimming from breakfast to sunset, and for dive groups who want a cheap base with a boat dock, that’s a fair trade. Everyone else should read our full Roatan all-inclusive guide before committing.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
An entire private island with three private beaches	Airport transfers cost around $20 and are not included
Among the cheapest true all-inclusive rates on Roatan	One buffet restaurant plus a snack bar — that’s the whole dining program
All 160 rooms are roughly 50 feet from the shore	Official site publishes almost nothing on the dive center or marina
True full-stay all-inclusive by default, not an optional package	Dated three-star rooms and finishes
On-site marina and dive operation for reef access	Consistently rated below West Bay’s better properties on food
Free Wi-Fi, welcome cocktail, central French Harbour location	Parking is $15 per day; no published spa or kids’ club program

The Resort at a Glance

Location	Cayo Ezequiel, Plan Grande — a private cay off French Harbour, Roatan, connected by causeway
Rooms	160
Room categories	Standard and Deluxe (Ocean View); ocean, pool or garden outlooks
Restaurants	1 — Las Palmas (international buffet, breakfast/lunch/dinner)
Snack bar	La Palapa, beachfront
Bars	2, serving through the day
Pools	Swimming pool on site
Beaches	3 private beaches with soft sand and calm, shallow water
Marina & diving	On-site marina and dive operation (the property name is “Dive & Marina”)
Airport	Roatán International (RTB) — short drive; transfer service $20
Adults-only?	No — family resort
All-inclusive status	True all-inclusive (meals, drinks, pool and beach access, Wi-Fi, welcome cocktail); transfers and parking billed separately

Rooms and Suites

There are 160 rooms here, and the resort’s own description of them is refreshingly plain: island-inspired wooden architecture, all located “just 50 feet from the shore,” with ocean, pool or garden views. Two broad categories are sold — Standard and Deluxe (Ocean View).

The 50-feet-from-the-shore claim is the genuinely good news, and it’s the reason to consider this resort at all. On a private cay you can’t be far from the water by definition, and the layout takes advantage of it. Even a garden-view Standard room puts you a short walk from sand in three directions. That’s structurally different from a big beachfront resort where 60% of the inventory looks at a parking lot.

Standard rooms are basic and functional: air conditioning, tiled floors, wooden fittings, twin or king configurations, a small bathroom. Deluxe Ocean View rooms buy you the outlook and, generally, a slightly better position. The upgrade is worth taking if the price gap is modest, mostly because the ocean-facing units get the breeze.

The honest caveat: this is dated construction. Wood-and-tile island buildings age hard in a salt-air, high-humidity climate, and Fantasy Island has been operating for a long time. Expect scuffs, expect a bathroom that looks its age, expect the occasional maintenance grumble. Roatan’s older all-inclusives — this one and Henry Morgan both — attract “dated rooms” comments in guest reviews with real regularity. If you need a modern room, you need to pay West Bay prices at a newer property.

Our pick: a Deluxe Ocean View on an upper floor. Breeze, view, and a bit of distance from foot traffic. Ask specifically for a recently refurbished unit — availability varies and the resort refurbishes in batches.

Food and Dining

The dining program is short and I’d rather state it plainly than pad it out.

Las Palmas is the resort’s restaurant: a modern space serving international buffets for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It handles the whole property, three meals a day, seven days a week. The resort describes its culinary offering as recently transformed, and buffet quality at this price point on Roatan is generally decent-to-fine rather than memorable — fresh fruit, eggs and pancakes in the morning, a carvery and hot-line rotation at dinner, grilled fish and Honduran staples like rice and beans and plantain alongside international standards.

La Palapa is the beachfront snack bar, and for a lot of guests it’s the better experience — a burger and a beer with your feet in the sand beats a queue at the hot line most days.

