Jen and Randys trip report
(or the saga of sonny and cher)
Halloween week 2005
This was our 8th trip to Hedo. We love the place. That said, I want to write a little story here instead of our day to day activities
We were at Hedo for Halloween in 1999 and 2000. Had a blast both times, and dressed up for Halloween both times, but never entered the Halloween skit contest.
After the 2000 trip, I decided I wanted to participate the next year. We booked Halloween for 2001 and in early fall of that year I came up with our Halloween skit idea...
We would dress up as Sonny and Cher and we would do a song parody of I Got You, Babe and we would call it Hedo II, Babe. At this point I was working for a company in New York City that did production for radio morning shows all over the country. My job there was to write the lyrics for those dopey song parodies you always hear if you listen to your local morning radio show. So I wrote our little Sonny and Cher song parody in a matter of minutes (while riding the subway, I believe) and gave it to my producer. He took the lyrics, found me a Cher and a Sonny sound alike and produced my little Hedo song.
I was in the process of searching for our Sonny and Cher costumes when the 9/11 attacks happened. We were living in NYC at the time and needless to say, the attacks didnt put us in a very hedonistic state of mind. Even by late October, I was nowhere near mentally ready to party, so we cancelled the trip.
By the next year I was feeling better and was ready to try it again. We booked Halloween 2002 and this time I went out and bought our Sonny and Cher outfits. Everything was fine until shortly before Halloween when we had a death in the family that once again caused us to cancel our trip at the last minute.
After everything wed been through, we decided to leave NYC in late 2002. We quit our jobs and moved down to South Florida.
We missed our Hedo Halloween trips in 2003 and 2004 due to the expense of relocating.
In 2005 we decided we were going to try a Halloween trip again. By now I lost the original Sonny and Cher costumes so I hit ebay to repurchase everything. By mid October, everything was still a go and I thought the bad luck streak had ended.
Enter Hurricane Wilma. Just two days before we were supposed to leave for Jamaica, this damn category 3 hurricane gave us a direct hit. As we sat in our shuttered up house and listened to the 100+ mph winds outside tearing up our yard, I told Randy that I was going to Jamaica to do this f*cking Sonny and Cher thing if it was the last thing I ever did. Randy told me that if we had to cancel yet another trip due to tragedy he was going to burn the Sonny and Cher costumes. Of course the hurricane closed down our airports for 3 days following the storm. I was ready to swim to Jamaica IN my cher costume if I had to. I wasnt missing this again.
The airports were still shut down on the day we were supposed to leave, but luckily they opened the next day and we miraculously got ourselves a flight out of here. It turned out to be a good time to leave as there was still no power in most of South Florida at this time and we just wanted to go ANYWHERE where we could get a hot shower.
So we get to Hedo. We shower. We then proceed to have a blast doing the regular things we do at Hedo.
Then its Halloween night. We were entered in the Most Entertaining category which they do at the end, which meant we had to wait until the end of the show to perform it. So we watch the show from behind the stage. It was fun and some of the skits were a blast, but I was nervous for our turn and couldnt believe that after 4 years it was really almost time to perform this thing.
Then its our turn. And its awesome. I could hear the overwhelming crowd reaction and it was just amazing. 4 years of bad luck and then FINALLY we were actually there, doing this goofy skit I had come up with in a matter of minutes SO many years ago.
The act lasted 3 minutes. The crowd gave us a standing ovation. When it was all over Randy turned to me and said I think the curse is broken. And to put the icing on the cake, we won the Best overall skit of the night. J
So, thats the saga of Sonny and Cher and just another example of the magical things that can only happen at Hedo II.
PS The video of our skit that was shot with our camera gets cut off and was shot from pretty far back. If anyone out there has decent video of Sonny and Cher and can make me a copy, Id be forever grateful!!!