Trip Report
Hedo 3
July 13 – 17,
2000
No, we won’t go back.
We’re late 40’s, an open-minded but monogamous
couple, married 27 years. Never
thought we’d enjoy the “Hedo” lifestyle, but our first trip to Hedo 2 in
’97 was our best vacation ever….and we travel a lot.
We thought we’d try a few days at Hedo 3 before moving down the road
to what was tried and true.
For us, the flight is always a pain (we live in Baton
Rouge). This year we decided to
overnight in Atlanta both directions. That
would allow us to arrive earlier in the day and leave later on the last day.
It also appealed to my cheapness: a night at the Fairfield Inn at the
ATL airport made sense. And, it
seems three-fourths of every Air Jamaica flight we take is late by an hour or
more. We didn’t want the stress of missing our connection on the
way home. Good decision.
Delta did well and we had an uneventful night at the
Fairfield Inn for $55. Air
Jamaica left on time (!) and we were at MBJ, through customs and at the
Superclubs desk by about 9:00 AM. The
bus ride to H3 was a little shorter than to H2 and uneventful.
Check-in was fine.
And for the return: also a good decision.
We would have missed our return connection (as we did last time)
because Air Jamaica was late by about 1 ½ hours (again).
Initial
Impressions
Where was everybody?
The terrace-equivalent of H2 was much smaller and sparsely populated.
Didn’t see anybody in the pools.
Finally, as lunch started, some folks arrived to graze.
Was the food better than H2? Maybe.
But certainly not substantially so.
Maybe not even marginally so. The
wife wore a see-through top and was literally an outcast.
The only risqué girl there. And
for that she got lots of dirty looks from the other female guests.
Didn’t stop her, though, every day was the same.
The front pool did fill up a bit more on other days, but
never saw that it was packed or even at 10% of capacity.
The room was nice, larger than H2, with a jacuzzi-style
tub and a TV. Initially thought
the grounds were very spread-out and the walk to dinner would be a drag, but
it was, in fact, closer than the nude side at H2.
First impressions of the facilities: very good.
First impressions of the guests: very prudish….they
should have stayed at Grand Lido or Couples instead.
The
Layout
There’s a nice, free-formed pool with plenty of deck
space up front by the terrace. Also
a nice “main bar”. Then there’s
the water slide off the back of the pool (you climb steps to about a third or
fourth floor level). The slide’s
a hoot. MUCH faster the first
time, though. The front pool’s
a clothing-required pool.
The rectangular-shaped compound has a clothing-optional
pool in the middle and the swim-up rooms (big misnomer there!).
Problems with this approach: maybe
40 – 50 couples in the pool. Maybe
three nude. Sorry….I still don’t want to be on display.
What does “swim-up” mean? I
guess it means the first-floor rooms have a sliding door so they can walk
across the deck to the pool. And
the bar closes at 5:00 PM. Dumb.
The Nude room layout is much better, with a nude pool,
hot tub and swim-up bar. This is
where we spent most of our time. The
nude beach is nice but dismally small. There
are nice sunning decks adjacent to the nude beach.
They look kind of like piers or boat docks. Two comments here: they were seldom used by more than one or
two couples at a time and you had to walk across “dumped” concrete to get
there. A real killer on the feet.
Can’t say “stupid” loud enough.
The work-out room is better-equipped than H2.
There’s three pool tables, two ping pong tables and a large-screen
TV. You’ll probably use ‘em
before you leave.
There are also three restaurants: a Japanese, Italian and
a Jamaican. Don’t know if it’s
incompetence or graft, but our reservation for the Japanese restaurant was
erased and we showed up with nowhere to eat.
We watched it written down (in pencil).
But we also heard other guests (it’s a younger crowd than is typical
at H2) brag that they got into the restaurants by tipping the waiter.
Ain’t nuthin’ but an irritant.
Observations
& Conclusions
A common sight: fully clothed young adults playing
volleyball on the nude side adjacent to the “Nude Beach” sign.
Typical, typical. There appeared to be absolutely no enforcement of nude-beach
decorum. Security was
extraordinarily pitiful. Can’t
say that enough. Example:
one of the staff talks one of the guests into receiving a blow job near
the bar. Okay.
An hour later, the security “ladies” bust up a couple (guests) in
the ocean who are apparently coupling.
There were lots of comments by other guests on what H3 management was
thinking.
