Connection refused when trying to set up replication
After you import the dump file from the master, your new root password on the slave will stop being valid on the slave not later than, but sometimes as late as, the first time you restart it, because the mysql.user table is going to be overwritten... the new root password after restart on the slave is going to be the same as the root password from the master (assuming the master has a SUPER user called "root").  

The workaround is either using the master's root password (assuming it has a root@localhost account) or is to keep your connection open to the slave while restoring the dump file, and then after the restore is done, modify the mysql.user table to have the values you want, before disconnecting and restarting.  FLUSH PRIVILEGES; after making the change, then try logging in from an additional connection to verify that it's going to work, then restart the slave.

If you RESET SLAVE; before the restart, you shouldn't need to --skip-slave-start.