Well, I'm writing this trip report without Marie's input so maybe she'll come back and add something.
Our trip there sucked. Last time we went to Jamaica we flew a day early from Lansing to Chicago and then spent the night in Chicago to catch the 6 AM direct Air Jamaica flight to Montego Bay.
This time we figured we could take a crappy flight with 3 connections and it'd be cheaper that we could spend an extra night on either end of our trip. So instead of doing the 7th-14th we did the 6th-15th.
We were supposed to arrive at the resort about 5 PM on the 6th, I think we arrived around 9:30 thanks to a huge delay in Miami thanks to Air Jamaica (now serving 3 on-time flights per month!)
We won't be doing the connection thing again.
We skipped dinner when we arrived, bought some weed from our porter, smoked some, and hit the nude hottub.
The next day was Saturday, we met Carolyn & Dave finally. We hung out on the nude side all day. Marie wore a liquid latex halter top thing to dinner for Grand Gala bare-as-you night. I was expecting more from that dinner, I thought it was supposed to be on the beach. The decorations were amazing, but I thought the food wasn't on the same level as the decor. We left after the show started and went back to the nude pool/hottub.
The next day was Sunday, now the group started coming in. We hung out at the nude pool all day and met Crystal & Tom. It was funny, someone introduced me as owning 4hedonism.com to them and I was talking to them since they were forum members and apparently they didn't recall how I was introduced because when the forum came up in conversation they were suprised I owned it. I believe today I also met Cheezheads & Happycooter.
We also met Robert & Beth both very nice, and then the meet & greet was tonight. I was quite amazed at how organized Beth was. When we met them earlier Robert wanted to stay and talk business to me for awhile and Beth kept reminding him of all the stuff they needed to do. Then at the meet & greet Beth had her clipboard and knew everyone's name and was rattling things off. I thought it was kind of funny, I was expecting him to be the organizer and whatnot.
I didn't like the meet & greet. The music was too loud, I could hardly hear myself talk, we didn't stay long. Still, it was good to see the various people in the group.
The rest of the days sort of blend together so I'll stop doing the day-by-day thing....
Diving
I prefer how Hedonism II does diving. An 9 AM dive and an 11 AM dive. If you want to do both you can, if not, you don't have to. At III they did one boat trip & two dives starting at 9 am. I usually only like doing 1 dive per day anyways so having to get up earlier and then having to sit in the boat and wait between dives was not fun. Especially considering how rough the seas were. I got seasick the first time and we all took a vote and decided to go in early and skip the 2nd dive. I then waited a few days hoping for calmer seas before going again. Finally I went again and while I dealt with the waves fine I was really really tired, so when someone else got a boat ride back because they were seasick I hitched a ride too. As such I only really went on 2 dives the entire trip.
The coral was fine, and the wreck site was cool, but I did not see much wildlife and I felt the diving at II was many many times better. Both because of the calmer water and the more wildlife.
EATING
I thought the food was about the same as at 2, the desserts were better though (sweeter). I was disappointed in the icecream though. For hard icecream they usually only had one (Weird) flavor available. Like Mango (gimme chocolate!). The softserve machine was broken (or just turned off) most of our trip. No lobster either.
Munasan was good.
I thought pastafari was pretty good too, but many of our group did not as lots of people got sick afterwards. We later figured out everyone was sick for different reasons, but the impression remains. Marie for instance got dehydrated. It took us a few days to figure out the problem too as she had been playing with her medications and she had also had bouts of motion sickness over the past year. But it was dehydration. Drink water!
ENTERTAINMENT
Hedonism II kicks Hedonism IIIs butt in this area. Apparently they recently have had alot of turnover in the entertainment staff and it really shows. At 2 they had body painting every day and other things like a breast and buns contest like every other day, naked twisted all the time too. Plus the shows were in my opinion better and the ECs more talented. Here... they did body painting once, they had a scheduled breast & buns contest that they did not do, and their idea of a fun nude side game is guess the song. Quizzes can be entertaining at times, but you need to do more sexual games and you need to do them more often. Oh ya, they tried to do a retro impression contest too. So out of 100 people on the nude side you need a volunteer who can do an impression of a retro person, and who is willing to volunteer. No suprise only one guy went up there.
Too often it seemed to me the ECs were just hanging out with each other rather than participate with the guests.
I also thought it was a little lame that when we did a nude slide invasion they put up drapes to hide our dirty bodies and then kicked people out of the main bar afterwards.
I like to think that we participate often. At II we came home with 5 bottles of rum afterall. This time we got 1 hedo buck. Thats it, just 1 hedo buck. We had 5 more given to us, and Kay gave us the rum she won, but of what we got by ourselves it was just 1 hedo buck.
ROOMS
The rooms are definitely nicer than at II. Also I always had hot water -- but sometimes it wasn't consistent. I'd be doing the hot-cold dance in the shower. This was usually only in the morning when other people were also using the bathrooms. When I showered later in the day it was fine. The camera feed of the main stage did not work.