My wife’s biggest peeve: guys in swim trunks on the
nude side. Lots of ‘em. With no
intervention by security.
The bartenders don’t know how to mix drinks.
Sorry, but sometimes the truth hurts.
Had five mudslides in a row – every one tasted different.
And why put sugar syrup in a mudslide?
Disgusting. This was a
common complaint about most of the bartenders and all of the bars.
One positive: Ann Marie, the bartender at the nude pool bar was very
willing to make whatever we wanted, so long as we didn’t call it a mudslide.
Once we got over the formalities, everyone around us was ordering “Negril
Mudslides” too. Ann Marie went
out of her way to take care of the customers – I even watched her personally
walk over to the Jamaican restaurant to get jerk chicken because she knew that’s
what one of the guests wanted. Her
smile was contagious and her attitude (after we finished arguing about how to
make a mudslide) was always top notch. She
really deserves an attaboy – one of the best employees we dealt with.
No…unequivocally THE best employee.
Prediction: disaster
for H3. There is gross disrepair
already. There’s a beautiful,
large (20 ft diameter?) waterwheel near the entrance that is supposed to show
off the property. Broken for
months – collapsed and rusted already.
The pool tables, less than 8 months old, are in desperate need of
re-felting. The tile at the nude
buildings are horribly dirty (we saw employees power-washing the tiles at H2
the next week) and many are broken or cracked.
The in-room Jacuzzi is great if you like slowly moving water and good
background noise. The air
conditioners do work well however, and there’s TV if you get bored (likely
to happen). There were many signs
of poor maintenance in the rooms as well: faucets that were loose and patches
on the walls.
Another problem: we were quoted and paid for an
OCEANFRONT NUDE by GoClassy tours. We
were told that was the best available room: ground floor near the nude pool.
We were assigned a second-floor room, down from the pool.
Yea….I was a little slow in figuring out the “bait and switch”
and tried to resolve it when we left. But
the manager had not yet come in and we were given a here business card and
told to contact her later. Never
mind that the H3 fax was out of order for more than a week.
Anyway, after several long-distance calls and many fax attempts, we
finally got our fax through. We
got a quick response that basically told us to pound sand: they consider all
floors and several of the buildings to be “Oceanfront Nude”.
We called GoClassy and were again told that only the first floor is
Oceanfront Nude and the difference in price is about $20 per person per day.
Next we fired off a fax to GoClassy and included copies of our original
fax to H3 and their response. That
was on a Thursday evening. We
then flew to Detroit for the weekend. Amazingly,
when we returned on Sunday, we had a FedEx package from GoClassy with a refund
check and a letter of apology. We
were flabbergasted. GoClassy
far exceeded our expectations in resolving our problems and we would recommend
them to anyone without hesitation.
Obviously, compare quotes first, but if they’re close, we’ll choose
GoClassy next time simply because we know they’re ethical and professional.
By the way – it’s a lot more windy at H3 than at H2.
This could be good news or bad news.
If you go to H3 to windsurf or sail (we didn’t) it’s great.
If you want to sit in the nude pool and drink Negril Mudslides (we
did), you tend to freeze your ass off. Even
in late July.
Another observation: on two of the four days, there was a
nude volleyball game played in the nude pool. We really thought we’d like this much better than H2.
However, on both days there was only one or, at the most, two ladies
participating. Again, a younger
crowd.
Now, here’s the interesting part that pretty well sums
up our experience at H3: Beautiful day. Lots
of naked people in the nude pool. Lots
of drinks flowing. The volleyball
game is in full swing, but there’s only one female playing.
I suspect she was dragged in there by her husband. The rest of the
girls are on the sidelines. It’s a serious game, as was the game played the
previous day. We’ve been
drinking our “Negril Mudslides” at the bar with another couple.
Linda’s a cute, big-busted 40 year old blonde who, like me, has had a
few too many. I suggest she &
my wife go join the game (bad idea). Instead,
she sees one of the guys jump out of the water, falls in lust with his butt
and goes and gives it a pinch. He
got genuinely angry and told her she was messing up his concentration and told
her to leave him alone. Now here’s
where I get confused. Is it a
different generation, different interests or what? I don’t know, but I do know that if a cute, busty naked
girl pinched my butt I sure wouldn’t have gotten mad. And that attitude seemed prevalent throughout our stay.
Conclusion
See “Executive Summary”, above.