Chris - September, 2016
Arrived at ~2:30pm on Saturday, 9/10 and hit
immigration just ahead of several other planes. Total time
from deplane to exiting the airport: ~15 minutes. Had another 20
min. wait for the Sunholidays bus, then a nice ride to Negril - arrived
at 4:15pm. Check-in was fast - much better than past years.
The new dining room furniture was very nice - comfortable & tasteful
(first time we'd seen it). All other facilities were good and well
maintained. The wine bar, courtyard & updated bathrooms are particularly
nice. The wine bar is a great addition - good
assortment of wines, though prices are 1.5x what we'd expect in a
restaurant in the US.
Food overall was great. The main dining room buffet was open only
Sat, Mon, and Fri. nights, due to low occupancy. The buffet food
was superb - wide assortment of dishes (incl. lobster/shrimp saute, jerk
pork, etc...) and all were excellent. Other nights, the buffet
area had snacks like fruit and cheese. The 3 specialty restaurants
were all open for dinner most every night. The Flame restaurant on
the prude beach was very good - a rather small menu, but great filet,
shrimp, etc... Pastafari had it's usual nice assortment of Italian
dishes, as well as filet & lamb chops - all very good. The sushi
at Harry-san was good. The menu has several free types of sushi,
plus a few higher-end types for extra cost.
The buffet breakfasts had a nice assortment of Jamaican dishes every
day, as well as all the usual American stuff. Lunches were good as
well, with similar assortment of dishes, pasta, salad bar, fruit, etc...
as the past couple of years. Very good food overall - better than
I'd typically expect at an AI. Dining and kitchen staff were
excellent. I was surprised to find that the desserts (which
were significantly better than any past year) are all made in-house.
Kudos.
We had an ocean view standard room. Nicely
updated decor (as of ~1.5 years ago), and comfortable. New
individual AC units are being installed in all of the nude-side rooms.
We had one (and perhaps all occupied rooms did), and it worked great.
(The temperature setting on the remote control is in deg. C, so be
prepared to convert if you're a deg F. person.) The bathroom is
similar to the past few years, except the fancy multi-head shower (that
was a hassle to operate) was replaced with a regular shower head & temp
control. A bit more basic, but easier to use and worked
well. One minor concern was that the shower temp would
occasionally get scalding hot when nearby rooms flushed their toilet.
The beach and grounds were all very good - very
nicely tended. Occupancy was low (30%?), so chairs, tables,
floats, etc... were never in short supply. Weather was great - a
couple of afternoon showers, but sunny most of every day. Scuba
and snorkel boats were in good shape, and the watersports staff was
great as always. Scuba trips were superb as usual - the dive team
is very professional & attentive - particularly for less experienced
divers. Kudos.
Harry gave us a nice tour of some upgrades in
process for the prude side rooms, where the bathrooms are being gutted
and completely redone. They looked VERY nice - an excellent
upgrade, with tasteful mosaic tile accents, nice new sinks, showers, and
frosted glass doors. This will be a great improvement, since
the bathrooms in most of the standard rooms are tired and need an
update. (Like most of the older bathrooms, ours looked like
an 8 year old was turned loose in it with a caulking gun...) :)
Entertainment was great. The house band is
superb... nice mix of jazz, rock and classic reggae. All
very nicely done. The EC team under Winston's direction does
routines that are sexy and professional - far exceeding what I'd expect
at any AI resort. The whole team really seems to enjoy their
work - and they have a consistently positive energy that's better than
any I've seen in the last 20 years.
Big shout out to Donna, Lorna, Ritchie, Anthony,
Kevin, and esp. Harry for consistently improving things for us guests.
Well done. As always, it was great to chat with Paulette,
Alicia, Michelle, Oswald, Pauline, Ritchie, Anthony (x2 - chef and
watersports), Wilfred, Delroy (beach) and other long-timers.
Glad to see they all seemed to be doing well and happy with their work
at Hedo.