This was my wife Sheila and my (Chuck) first visit to Hedo. We went June 8-15, 1998 and for our summary will describe events, activities, and the resort itself using a 1-10 grading scale with 1 being really poor and 10 a great experience. Our rating will be in parentheses. Before getting into the details of our trip, we want to give you what we call our "need to know tips". First, since the main dining room is open air there is an over abundance of flies everywhere. If this bothers you as it does us never get the top plate from the stack. We always saw flies on the plates. Second, dining is buffet style with all food out in the open. Again, we never got the food from the top but, used the serving utensil to scrape or move the top layer and get our food from underneath. Third, if you party as hard as we do consider taking a nap sometime during the day. Others we know did the same thing and it really pays off. The long hours of sun and alcohol begin to take their toll after two or three days.
We flew out of Atlanta on Air Jamaica to Mo'Bay. Air Jamaica was great! They were right on time, the staff was friendly, and they served free flowing red/white wine, Red Stripe, and champagne. Their breakfast was great which was a wonderful surprise for airline food. It was about a 2 hour 45 minute flight. All went well until we tried to get on the bus to Hedo. The Hedo personnel there were somewhat unclear on what was going on and there are 2 or 3 pieces of documentation you must complete before they will let you on. Bring your patience with you, believe us, they get in no hurry. It's a good idea to go to the bathroom before boarding the bus as you ride about an hour before the bathroom/Red Stripe/cigarette break occurs. The overall bus ride is about 1 1/2 to 2 hours depending on traffic, the length of your stop, etc. If you have never rode in a vehicle in Jamaica do it once. The scenery is beautiful and you're practically riding along the coast. You pass through several quaint little "towns" and see some interesting people. We passed several Jamaican's holding up buds of Ganja that must have been 12 inches long! Then take the air hop back to Mo'Bay from Negril. How do we rate the bus ride? (3) - it's hot, long and ours was crowded with people.
ROOMS Again, being our first visit and unsure what to expect we stayed on the prude side in room 1112. The rooms are very basic with a phone and Aiwa am/fm, cassette/cd player. We did take several cd's along which gave us a variety of music to listen to. The radio usually would only pick up talk radio or reggae. The rooms could stand some major updating. There's a king size bed with mirrors above on the ceiling, a long dresser with a full length mirror across from the bed (both provide for interesting views during extracurricular activities). The dresser has six drawers. There is also two night stands with two drawers each, two lamps (the lamp shades look 20 years old), a couch, coffee table with coffee maker, and a closet with a small safe inside. The room air conditioners are basically antiques and ours did well to keep the room between 75-80 degrees. Others we talked with had the same problem, however, others did not. The bathroom has a roll out window which does little to prevent hot air from coming in. We kept the bathroom door shut which helped considerably. When taking a shower be prepared to have cold water one minute and extremely hot the next. We don't know what the problem is but it seems prevalent over the entire property. Walking past other rooms you could hear showers on and occasionally people scream as the water temperature suddenly changed. The rooms we rate a (4). But, in all fairness you're not in them all that much. There's just too much to do.
DINING The main dining room is open air and hot. If possible find a table under a ceiling fan. They help a lot to cool you down and circulate air. The variety of food is large as is the quanity. The quality could definitely be improved upon. Most of the food was bland tasting. We eat a fairly healthy diet at home and the Hedo food kept Sheila's stomach upset about half the time. Much of the food is either fried or greasy or both. Also, note our tips at the beginning of our review. We give the main dining room food a (5).
A very bright spot in dining is the Pastafari Italian restaurant. Excellent food in a great atmosphere. It's indoors and therefore air conditioned. Ask to sit in Courtney's section. He has the deep voice of Barry White and wants to come to the U.S. as a singer. He is also a good waiter. Reservations can only be made on the day you want to eat there. Make reservations at the front desk early - you can start at 9:00 a.m. We give Pastafari a (9) rating.
We did not eat at the beach grill on the prude side, however, we did daily eat lunch at the grill on the nude side. All in all it was pretty good. The cheeseburgers we had read about as being so good were only ok. Again, there was a lot of grease in the meat and the ham reminded us more of spam. The fries were good though as was the snapper with spices that is prepared on the grill in aluminum foil. The nude grill gets a (7).
