Norm & Lisa - Hedonism III - Jan 12 - Jan 19, 2002
This was our first time in Jamaica and at Hedo III.. ARRIVAL We took the 11:00 American Airlines flight from MIA to MoBay and arrived on time. Immigrations and Customs was easy. We then headed to the SuperClubs desk to catch our bus. While waiting for our bus we were asked if we wanted beer and/or a 'good' smoke. After reading other trip reports, this didn't surprise us, yet it still did - geez! We made the mistake of buying a beer for now and one for 'later' on the bus. We got our beer for now but the 'beer for later' never made it to our bus in a cooler like the guy told us it would. Oh well, red stripe only costs $3 each. After about 20 minutes, we were loaded on a bus with about 5 other couples and on our way to Hedo III. The bus ride itself was ok. Our bus driver, however, NEVER shut up. I think we heard everything and anything there is to hear about Jamaica between the airport and Hedo III! And God forbid we try to socialize with other folks on the bus - the lady behind me and I were talking and were told to shut up and pay attention! We stopped once to stretch, took a pee break and give Jamaica some more of our money for red stripe, then loaded back up for some more fun-filled, non-stop Jamaica information. We arrived at Hedo III around 1:30pm. Our room was ready so we followed the bellhop to the room, checked it out for a minute, then headed out to find the folks we had been chatting with online and were looking forward to meeting!
ACCOMODATIONS Our room overlooked the ocean and part of the Sunset Deck of the Scotch Bonnet (Room #936 - purple). It wasn't too far from the nude pool and the quad, and was great for when we finally got around to sleeping - very quiet.
The room had all your basic amenities: there was a double dresser with 6 drawers, an open closet/dressing area, a small writing desk with a chair (i.e. catch-all table) and a small sitting area with a loveseat and small coffee table under a window we could open and look out over our portion of the ocean, ahhhh. The two twins together=a king bed (that was kind of annoying) sat catty-corner in the room and it had a headboard/shelf which held 2 lamps, a clock/radio (which didn't always work) and a radio/CD/tape player. A wall-mounted combination TV/VCR with remote control was in the room just in case you couldn't get right to sleep at night and the air conditioning was remote controlled as well. **Note: The air conditioning works real well so if you have a digital camera, give it time to acclimate to the outside temperature after leaving your room, before taking pictures, or all you're going to get is white 'steam' pictures. The bathroom was nice and the jacuzzi jets in the tub were cool although we never used them. We took at least 2 showers a day, in and out and damn, it would have been great if the shower water temperature was consistent! First hot, then hotter...okay, let's add some cold water - then cold, then colder...okay, let's add a little more hot - YOUCH, hot again! So, they were quick showers, for sure. We opened the windows in the bathroom to let the steam out and to also look out over the ocean. Other amenities in the room were an iron, ironing board, and a few shelves in the closet area. A wall-mounted blow dryer (located in the dressing area ... not in the bathroom) was available, but we brought our own as we had heard the hair dryers were wimpy. Maid service was not quite what we'd expect from an all-inclusive resort. Our maid, Jocelyn, gave us just the minimum number of towels until we caught her attention to give us extra. You would think that these folks would know that people are showering a couple times a day and that they'd need extra towels since the humidity doesn't dry things quickly. Once we asked for extra towels, she did provide them, but things like that should be a given. It was almost like the staff doesn't know it's audience. A nice touch added to our room from Jocelyn was the shaped towel and flower on our bed every day. Didn't quite make up for us having to ask for extra towels, but it was a nice touch.
WEATHER The weather was great for our whole week! Most mornings were sunny and warm, average 85 degrees. Clouds rolled in during the afternoon, but we had almost no rain while we were there. The clouds were actually very welcome, especially on those days when we mainly relaxed by the nude pool - gave our bodies a cooling off period.
DINING FACILITIES & FOOD The main Terrace dining room was nice; plenty of seating and food selection as it was a buffet. We usually ate here for breakfast and sometimes for lunch or dinner. The service for silverware, napkins and drinks was on and off here, however. Sometimes the staff was right there to give you silverware and your napkin, but more often, we were still getting our own drinks and silverware. You'd think at a big, all-inclusive resort such as this, we'd have wait staff at our beck and call! Lunch always depended on where we were coming from. After scuba diving, we usually ate at the Scotch Bonnet, right near the water sports shed - the service here was on and off as well. One day it was great, the next time, it took forever to even get water! The nude beach grill worked well when we were sunning at the nude pool. The grill was close and the food was ok - hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken burgers, grilled cheese, salads and fries - nothing to write home about, but it held us over till dinner. The Italian restaurant, Pastafari, was probably one of our biggest disappointments. We ate there a few times hoping it would get better. The menu is changed every Thursday - the one day a week the restaurant is actually closed! (Now why in the world does a restaurant at an all-inclusive resort need to close???) Anyway, this meant that if you ate at Pastafari's more than once between Thursday and Thursday that you'd get the same menu. As limited as it was, I'm not sure you'd need to eat there more than once in a week's timeframe. The food was ok, but the service was ridiculously slow!! Just to get menus was sometimes a task. The last time, we took it upon ourselves to catch the waitress EVERY time she walked by us - that finally got her moving. The Japanese restaurant, Munahana, was our favorite. We should have eaten there more as the food was great and the service was excellent! But, what-- no onions at a Japanese steakhouse in Jamaica?? How can you have dinner at a Japanese steakhouse without the infamous onion volcano??? (Apparently, onions are not grown in Jamaica and therefore conserved for eating only.) The menu was fixed and consisted of a salad with a very tasty dressing (not sure what it was), miso soup, sushi (none of us were sushi eaters, so we can't say how that was), and tempura shrimp and veggie appetizers (not a whole lot of flavor to the veggies). The entrée was a choice of seafood (shrimp and teriyaki snapper), chicken, or beef (or any combination of these items) with stir-fried veggies and rice. Dessert was green tea mousse, which sounds terrible, so we skipped it. BAR SERVICE The bar service was ok - it was kind of busy and hard to get the bartenders' attention at times. Some drinks that we enjoyed were: the Dirty Banana and the Hummingbird (not very strong drinks but yummy and filling), the green parrot (Appleton estate rum, blue Curacao and grapefruit juice-yummmmm), the purple rain (tastes like a sweettart) and the stoly slushy.
