Weddingbee Blog

We’re back from our belated Jamaica honeymoon, where we stayed at the fabulous Secrets Wild Orchid resort. And that means it’s time for… honeymoon recaps!

In thinking about my recaps, I’ve decided to write three big posts. The first one will discuss our trip as a whole. The next one will be about the food and restaurants at the resort. And finally, the last one will give my ’formal’ review of the resort*.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Getting There and Getting Settled

Mr. Mary Jane and I woke up at the ass-crack of before-dawn on July 1. Before 5, we were on our way to Fargo to catch our first flight (which was scheduled to depart at 7 AM). We were sleepy, but excited. The day we’d been waiting for had arrived!! At about 6:15 I cheerfully strode into the airport — dragging our luggage behind me — only to be yelled at (yes, yelled) at by the gate agent.

Before I even arrived at the [completely deserted] counter, she was shouting at me. “Are you Mrs. Mary Jane? I can deny you boarding.” My smile was gone as she continued: “You have to be here two hours early for an international flight. I don’t have to let you on the plane. Do you realize what time it is?” I looked at the clock. 6:20. I’ve never flown internationally (excepting Canada) before (and besides, this flight was to Chicago!), so I had no clue they were so strict about these rules. Fargo’s airport is small, and it rarely takes more than 10 minutes to get parked, checked in, and through security.

But although I did have some choice words brewing in my now at-attention-and-very-pissed-off brain, I recognized who had the power in this situation. So I simply smiled apologetically and said “I’m sorry, I have no excuse… there was road construction and we should have left home earlier.” She just stared at me, so I continued: “This is our honeymoon, my husband is parking the car; we would really appreciate if you would let us on the flight.” She sighed, rolled her eyes and asked for our passports (I had both of ours), checked us in (without him even being present!) and took my suitcase. “Well, I don’t have to put your luggage on the plane,” she barked. “There is a half-hour cut-off.” (It was 6:25 at this point. That’s 35 minutes… but I decided to keep my mouth shut and just hope our suitcase would make it.) She then told me that if we were not through security in 10 minutes, she would personally be at the gate to deny us boarding. Good morning to you too, lady!

We were through security five minutes later, and on the plane 5 minutes after that. When we landed in Chicago, I hung back by the arrival gate to watch the bags come off our plane. Our suitcase was among them! Hurray! Good thing I didn’t tell that airport lady to ’Go $%^# her &*@#ing %&#* %^$#*,’ eh?

The rest of the trip was fine. We flew from Chicago to Miami, and Miami to Montego Bay. On the final leg of our journey, we got these:

Customs & Immigration forms! Fun. When we landed in Jamaica, we had to go through an immigration booth, and then a customs booth (along with everyone else on our flight). It took about a half hour. After collecting our suitcase, the Jamaica Tours company was waiting to whisk us away to the resort.

Now, the first thing I noticed when we stepped outside for the first time was the humidity. Oh my God, you guys. It was so. freaking. humid. Maybe those of you from the South are used to that, but we are not. It gets humid in Grand Forks, sure. But not that humid. Man. Anyway, the bus was air-conditioned.

When we arrived at the resort, a very nice gentleman unloaded our bag from the bus and put it on a golf cart. We were then driven to the Preferred Club, which is tucked in the back of the resort and has a separate lobby for check-in. He told us a little about the resort on the way. Here’s a video of part of our ride:

If you listen to the audio, you can hear the bellman talking about two of the resort’s restaurants.

We were handed champagne given comfy chairs while we checked in. Remember how I had some concerns about our room reservation? Well, we experienced no difficulties. However, I also made sure to call and email the resort the day before our arrival. I received both written and verbal confirmation that they had our correct reservation. Still, the fact that we were able to quickly check in and be brought to our room was a huge load off of our minds.

We booked a Master Suite in the Wild Orchid Preferred Club. And OMG. It was so worth the extra money. The ’normal’ rooms looked like dorm rooms (really, really nice dorm rooms) compared to what we got. Here’s a peek at our room.

And the view…

I’ll write more extensively about the room and check-in process in my review of the resort (that’ll be part 3). I’ll show more photos, too.

We spent the rest of the evening unpacking and getting settled. More adventurous travelers might have taken a stroll down to the bars or clubs, but we were wiped. We had been up for 20 hours at this point, and it was time for bed.

The next morning, I couldn’t stand to stay in bed too long: I was anxious to check out our view for the first time! It did not disappoint.

After we got dressed, we took a walk around the resort. One of our stops was the Spa, where we booked a whole bunch of massages and treatments to take place throughout the week. We got hungry at about 11:30 and decided to go to lunch… only to find out that the restaurants don’t serve lunch until 12:30. Oops. So we made our first (of many) trips to one of the bars…

And ended up experiencing our first (of several) Jamaican afternoon thunderstorms.

When the rain let up and we finally made it back to the restaurants, we learned that breakfast and lunch are both served buffet-style: No restaurants — just one big buffet. (The buffet meals had a large selection that was fine for the first few days, but it did get tiring after a while. I will talk more about the food in part 2!)

A Belated Honeymoon Package for Belated Honeymooners

Way back when we booked our trip, we were told we’d qualify for the “Eternity Honeymoon” package. When we arrived, however, there was no indication that we had received it. This was the only time I had to break out my Big Fat Folder of Confirmations. Once the concierge was handed a copy of my many correspondences with our travel agent and hotel staff regarding our qualification for the package, she decided we did indeed qualify for this package. (However, it took four days to receive the honeymoon welcome, and another 3 days after that to receive the eternity honeymoon welcome. If you’re counting, that’s 7 days in to our trip!)