BARS The bars stock almost any type liquor you could want with one exception. Sheila and I both like doing shots of Cuervo Gold tequila but, just our luck they didn't have Cuervo. Instead they carried Charro Gold. If you don't like Red Stripe beer you're also out of luck since Red Stripe is the only beer on the property. It also isn't the coldest. The only place I found the Red Stripe cold was at the tap behind the nude jaccuzi.
The main dining room bar stays very busy. Service was adequate with our longest wait being about 5-10 minutes. This occurred after dinner during the main dining room entertainment. The bar deserves a (7).
The nude bar, Delroy's, has less of a wait. It is also a better environment probably because of the personalities of Delroy and Scumba. It is a laid back area where people are the most friendly of anywhere on the property. One note: even though Superclubs says tipping is not allowed we were told by other guests that it will improve service. It does. We tipped $20 at Delroy's and anytime the remainder of our stay we approached the bar we were waited on almost immediately. Consider a tip early in your stay for improved service. Tipping aside, we think Delroy's deserves an (8). As much for the atmosphere as the service.
Veronica's Piano Bar is easy to get waited on at most anytime. Sometimes there is a wait late at night when the place is crowded. It also has the best air conditioning at Hedo and is always cool. We found ourselves stopping on more than one occasion to cool down and have a drink. We rate Veronica's also with an (8). This rating is for the bar only. Veronica's entertainment will be evaluated later.
SHOPS The five or six shops onsite have your usual tourist items - t-shirts, clothing, Hedo logo items, liquor, cigars (including Cuban; the cohibas were going for $15US), jewelry, Blue Mountain coffee, etc. Prices were not inexpensive, but are less than Grand Lido.
On the beach there are a few craftspeople selling clothing, wood carvings, jewelry, and hair braiding. We did not check their prices but heard they were higher than if you went off the Hedo property. About a five minute walk from Hedo will get you to a straw market where many more items are sold. It's on the road in front of Grand Lido.
Sheila rates shopping a (6).
DISCO The disco can be summarized in three words: hot, hot, hot. We only went there twice. Once on pajama night and for a few minutes one other time. It's is worth going into for the pajama party. It was not hardly as hot in the bar area, but when you went through the door into the disco it is hot and to us seemed to have a musty smell like it needed to be aired out. The disco itself gets a (2).
POOLS There are two pools - one on the prude and one on the nude. I believe the prude pool is larger and is located just off the main dining room. It mainly seemed to have younger singles there. We noticed water volleyball being played often. Another pool game was to see who could hold their breath the longest underwater. Our opinion may be somewhat biased, but the prude pool appeared slow and unexciting. It is a nice pool and convenient to your room if you're staying on the prude side. (5)
The nude pool had a more adult atmosphere. We met some really great people and the poolside games are more interesting, such as best tan, most burned butt, body painting, etc. Delroy's is here and can be accessed from the beach or from the pool as it has a swim up bar with seating. A grill is also here and is rated above under DINING. There is also a large jacuzzi that is the same temperature as the pool. Behind these is the infamous nude hot tub. It is big and could hold several people. It has no jets and is really just what the name indicates: a hot tub. We never saw any blatant sex as we had read of on the internet. Security stayed pretty close late at night but never bothered anyone. Shelley and Greg had x-rated dice with sayings on them. The roller had to perform the saying on their partner. One security guard would roll the dice for four couples of us and use his flashlight to read the saying. So, needless to say we had no problem with security. The nude pool area we give our only (10). It is a combination of many good things.
ENTERTAINMENT First and not to be missed is the pajama party in the disco. We sort of knew what to expect from friends who have been before us (hi to Cliff and Becky of the Butt Crackers) so we didn't worry about wearing skimpy clothing. Actually our outfits matched and we won for the best couple. Expect to see anything you can imagine from teddies to thigh high hose with a thong and nothing else. Most guys wear boxers or thongs. You see some guys in just short pants who are there only to gawk at the women. We were also told some men come there (Hedo) to take pictures of good looking women and sell them on the internet. One lady we met who works in public relations at Hedo told us she is wary of having her picture taken anymore because one was e-mailed to her as a screen saver. We took our camera as did many others, but only took pictures of each other and friends we knew. If it wasn't so hot in the disco we would rate the pajama party higher. Thanks to Dee, Lori, Shelley and Greg for all the help that night. Here leezard, leezard, leezard!! We still give it an (8).