ACTIVITIES The activities included at the resort were more than enough to keep us busy for a whole week. Onsite and included: We learned to scuba dive, got resort certified and dove on Sunday, our first full day there. We dove again on Tuesday and wanted to go one more time on Friday but the water was too choppy and murky. We, however, did not take full advantage of the rest of the water sport activities and plan to next trip. We want to learn to waterski, go sailing, go kayaking, get in some snorkeling and go out on a hobie cat. These were all included in the price we paid for a week at Hedo III. The water sports staff were all very knowledgeable about diving and the other water sports activities and were real personable - probably our best experience with staff at Hedo III. AJ was a great scuba instructor and Mad Max always had great things to say to make you laugh. :-) Offsite and NOT included: We did take some time to get off the resort at quite a fee. **Note: Bring enough cash to cover approximately $100 per couple per offsite activity. We went horseback riding in the ocean at Chukka Cove and it was really cool, but it was $65/person. We also went out on a nude booze cruise. It was fun but I would recommend that you stay up in front because as soon as I went to sit in the back, I got seasick! The staff on the cruise is very attentive on alcohol so if you're drinking, you won't miss out if you're up front. They were also way more attentive and energetic than most of the staff at Hedo III.
ENTERTAINMENT STAFF It was obvious to us that these folks do this job day in and day out, working hard to be happy for little reward. They were enthusiastic but looked like they had to work hard to seem that way. My favorite was Romeo - super sweetheart! Some of the entertainment this staff provided was really unnecessary. The circus, which Climaxx kept claiming was all pros, was lousy! They had some folks who'd been practicing with the 'pro's' in the show, who we would expect to fall or not catch the swinging guy. But the pros should be catching every time....what kind of pros WERE they?? The singing and dancing seemed like a waste of the entertainment staff's time. We thought it would be cool to open the piano bar and disco earlier instead of having to watch unentertaining singers and dancers. Why wait till 1030 and 11pm?? No wonder most folks weren't getting to bed until after midnight!! The games were a lot of fun with the entertainment staff. On this, the staff had fun. The Hedo bucks though....either they need better rewards for Hedo money or don't bother. We saw most folks going home with overproof rum or t-shirts. For all that hard work to win Hedo money, you'd think they'd have the good Appleton Estate Rum or some of the nice jewelry that the locals were selling on the site, not cheesy keychains!
DISCO The Octopussy Disco was cool. The bar is in the same room as the disco, and has a pole for anyone who wants to do a pole dance on it. There is also a cage for people to dance and/or perform in. There's a black light in the cage, so bring white! The music is very loud making it hard for the bartender to hear you and there isn't much variety. Every night seemed to have the same music so if you bring good dance CDs, by all means, indulge the DJ or he'll play the same old stuff. The waterslide goes right through the disco which is neat. When our group of friends would do our midnight-ish nude waterslide run, the disco lights would be blinking into the waterslide and people could see us sliding through. Fun!
SHOPPING There isn't actually a real shop at Hedo III. There were two rooms in Building 1 (the green building in the Quad) which were converted to shops. They were very tiny and poorly laid out and offered your typical touristy tacky t-shirts, thermal mugs, alcohol, etc. One trip report stated that construction was being performed for 2 shoppes, but they apparently weren't complete yet, so we still had the 2 rooms.
GUESTS We made some great friends at Hedo III, but there were definitely some people who thought they were better than the average crowd.
Dirty Bananas!! If you've never been to Hedo before, I would recommend searching out others who are going the same time that you are. We joined the Dirty Bananas, which is a yahoo group, and started talking to these folks a couple months before we all left for Jamaica. This made going that much more interesting as we had folks to look forward to meeting and to hang with while we were there. They were not all in the lifestyle, (wow, what a shame), but we still had a super time! For the contests, the entertainment staff even began thanking the Dirty Bananas, specifically, for participating! We had tattoos (very cool idea Jen & Phil!) and a blow-up banana at the nude pool with all our names on it. You could find us dancing on the bar at the piano bar, going through the waterslide at least a couple times a day, nude (which supposedly isn't allowed because the water slide is on the prude side - no worries mon) or participating in the daily contests - GO BANANAS!
SUMMARY Overall, Norm and I were really impressed with the resort facilities, rooms, and water sports staff. The shower water temperature, slow service and entertainment could really use some improvement, but the weather was perfect and we still made the most of our vacation! See you next year :-)