We were at Hedo 2 from April 4 to April 10 for our first trip, so this is
my attempt at a trip report.
Arrival:
Sitting near the exit of the plane sure can save a great deal of time when
you get to the Immigration area. I don't know if we just got there
at the wrong time, but the line was LONGGGGGGGGGG. It did speed up
after about 40 minutes in line, but if you were the last one off the
plane, I'll bet your wait was over an hour that day (and the A/C really
was not the greatest). After finally winning at the "hide the
luggage" game, we were on our way out to find a TimAir rep. We had
been to Sandals Negril and Breezes Runaway Bay before, so have taken the
bus, and even though it is not really that bad usually, we thought it
might be fun to take a small plane and get a better view of the island on
the 15 minute flight. It was worth it. My wife got to pilot
the plane herself for a bit since she got the copilots seat. Thank
God she didn't try any rolls (at least with the plane).
When we arrived at Negril, the offers for Ganga began immediately.
We were propositioned about 5 times between getting off the plane and
getting to the resort about 3 minutes away. Once on the grounds, we
checked in. It was low occupancy (57% they said). We
had reserved Run of The House and they tried to put us on the Prude
side, but we nicely asked for an upgrade, since they had low occupancy.
We first were told that they usually would charge to go to the nude side,
but when we politely pointed out the low occupancy, we were told she would
see what she could do, and we got the free upgrade. Guess being nice
can work out.
Room:
We were told that the room (2202) was garden view, but I
would still consider it Ocean view, since the only thing blocking the view
were a couple of trees. Great location for most of the activities,
since it was close to the Dining room. The A/C was not the greatest
(probably kept the room at about 74 or so) but it was better than nothing.
Too bad that they don't have balconies. It sure would make the rooms
much better if you could sit outside and relax. Oh well- maybe in
the next upgrade. The only real problem we had was the housekeeping.
We only had a couple of bath towels in the room, and no hand towels or
washcloths for my wife. The room was not touched at all on the first
or 3rd full day at the resort- so during our 5 day stay, she only cleaned
the room once. We did have the Do Not Disturb sign on a couple of
times- but we were out of the room fairly early and didn't generally get
back to the room until about 4pm or so for a nap.
The most annoying thing was the last day when we were in
the room having a bit of fun at about 4pm or so with the Do Not Disturb
sign attached, when apparently it became important for the housekeeper to
ignore the sign and pound on the door - not once- but twice- even after we
yelled out that we were busy. After the second knock we yelled out
that we were having sex, and apparently that was finally enough to get the
maid to notice the sign. By that point we had already given up on
having the room done anyway and gotten the towels ourselves from the nude
hot tub area. (sure is a pain sleeping with sand in the bed though...)
Shows:
They were a bit hit and miss- but I would guess a lot of it was due to the
low occupancy. There still was more participation than we saw at
Sandals or Breezes, but the crowd was not quite as wild as I had heard it
was. Still, the EC's did a great job in getting people involved
anyway. They sure have a lot of energy! Surprisingly the best
night was probably the Talent Show. The EC's were pretty darn
amazing with the dance routines. It was hard to take your eyes off a
couple of the dancers- for several reasons- one of which was wondering the
exercises they have to do to make their hips move like that. It was
almost hypnotic. The toga night was OK, with a fair amount of
participation, but Mardi Gras was not very good, with the crowd (such as
it was) being very quiet.
Disco and Piano Bar:
We were a bit disappointed with both of them, unfortunately. We love good
piano bars, and after a day pass to Hedo 3 and seeing how crazy and fun
that one was, we thought this would be great. I hate to say it, but
the Piano player (didn't catch the name) really was lacking in skills to
get the crowd into it. We tried it about 5 times at different times,
thinking we were just hitting the timing wrong, but in our experience it
was a bit lame. To be fair, a lot of it was probably the occupancy
again, but based on our experience, what seemed to happen is that people
would come in, stay for a bit to see if things would get going, but then
leave while he was playing an instrumental version of "Feelings."
Not quite conducive to a big party atmosphere.
We tried the Disco too a few times, but we must be getting old or
something. It was too loud to hear yourself think in the disco area
itself, and it looked primarily like a place for locals to hang out.
