Okay WAIT! let me get my smokes and stuff cause this is going to be a very long post... and after your done reading it you just won't believe it!
Everything is relevant.. so bear with the prior explaination.. it's really all about Karaoke...
I got Married on the 19th of July (YAY for me). Decided to take our honeymoon in Jamaica. (sweet) My Husband and I searched for a resort that offered Karaoke Nightly (sandals, read it on a website). We Found 1 @ a 6 star hotel.
After spending $7800.00 on a 1 week trip, we get there and ask about Karaoke, (where it was and what time) they tell us that NO karaoke is only 1 night per week (it's a misprint, on the site). (OKAY I can handle that graciously even, NO PROBLEM) Karaoke is on Sunday night, hosted in the disco. GREAT Well at least we have 1 night, that's cool.
The hotel has an ENTERTAINMENT Staff, all week long there are all kinds of things they are doing (Dancing, singing, planning movies for us, trivia games, name that tune, big fancy festivals, that kind of thing)
The next day we are walking past the Events calendar & stop to take a peek. WOW!! karaoke IS on Sunday BUT only from 10 - 12 (This is a resort with 529 rooms, not a small little resort, it has 6 bars).
So me being me, I stop at the consiegre office and inquire as to why only 2 hours. They tell us that some nights they don't have enouh sigers, BUT if the bar has singers than Karaoke will continue until they have run out of requests. (Alright very cool, considering that even if it's just the 2 of us we can sing all night.) ONE THING you should know is that on the days leading up to KARAOKE, the DISCO was dead, we are talking, NO more than 5 couples in total in the bar, on any given night.
We are psyched for karaoke & I'm a sucker for a chair with a back rest lol. So we go down at 9:20 pm, before they start serving. We are meeting 3 other couples there. (already we are 1 couple away from meeting any nights attendance).
HERE'S Where MY STORY TURNS HORRIBLE AND you won't believe it!!!
The System is all set up and ready to go, GREAT!! My husband asks the guy for a book to look at while we wait. He says he doesn't run the Karaoke only sets up for the girl who does.
When she arrives she approaches us and asks if we want to sing. We say yes that's why we came BUT we don't have a book to choose our songs. (Meanwhile 6 or 8 couples have started milling around). she tells us that they don't have a book, BUT garantee that any song we want, they will have (Pretty brazen BUT whatever, I didn't test it, I'm not that kind of person). She hands us 1 8x10 sheet of paper, there are 40 spots on it to fill in your name, room number, song title, and date of departure. (room number is so they may keep track of party points from all the activities at the rsort so you can win prizes at the end of every night and a big one at the end of your stay).
BUT I said, how do i fill it out, (like do i put all my songs in a row i wanna sing or do i space them out on the page, so other singers can add between?) she tells me that if i write 15 songs in a row, then i will sing those 15 songs in a row without anyone else getting to sing). But if i wanted to I could space them out. I told her okay i would space them out because i don't like singing 2 in a row.) she asked how many song we each intended to put up and we told her that we would probably pick like 10 songs being that it was not busy. So instead she had us fill in 1 line on the paper and write our songs on a seperate peice of paper (which we did). Another couple had come in and he filled out his one line on the 8x10 sheet.
KARAOKE STARTS at 10 pm. the host gets up and ATTEMPTS to sing a song, then another and another) 3 songs, the first verse of each of them and then admits she doesn't know them very well. At this point we have about 30 people in the bar and 1 staff running the Karaoke machine (which was a laptop system), 1 hosting and 1 taking requests. The host then proceeds to put on, "the devil went down to Jamaica" Which no one in the bar requested and No one knew. She wants us to have a sing along song, (OKAY it's one song, I'm in for singing from the table if it's one). so a few of us attempt to sing along from our tables. after this, she does a round of 4 singers, my husband, myself, & 2 others.
She then starts the next round, at this time the one taking requests hands in 1 full sheet of singers and songs. The host attempts yet again to sing 2 more songs, (doesn't know them). Then she puts up the girl taking requests, (A song this girl didn't know either). The next round goes rather Smoothly, some staff are now finishing work and joining the party, so she adds 2 more staff in in the middle of the round (NO BIGGIE, as far as i was concerned.) She misses me in the round and puts my husband up for 2. (it's a vacation, so happy go lucky not going to complain.)