Two bars operate through the day serving cocktails, beer and soft drinks, included in the all-inclusive plan. The resort does not publish a spirits list, which in Central America almost always means local and standard-brand pours rather than imported premium labels. Don’t assume premium spirits are included here; ask at check-in. Our guide to all-inclusive alcohol covers why this is the most commonly misunderstood inclusion in the category.

Food quality verdict: adequate and abundant, with a one-venue ceiling. Seven nights of a single buffet is a lot of buffet, and this is the most common criticism the property attracts. If food is central to your holiday, either book somewhere with à-la-carte venues or accept that you’ll be taxiing into French Harbour for a couple of dinners — which, to be fair, is easy and cheap from here.

Beach and Pools

Three private beaches. That’s the headline, and it’s real. The resort describes them as soft sand with calm, crystal-clear water, and being on a cay means you get water on multiple aspects — one side sheltered, another catching more breeze. On a busy week you can genuinely find a stretch of sand with nobody on it, which is not something you can say about West Bay in cruise season.

The important honesty: these are south-shore cay beaches, not West Bay. West Bay is the postcard — a long, wide, blazing-white strip with reef 50 yards out that you can snorkel from the sand. Fantasy Island’s beaches are smaller, sandier-bottomed, and more about calm swimming than dramatic beauty. Snorkeling from shore is fine; the serious reef is a boat ride away, which is what the marina and dive operation are for. Families with young kids often prefer the calm-and-shallow profile here anyway.

The pool is a single swimming pool serving the property. With 160 rooms, that’s a busy pool in high season and around midday. Fortunately, with three beaches, the pool isn’t the only game — plenty of guests barely use it. Don’t book here expecting a pool complex; book here expecting water on all sides.

Activities and Entertainment

Diving and the marina are in the property’s name, and boat access from your own cay is a real advantage — you’re stepping onto a dive boat rather than being driven to one. Roatan sits on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second-largest reef system in the world, and the south-shore and Mary’s Place-side sites are within reasonable range from French Harbour.

Here’s my honest flag: the resort’s current official website publishes very little detail about the dive center or the marina — no operator name, no dive package pricing, no boat schedule. That’s an information gap, not evidence of a problem, but it means you must confirm the dive operation’s current status, package rates and what’s bundled into your all-inclusive directly with the resort in writing before you book a dive holiday here. If diving is your primary purpose and you want certainty, Turquoise Bay publishes its boat schedule and dive counts explicitly and bundles three dives a day into the package — a much safer bet for a dedicated dive trip.

Everything else: the resort runs an excursion booking desk, and the French Harbour location is genuinely central for island touring — Gumbalimba Park, the iguana farm, West Bay for a beach day, zip-lining, and the island’s east-end villages are all reachable. Swimming, beach time, and pool time fill the days for most guests.

Evenings are low-key. Two bars, cocktails, and the specific quiet of being on a small island after the day-trippers have gone. There’s no large-scale nightly entertainment program published. If your family wants a theater show and animation team every night, Henry Morgan runs the bigger operation on West Bay.

Kids: this is a family resort and the calm shallow beaches suit young children well, but the resort publishes no dedicated kids’ club program. Assume there isn’t a supervised one and plan accordingly. Our best all-inclusive resorts for families guide sets out what a real kids’ club looks like if that’s a requirement.

Spa and Wellness

Fantasy Island does not publish a spa program on its current official website. There’s no named spa, no treatment menu and no pricing available, so I’m not going to invent one. If wellness matters to you, treat this resort as having none and plan on booking a massage independently — beach massage services are easy to arrange on Roatan and typically run $40 to $70 for an hour, which is one of the better-value things you can buy on the island.

For a property in this price band that’s not unusual. A three-star all-inclusive at $180 a night for two is spending its budget on food, beds and beach maintenance, not on a hydrotherapy circuit. If a spa is part of the picture, Infinity Bay on West Bay has its Tranquility Spa, and Media Luna runs a full-service spa on the south shore.

