Brook & Tara - January, 2014
Trip Report – Jan. 5-11, 2014
This was our second trip to Hedo II (first in 2006) and let me first say how happy we were to go back! Having read many of the posts on the message board and recent trip reports, we were a little nervous but optimistic about what we would find.
I won’t spend much time on the trip there because it was as pleasant as always. I do have to say that I missed the Jamaican dancers/singers in the arrivals hall. Oh, well! We were late arriving due to a delay in Atlanta, so our bus trip was as pleasant and short as it could be.
Overall, we were quite impressed by the state of the resort. The rooms were pleasant and quite clean. The bed was comfortable and the linens were nice. Bathrooms are a little on the small side but no big deal. The cleaning staff did a very nice job. We did spend a little extra to have an Ocean View room and we would not do this again. The way the window and curtains were positioned, it was pretty much a waste of money. We could see the water but only if we took great pains to look. Otherwise, the room was just fine. And contrary to many reports we’ve read, we had absolutely no problems with hot water.
We were quite impressed with the number of people working on maintaining the resort and generally keeping things looking good. We spent most of our sun time on the nude beach and it was just a great way to spend a week! We did go to the nude pool frequently, especially in the afternoons when Mark, the DJ from Tom’s Trips was playing the music! He was just awesome!! We thought the pool and hot tub were also well-maintained. We loved having drinks from Delroy and Scumba at the nude pool (and we are glad to hear Delroy is feeling better after his recent medical incident!).
We also thoroughly enjoyed the food at the resort, and felt it was much better than our memory from ’06. We ate at all three restaurants but our favorite was the Japanese restaurant and the gala buffet on Friday evening. In fact, we had two meals at the Japanese restaurant and we were joined the first time by Kevin and a couple of other people from the resort. We felt that the fact that THEY wanted to eat at the on-site restaurants was a sign of their commitment to the success of HII. The service at all of the restaurants was top-notch.
We did the catamaran cruise twice, and while I know the crew is not part of HII, I would like to take a moment to compliment them also. We did the Tuesday afternoon snorkeling trip and also the sunset trip to Rick’s. The crew members are just awesome! The waters were quite rough that Thursday evening, and they did a great job getting us to and from Rick’s on the skiff.
Finally, we felt that the entertainment staff did a terrific job! We are not “joiners” for the most part when it comes to pool games, so we could really care less about what they did by the pool to engage people. We are there for the rest, relaxation and good music. Our only real interaction with the staff was when we saw the shows in the evening. We both felt that the staff did a FANTASTIC job with the shows, especially the Friday evening performance!
All in all, we were quite glad to have made the return trip and will look forward to our next one!