I only saw a couple of guests from the resort at the disco, and they left
before we did. Well- I'll just chalk that one up to being too old.
Beaches:
It was a bit funny how there seemed to be some people that were not happy
with the beach conditions. I thought they were fine. Yeah,
maybe not as fine a powder as Sandals, but otherwise it was very well
taken care of, I thought. There were numerous empty loungers,
and enough shade so that you could move a chair to be covered. The
Nude beach area was slightly more crowded than the Prude beach, but since
there were only about 10 people on the prude beach at any one time, it was
not hard to be more crowded. Still more than enough room for
everyone.
Pools:
It really was amazing how few people were using any of the prude pools.
The most I ever saw in the main pool was 4 people- and most of the time
none. The nude pool really is the main area during the day, with so
many people just hanging out and talking. We were part of a really
nice group of people who were fun to talk to. Unfortunately we
really are not pool people, and most of the rest of the people were, so we
were not with them as much as we would have liked. The nude pool is
smaller than the main one, but especially on a low occupancy week, it was
great. A fair amount of people there, but still room to sit and talk
to people.
Hottub:
Well, I guess this is generally the main part of any review. The Hot
tub was the hub of the resort after 10pm or so. It was a lot of fun
staying there and talking to people, although for the first few nights, I
was surprised that there was not more to see. Occasionally (usually
after 1am or so) you would see a few PDA's but VERY discrete, it seemed.
Finally on our last night it got a lot better in terms of action. At
one point there were 7 of us guys in a row on the edge of the tub with our
wives having a bit of fun with us. Kind of fun to watch the shows.
That and a couple of us returning the favor for our wives seemed to be the
most going on when we were around. Still a great deal of fun.
Dining:
We found the specialty restaurants to be very good. Munasans was
pretty good for Japanese food, and The Scotch Bonnet was very good for
Jamaican food. Pastafari's was our favorite, with the food probably
being the best we had there. We were a bit disappointed with the
main dining room food though. They really need to serve more
vegetables- besides Callallo- whatever that is. I am pretty much a
meat a potatoes guy, but you really do start to miss things like broccoli,
asparagus, corn, etc.. when they are never around. Breakfasts and
lunches were OK. I would suggest generally going to the specialty
restaurants almost every night.
Misc:
We took the Catamaran trip to the caves for snorkeling, which was a ball.
We had a great bunch of people on the cruise, and although it took a
while, it became just about totally nude by the time we were at the caves.
The funniest part was when one of the guests apparently decided she REALLY
liked her foot massage and decided to swim into one of the caves with one
of the workers on the Catamaran. The guy tried to get everyone to
skip that cave, but a couple went in and were chuckling a bit. My
wife was snorkeling a few minutes later and thought that she was seeing a
jelly fish- turns out it was just the used condom slowly floating
away. Nice to know that they practice safe sex at least- but that
kind of littering is a bit off putting...
We went over to the Office of Nature (Binge's) one afternoon, and had a
great time having some lobsters. One hint though- negotiate the
price first. For once we forgot to do it- thinking the prices would
be set, and were then told that the lobsters were $40 for the 2 and $6 for
each of 2 Red stripes. Since we had already eaten, it was a bit
harder to negotiate. We got them down to a total of $41 by the end,
but I am sure they were chuckling at us when we left- Stupid
Americans!
Another humorous event took place while I was sitting at a table on the
2nd floor on a little deck area of the building reading a book outside a
couple of the rooms near us. As I was reading, I heard a door open,
and a guy tell someone "Thanks for the roll." He walked off,
and about 10 minutes later I chuckled as a guy and his wife walked out of
the room and said Hi. Perhaps I just have a dirty mind or something,
but I kinda doubted that he was getting a dinner roll that she and her
husband just happened to have in the room. Too bad they didn't leave
the door open- it would have made a fun show!
All in all- we had a great time, and I hope to get back soon- hopefully
during a busier time. Thanks again to all the people we met and had
a great time with: Ishtar, Chicago Jake, Jim, Irene (nice outfits,
by the way- quite distracting), Dan, Tammy, Ric, Janet, John, etc, etc,
etc.(sorry I missed some of the names of the not so innocent- must have
been all the alcohol ;-) You guys were great to hang with when we
got the chance.