The request girl has now added another 8x10 sheet to the 1 they already have going. now that's 80 songs they have taken in at least (then my list and my husbands). there is about 70 people in the bar. FANTASTIC!!
she starts another round (this time she puts on a german sing along song, NO ONE there is german) my husband sings 1 song in this round, I get missed again (i still say nothing) and she's at song number 5 or 6 and the sound stops working. (she's busy blaming the laptop, but yet the graphics are still working and the laptop when unpluged from the sound system is playing just fine). now they got problems that NO one there knows how to fix.
It's about 10:30, so they call 4 other staff to come from somewhere on the resort to help fix it, (it eventually took 45 minutes to fix something gave out on the house sound system, they went and got a powered speaker and it was back up and running).
My husband approaches the hostess and mentions to her that she missed me the last 2 rounds.
they start Karaoke again, this time one of the other staff who came to rescue us sings, (GREAT!! maybe he'll actually make it through a whole song). Well he sings the next 3 songs in a row, american pie being one of them. all songs he sang in their entirety.
Then the original hostess gets up and tries yet again at 4 more songs where she sings 1 verse of each and still has yet to find a song she knows well enough that she's not stumbling and not keeping pace or... (just BAD!! I can't even explain how bad going through this every round was).
then another staff member gets up and sings 1 song. They call my husband up and then one other customer. then 3 more staff sing 3 more songs. my husband again goes and asks about my turn, the host tells him they dont have any of those songs BUT the request girl checked to make sure they had those songs before it even started.
So I ask her, she says they were just kidding and I should be coming up shortly. (OKAY GREAT!) 2 or 3 songs later they call me up to sing, BUT before i get up there, they announce KARAOKE will ending in 20 minutes. I sing my song and stop to ask the host what time it was and why they were closing down. she tells me is 15 minutes to midnight and they were closing Karaoke at 12. I asked her about the down time, she said it didn't matter. They were changing the karaoke to dance music from 12 - 2 am, and that karaoke was ending.
they played 6 more songs 2 being staff and again my husband sings.
(YOU SHOULD KNOW.. I had only 1 drink during this time and hadn't been drinking prior to coming to Karaoke).
I'm PISSED OFF!! are you KIDDING ME???
the staff sang the majority of the time karaoke played and then add the time down. When it came down to numbers I sang 3 songs, my husband sang 7 and the few customers who got to sing sang 1 song each. (we won the prizes for the night, BIG DEAL). the bar had about 100 or so people whe we finished Karaoke and within 3 minutes they were down to 6 or 8 couples. literally it was stupid.
the guy who came in before karaoke started right after us, NEVER did get to sing. the request girl had 4 FULL sheets of songs that she handed in, that never seeme4d to get played.
THIS WAS THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING I HAVE EVER WITNESSED IN MY ENTIRE CAREER.
Believe me, I can go to anyone's show and have a great time and nt even think about it. BUT this was OMG! I can't even get across how stupid this was.
Here we are the guest paying all this money to stay there, we listen to the entertainment staff all week long, watch their stupid movies and play their games and the one night when we had an actual crowd happening and a night life where people were actually enjoying themselves, where we could entertain ourselves and each other and they robbed us of it.
I'm not angry that I only sang 3 songs, that's not it at all. On a regular night i only get to sing 3 songs when i'm working. the FACT is that the staff took up time that the other customers could have used and that there was no list of singers or rotations and that so many people left the second they turned it off.
Sometime during the evening, the guy running the System told my huband, that up until a short while a go they didn't have very many songs. BUT a vacationer brought in a hard drive and gave it to them. it has 30 thousand songs on it, (can you say illegal!)
(Was my post long enough? lol.. bedtime it's 5:45 am)
I Have To Tell You All This!!!
That stunk about how unproffesional they handled it. I try not to sing alot at my shows but when I go to some other show I am going to sing and not just sit around stewing because the staff monopolized the system for the entire night. I pride myself on how fair I run my show and believe that if it run differently that the host is unprofessional. I take my song requets as I get them and that is the order I stick with all night with the exception of new singers who get added at the end of the present rotation.