So on day 4, we found this swan on our bed…

… and we also received some champagne (with two apples)…

Then on day 5, this banner was crumpled outside our room door:

They had tried to hang it, but our ’Do Not Disturb’ notice was up so they could not open the door to do so. This is how it’s supposed to look:

On day 6, we were given a private candlelight dinner in one of the gazebos.

[Note: ’Candlelight dinner’ photos were taken by Secrets Resort photographer; edited by me.]

We then returned to our room to find this.

And on Day 9, we were offered a free 25-minute couples massage.

Fortunately, the honeymoon package wasn’t a big deal to us. We didn’t take it too seriously, so the apparent disorganization of the whole thing was more funny than anything else.

Oh, and… I said the massage was ’offered’ to us because of the following.

We’re Not ’Massage’ People

On our 3rd day we had the first of our of our scheduled spa appointments. We learned early on that Spa check-in takes a long time. In fact, the Spa was probably the most stressful part of the resort (I will write about why in my review). Anyway: after reading for a while on the beach, we strolled over to the spa for our appointments. I got a Green Coffee body wrap (which was awesome!). We also got massages.

They weren’t bad massages. We simply are not massage people. My 80 minute hot stone massage seemed to last forever. I suppose I should have been, um, relaxing, but that’s not one of my strong suits. So I spent a great deal of my massage wondering how much time was left and contemplating ending it early. I stuck it out though, only to find that Mr. Mary Jane is not a massage lover either.

Which sucks, because he had booked three more of them throughout the week! He ended up canceling them. We couldn’t get a refund, but they allowed us to exchange them for other services. (Another Green Coffee wrap for me, pedicures for both of us.) After some thought, we also canceled our free couples massage. We just weren’t into it (and Mr. Mary Jane’s sunburnt shoulders weren’t going to be into it either).

And Now: The Point of Our Vacation

A perk of canceling the Spa services was that it really freed up our days. One thing we did not want on our vacation was schedules. Booking massages nearly every day was *not* fitting in to that mantra! With the massages off the docket (and the new services all rescheduled for the same day (Thursday, day 8 of our trip), it gave us plenty of time for this…

… and this…

… and more of this!

We ate, we drank, we read, we swam. That is how we spent our days in Jamaica. In fact, here is a video I put together showing some of the typical experiences we had each day.

Don’t bother with the sound on this video. iMovie keeps messing it up when I export!

It did not rain every day, but it rained most days. Only for an hour or two, though. One benefit of going to a tropical resort during their off-season (summer) is that it’s not crowded at all. There were not many people there, meaning lots of personal space and choice amongst the best places to sit on the beach.

There were only a few instances where we were bothered by other guests. For one thing: they allow smoking on the beach (we don’t smoke). It was pretty bothersome to see cigarette butts on the beach, and experience fellow guests lighting up and puffing away nearby. Obviously, we could move away form these people… but why should I need to relocate myself in order to breathe clean air, you know?! The other instance involved noise. There was a group of rowdy, loud 50-somethings who would party like frat-boys every afternoon and evening during the first part of our stay. Lucky us: they were staying in the swim-out suites two floors below us. They had even brought noisemakers (horns and duck calls. WTF?). This made reading on our balcony an infrequent thing due to the intolerable noise. The hotel forbids disturbing other guests, but my call to the lobby did not seem to correct the problem. We spent a lot of time indoors because of them.

Moving on…

We Did Do A Couple of Things

We didn’t take any day-long tours, even the highly-recommended ones. We just didn’t want to be busy. We did, however, manage to leave the resort on two occasions:

On the Fourth of July, we went parasailing! We were able to do this right from the resort.

I wish I had more pictures of this, but our camera battery died after only 8 shots! Sadness. After all my planning for how to capture the best shots of this excursion, we got hardly any at all because I forgot to bring extra batteries in my pocket. (Don’t forget your batteries, people!!) We did get some video though!

There was also a picnic and party on the Fourth.

And on the 6th, we took a 2-hour bike tour which also afforded us the opportunity to buy a few souvenirs.

Other than that? We just chilled. Eat, read, swim, sleep, repeat. Exactly what I wanted in a vacation.

If you’re getting ready to go on a tropical vacation, here are a few tips for you. I already showed you my extensive packing list, but there are a few key items Mr. Mary Jane and I could have really used while we were in Jamaica:

• A fly swatter (for mosquitoes): The doors to the hotel rooms lead to the outside air, and the maid-service people leave the door wide open while they clean. This means bugs in your room, every evening. We sprayed ours with bug spray, but a fly swatter would have been cleaner and more effective.
• A watch (cheap and/or waterproof): We’re so used to checking our cell phones for the time that we totally forgot to bring a watch. Hence, whenever we had a spa service or specific thing to do, we needed to carry one of our cell phones with us. Since we elected not to pay extra money for roaming services on our phones, we were basically just carrying an expensive brick with a clock on it. A $10 watch from Walmart would have been better.
• iPods! Well, we did bring one iPod for the plane rides. But we would have brought them in waterproof cases, with chargers. Earbuds in our ears would have drowned out the sounds of those loud partiers I mentioned earlier. As much as I would love relaxing to peaceful beach sounds, I do prefer my own music to the guffawing of drunken baby-boomers.

All in all though? Best Vacation Evaaar!

Bring your appetite next time, because my next post about our vacation is going to be devoted entirely to the food!

*All three of my posts should be up within the week, but if you are waiting on my review before you book, here’s a spoiler: I give the resort a B+. It’s very nice, everyone’s friendly, and I would stay there again. We only experienced minor glitches, and a little patience and persistence solved them easily. There were some design flaws with the hotels and their craftsmanship, but again… not a big deal. Also: I highly recommend AllInclusiveOutlet.com for booking. (Grade: A)