SLEEPING
I am a very light sleeper, and our room was right off the nude hottub. Still, noise from the hottub wasnt' an issue. Frog noise was though, those things are loud! I really wished I had remember ear plugs. Also the air conditioners are much better than at II (which is important for me to sleep).
TOWELS & CHAIRS
Eh, hard to find. Why must towels and beach chairs be such a commodity? I understand why people claim chairs early in the morning, and I understand why people gather up a dozen towels at a time, but shouldn't there be a better system? IF more towels were available and if the nude pool area was bigger (See prude pool) this wouldn't be such a problem.
PEOPLE
I'm glad we found the group we did. We got along well and the girls all seemed to be at roughly the same level, which was important for them. When we go back I hope it is with the same people. I felt this trip was a little long for us, especially with Marie getting sick. But with a shorter trip with the same people we wouldn't have to worry about meeting people the first 3 days or whatever and could just jump in and have fun. For instance Marie & Kay really hit it off but they hardly talked to each other the first few days and then Kay only had a few days left.
NUDE POOL ATMOSPHERE
How can you play volleyball for 8 hours a day? No offense to the players, but I was a little annoyed and how long they played volleyball and how much the pool was consumed by it. One day they were playing at noon, and before we went to dinner that night I looked out my window and they were still going at it. The next day when we got back from breakfast they were doing it again.
Also, in general the music was better than at II. At II they played the same CD over and over all day. Here there was some variety, but still the dogs were let out far too often. Especially when the song itself is so repetitive do we really need to repeat the song?
One thing I really missed was the cold water jet pool at II. I really like that pool.
QUAD POOL
We didn't even see the quad for the first 3 or so days we were there, but I ended up liking it. I liked the "virtual privacy" of the sun deck. You could go up there and while people could see you you had a sense of physical privacy in that no one was going to walk by. I also liked the increased size of the pool and bar.
What I did not like about the quad pool was the bathing suits (yuck, who wants to swim with clothing on?). The lack of a grill, and the lack of bathrooms. IT wasn't such a big deal since we had friends with swim up rooms so we could use theirs, but without those rooms it would have been annoying. Also at night the bar doesn't stay open that long, and also obviously due to the high walls the sun doesn't shine for as long.
Still, we spent alot of time at the quad once the nude pool got so crowded and noisy.
Wild Women Group
I really liked this group. I enjoyed the suites. Sure we bailed out of the official suite parties but Robert gave me a key and we had a couple private parties up there. It was so convenient to have a neutral room close to the bar/dining room/disco. The stocked "bar" was a definite plus as well.
Robert & Beth were both very nice and accomodating. I definitely want to travel with them again. Especially since we have 2 free days (one sunshine day, and one freebie from Robert).
Rammers & Jammers
Crystal already talked of this, but I will a little too. All the girls in our group were pretty shy. Two of the girls apparently sat up one night talking about what they wanted, that they wanted to be with each other, and then both made small talk all night until they went to bed (luckily one then called the other...). But that just typifies their attitudes. They didn't want to get it on with some random girl on a bed with a big vibrator and a dozen people watching. They wanted to get to know the person first. They wanted it to be sensual, soft, and sexy.
Apparently then some of the women thought our group just wanted to take it slow, and that resulted in some more uncomfortable situations. What they failed to realize was that in truth the girls simply wanted to get to know each other first. It wasn't enough to just take things slow, they wanted to be with the girls they spent the day with, not a girl they've only briefly met, and even then they had to work up the courage to take initiative.
TRIP BACK
On both the trip there and the trip back Air Jamiaca made unscheduled stops in Kingston, this was annoying. Also they were delayed in leaving Montego bay. Then when we got to Ft. Lauderdale customs was really slow. As such we missed our connecting flight (despite originally having nearly 3 hours of a layover) and we had to spend the night in Ft. Lauderdale. Air Jamaica paid for it of course but still, getting home late was really annoying and in fact it cost me maybe 500 dollars in lost revenue with my business, that pissed me off.
I will never fly Air Jamaica again on anything other than a direct flight. They are way too unreliable for connecting flights. I'm also going to be sending some letters of complaint to various places.
Other Stuff
One of the last days we were there there was a sketch artist and I had him do a nude of Marie. It turned out really good, and is something I'll cherish for many years. I appreciate the opportunity to have that done as there isn't often a chance to do something like that in the nude on vacation.
We never left the resort, but we didn't plan to.
We were pleased with housekeeping.
Scotch Bonnet was a nice place to eat lunch if you just wanted something simple like a burger or a patti but didn't want to eat at the pool.
II v. III
The layout of the resort was far superior to II, much less walking, everything close together. I definitely liked III better.
I talked about the food, the rooms, and the entertainment.
II had many more single guys. The first half the week there was a distinct lack of single guys I was quite suprised. With Dennyp's group coming in the week after though I expect that changed.
Also the dining room service was better at III. At II you'd never get water and they'd steal your fork as soon as you stood up. We always had to leave one person at the table to guard it while the other went back up for more food.
Overall I like III better, the entertainment though I hope is better next time.
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