Of
course, I'm sure the folks
propogating this scam would say it's no such thing. I, being
solidly on the
shit end of their deal,
beg to differ.
Yes,
I just got married, in case that's a
surprise and you need a
moment to
compute it.
I "won" my
honeymoon. That is, some
chick called me on the phone a few months before my
big day and TOLD me that I'd
won my honeymoon. An 8-day
vacation, she said,
all-inclusive, with a
cruise to the
Bahamas in there. All my
meals and
activities, as long as I was
on the resort, would be taken care of. All I had to worry about was
alcohol and
transportation ("You mean
plane tickets?" I asked. "Yes, that and like,
taxis if you want to
get around on your own", she said.) Oh, and we were
asked to take a
tour of the
third stop on our vacation--a
Ramada in
Orlando. Um, whatever; I figured we'd just
skip it.
All for
only three hundred bucks a piece for my
new husband and myself. We were
planning on taking a
vacation to
Jamaica through an
all-inclusive resort anyway, because frankly I like the idea of not having to
budget a lot while I'm on
vacation. I like things that are
included. And
Jamaica would have been more like seven or eight hundred a
piece...So we paid our
six hundred. We got a
videotape in the mail shortly thereafter, which showed very
beautiful resort rooms and
huge cruise-liners. It also assured us that our
food was
taken care of as long as we were in the resorts'
numerous restaurants; that the resort
activities were all included too, and in general that we would have a
wonderful time.
Well, the
itinerary didn't come in the
mail until about
two weeks before the
wedding, so the
plane tickets were expensive--another
six hundred, actually.
Oh well. I
brushed that off because I REALLY NEEDED a
vacation at the time. Then we
got there, and hoo boy.
Meals, they informed us on our
first day there, were not
included, except while one was
on the cruise. We, the
honeymooners, had their
cheapest room with a
cool parking-lot
view, and the food was
expensive (in the one restaurant they had). We found a
7-11 and stocked up on
nukables. Oh, and we had to take a
tour at THIS
resort too--in fact, if we didn't take it (at 9 a.m., no less), we didn't get to go on the
cruise.
The
tour was not
ninety minutes like they said and it was not a tour. It was a
two-and-a-half-hour sales pitch that got increasingly
annoying, and which we, of course, had to
tolerate in order to get on the boat. Oh, and
activities were not only
NOT included, they were almost twice as expensive on the
Radisson's
private beach as they were on the public beaches--we checked. So four of our
eight days were spent at this
stupid place, trying
real hard not to be
pissy on our honeymoon.
Then,
boat time. The place we had to go to get on the boat was an hour and a half away, and they didn't feel like running any
shuttles or
buses, even though most of the people there were going on the cruise too (they trapped all us "promotional" people at once). It was $110 each way for a
taxi. We
rented a car for $140.
Hey, I gotta hand it to them, the
boat food was
superb. Of course, the "2-day cruise to the Bahamas" was a boat that left Tuesday night and got back Thursday at the
butt-crack of dawn, leaving us about
six hours on the
island. It was
not a
big boat. It was a
medium-sized boat, and it was definitely NOT the boat in the
video. Oh, and they didn't tell us this until we were
boarded, but there are no
public beaches on the particular
island we were going to (that being
Nassau), so if we wanted a
beach we had to pay 20-40 bucks a
head for a
ferry or something. Fuck it; we
walked around the island. It wasn't like we had
that much time to blow.
The rest of the time, we were in our
room--a six-by-nine
closet with a
really uncomfortable bed and such a
tiny bathroom that my
husband couldn't even fit in the
shower...
alone. Oh, and the
carpet was
fucking disgusting. I mean,
ew.
Next we were faced with the third leg of our
journey--another
resort. Well, now that we knew that
meals weren't *really* included, that we'd have a
shit room AND that we'd have to find our way the
four hours to
Orlando on our OWN (four hundred bills for a taxi THAT way)...we
gave up and came home
early. Mind you, that cost a
pretty penny too.
We, of course, are
filing a
formal complaint and getting our fucking
money back. But I would like to
warn you all about big
resorts and
promotional vacations and generally about
truth in advertising---it does not exist. I promise.
P.S. I do have to strongly recommend Carribean weed, as well as thank it for letting me have some fun anyway!