The toga party is in the main dining room. Sheets are left in your room to make a toga. We missed the toga tying demonstration earlier in the day so we had problems. You're not supposed to use safety pins but we brought some just for this type problem. It was a good thing too or my toga would have fallen more than once. The Hedo folks say 'no toga, no eat', but didn't seem to put much emphasis on enforcement. One reason could be due to many people not receiving their sheets until after the toga party had started. Poor planning by Hedo. It is amazing the number of different togas you see. Some people even said they brought custom made ones from home. After everyone went down front on the dance floor it became very crowded. Essentially elbow to elbow. I don't know if it was just too crowded for us or if we were just plain tired or both, but we didn't stay long. Our rating would be a (5), however, I don't know if that's fair since we left early (11:30).
Veronica's is a fun place. Besides being well air conditioned it is a great sing-a-long bar with fun starting around 10:30 p.m. One note, get there quick as the songbooks and good seats get taken. Dave on piano and Veronica are great. People really get into the singing. Don't let Dave get through the night without singing "Lucille". We were in there two nights. The first night it was really rocking with upbeat songs, however, the second time a group of about five basically took over with one guy even playing the piano for a couple of songs. The songs they sang were all slow and after a couple of these you could see the patrons looking pretty bored and some even filing out. We left too after a while. Nobody wants to be depressed at Hedo!! Sheila and I rate Veronica's (9).
Most of the entertainment in the main dining room after dinner is worth watching. There is a good variety of performances by both Hedo staff and entertainers brought in. Toga night is also guest talent night. Be prepared for the good, the bad, and the ugly. Our trip we even had a girl from L.A. do a complete strip tease in front of all. And I mean totally nude. Dining room entertainment we think deserves a (7).
MISCELLANEOUS We went on the nude catamaran cruise to the Pickled Parrot and caves. It cost $40US per person and was well worth it. The catamaran is large enough to support about fifty people. We also had an open bar with mixed drinks and Red Stripe and reggae music. Rasta Ralphie is also along selling tee shirts and jewelry. The wind was up causing some rough water which almost made Sheila sick but, she recovered and was fine on the trip back. You get to do snorkeling over some reefs and swim into caves under the Pickled Parrot restaurant using life jackets supplied to us. Once in the caves you climb a ladder to get to the top. It's about a thirty foot jump from the top and they recommend you not do it due to the danger, however, some folks in our group successfully did. The Pickled Parrot has mostly appetizer type food which is very good. We were told not to go nude but, that our wives could go topless, which they did. We had no more than got our food when the horn blew signaling us back to the boat. There is not enough time allotted to order and enjoy a meal. I ended up swimming back to the boat with our food in styrofoam trays balanced in one hand. Incidentally, the meal cost four of us $40US including the tip. (7)
Be ready to be offered pot for sell each day. It is usually the workers at Hedo offering it although on two occasions Hedo security personnel also offered to sell it to us. A polite "no" is all you need to say and they go on their way. You can smell pot being smoked many places around the resort but, never in any of the buildings.
Would we go back a second time? We're undecided. As much as we enjoyed meeting the people and the grounds are beautiful, the rooms are old and basic (Superclubs bought the place in 1976; it was previously known as the Negril Beach Club), and the food was not the best, we might try Grand Lido or Braco Village next time (they both have nude beaches). Also, Hedo III is supposed to open in 2000. However, it also appeals to a lot of people as evidenced by all those who return year after year.
Last, but not least, we would like to say thanks and hi to all of our good friends we met...Dee & Lori, Shelli and Greg, Jerry and Peggy, Brendan and Paula, and Linda and Steve. I know we'll all keep in touch and thanks to all of you for the good times!
Thanks Denny for the opportunity to express our views. For those of you who have already planned a trip - Enjoy, Party On, and Respect!
Chuck(39) and Sheila(32) Chattanooga, TN
Many thanks for the fine report. - Denny