What’s Included vs Extra

Included	Extra cost
All meals at Las Palmas (breakfast, lunch, dinner buffets)	Airport transfer service — around $20
Snacks at La Palapa beach snack bar	Parking — $15 per day
Drinks at two bars (cocktails, beer, soft drinks)	Premium/imported spirits — not published, assume extra
Welcome cocktail on arrival	Dive packages and marina services — confirm directly
Complimentary Wi-Fi property-wide	Spa/massage (no on-site program published)
Swimming pool access	Excursions booked through the tour desk
Access to three private beaches	Gratuities — see our tipping guide
Excursion booking desk service	Honduras departure taxes on international flights

All-inclusive status: TRUE all-inclusive. Fantasy Island is sold as an all-inclusive resort by default — meals and beverages at its restaurants and bars are covered by the room price. That puts it in the genuine-AI camp alongside Turquoise Bay, Mayan Princess, Henry Morgan and Media Luna, and distinguishes it from Infinity Bay, where all-inclusive is an optional package. The two inclusions people get caught out by here are transfers and parking, both of which are billed separately.

Pricing and How to Book

Season	Typical rate (2 people, per night, all-inclusive)	Notes
Low (September–October)	$180–210	Lowest rates of the year; inside Atlantic hurricane season
Shoulder (May–August, November)	$200–240	US summer school holidays push weekends higher
High (December–April)	$240–280	Northern-hemisphere winter peak; cruise traffic is heaviest
Holidays (Christmas, New Year, Easter)	$280+	Minimum-stay requirements typically apply

At $180 to $280 a night for two people all-inclusive, Fantasy Island is one of the two or three cheapest genuine all-inclusive rates on the island, and by a distance the cheapest with a private-island setting. Compare that against Cancún or Punta Cana, where an equivalent private-beach all-inclusive week starts $100 or more a night higher, and the value case is obvious.

Add the two extras to your budget honestly: roughly $20 for the airport transfer (each way, so budget $40 round trip for a couple unless the resort quotes per party), and $15 a day if you’re renting a car. Neither is large; both are annoying to discover at checkout.

Best time to book: low season here is September and October, and if you can tolerate hurricane-season risk with proper travel insurance, that’s where the value is. February and March are the most competitive months and sell out earliest. As a 160-room property, Fantasy Island has more inventory flexibility than the island’s boutique dive lodges — you can often find late availability that Turquoise Bay simply doesn’t have.

Where to book: the resort is widely distributed and priced on the big OTAs, which makes rate comparison easy — check the direct rate against Booking.com and Expedia-family sites, since promotional pricing swings between them. If you want dives included, book direct so you can get the package terms confirmed in writing. Rates change with season and availability — confirm the current rate and exactly what’s included before you book.

Compare Roatan all-inclusive resorts and prices →

Compared to Nearby Resorts

Henry Morgan Beach Resort is the most direct competitor: another large, budget-priced, family-oriented true all-inclusive with a big buffet operation, 238 rooms and a heavy charter-group presence. The decisive difference is location. Henry Morgan sits on West Bay Beach, which is objectively the better beach and puts restaurants, bars and dive shops within walking distance; Fantasy Island gives you a private island with three quieter beaches and no walkable village. West Bay for the beach and buzz; Fantasy Island for space and calm water.

Mayan Princess Beach & Dive Resort costs meaningfully more — typically $300 to $450 for two per night — and buys you condo-style villa accommodation, a well-run on-site PADI 5-star dive shop, and prime West Bay frontage with reef you can snorkel from the sand. If your budget stretches and diving matters, Mayan Princess is the better-executed version of the same idea.

Turquoise Bay Dive & Beach Resort is the pick for serious divers. Twenty-six rooms on the remote northeast shore, three boat dives a day explicitly included, published boat schedules and dive counts, and reef nobody else is working. It costs more per night but includes the diving, so for a dive-focused week the total is often lower than Fantasy Island plus a dive package. See the whole island lineup in our Roatan destination guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Fantasy Island really all-inclusive?

Yes. Meals and beverages at the resort’s restaurants and bars are included in the room rate by default — it’s a true all-inclusive rather than a hotel that sells an optional all-inclusive upgrade, which is an important distinction on Roatan. What is not included: airport transfers (around $20), parking ($15 per day), excursions, and any premium spirits. The resort doesn’t publish a brand list for its bars, so if imported liquor matters to you, confirm in writing before booking.

Is it actually a private island?

Yes, in the practical sense that matters. The resort sits on Cayo Ezequiel, a small cay off French Harbour connected to Roatan itself, so the whole property — three beaches, 160 rooms, pool, marina — is on its own piece of land with no through traffic and no public beach access. You still get on and off easily for excursions; you just don’t get strangers wandering across your beach.

Is Roatan safe, given what people say about Honduras?

Honduras and Roatan need to be assessed separately, and it matters. Mainland Honduras has one of the highest violent-crime rates in Latin America, and the UK Foreign Office advises specific caution about walking in cities like Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula and about certain mainland road routes. Roatan is a Bay Island roughly 40 miles offshore with a tourism-driven economy, and the guidance for the Bay Islands is ordinary petty-theft precaution rather than a warning: don’t leave valuables unattended on the beach, use the ATMs your hotel recommends, don’t walk unlit roads at night, use reputable taxis. Staying on a private cay removes most of that exposure anyway. Check your own government’s current advisory before you travel — advisories change.

How is the diving, and are dives included?

Roatan’s diving is world-class — you’re on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, with walls, wrecks and healthy coral within short boat rides. The resort has an on-site marina and dive operation, which is a genuine advantage. However, the current official website publishes no detail on dive packages, boat schedules or pricing, so do not assume dives are included in your all-inclusive rate. Confirm the current dive package and cost directly with the resort. For a guaranteed dive-inclusive package with published boat times, Turquoise Bay is the safer booking.

Is Fantasy Island good for families with young children?

Reasonably, yes, for a specific kind of family. The three beaches are calm and shallow, everything is within a short walk, and the price is family-friendly. What you don’t get is a published supervised kids’ club, a water park, or a nightly entertainment program — so parents are the entertainment. Families who want structured childcare and activities should look at our best all-inclusive resorts for families roundup instead.

How does the food compare to other Roatan resorts?

It’s a single international buffet at Las Palmas plus a beach snack bar, and it’s fine rather than a highlight — which is what $180 a night for two, all-inclusive, buys anywhere in the Caribbean. Guest sentiment reliably places Fantasy Island’s food below West Bay’s better-regarded kitchens. The practical fix is easy from this location: French Harbour is close, taxis are cheap, and a couple of dinners off-property costs less than upgrading resorts.

Final Verdict: 7.1 out of 10

Fantasy Island Beach Resort, Dive & Marina delivers something no other Roatan all-inclusive does at this price: your own island. Three private beaches, 160 rooms all sitting within about 50 feet of water, a pool, a marina and a genuine full-stay all-inclusive plan — for a rate that in Cancún wouldn’t cover a room-only night. If you’re a family who wants the kids in the sea from breakfast to sunset, or a group who wants a cheap, water-adjacent base for a week of diving and island tours, this does the job and does it with more space than anywhere comparable.

The reasons it’s a 7 and not an 8 are structural rather than fixable. One buffet restaurant is one buffet restaurant. The rooms are dated three-star island construction and the reviews reflect that. Transfers and parking are charged separately, which stings on a property sold as all-inclusive. And the near-total absence of published information about the dive center and marina — on a resort whose legal name includes both words — is a gap you have to close yourself before you book.

Book it if price and beach access are your top two criteria, you’re happy with buffet food for a week, and you like the idea of a small island to yourself. Skip it if you want dining variety, modern rooms, a kids’ club, a spa, or a guaranteed dive package. Set your expectations at the price point and Fantasy Island is a good holiday: 7.1 out of 10.