Sand and Soul Festival, The Bahamas, 2017 | Stacy Nakia Peebles, PhD, LCSW

I love to travel and I love live entertainment. This trip was a perfect combination of both. This was an event organized and hosted by Steve Harvey. The event took place at the Atlantis Resort in The Bahamas. Now Yall know I will take a solo trip anytime. This would have been a solo trip except the pricing and accommodations were set up really weird. This is one of the things that I didn’t like about this trip. The concert tickets were linked to your accommodations, so booking the more expensive rooms got you closer to the stage. However, you didn’t learn your actual seat location until you arrived. They said it was based on first come first serve with regards to the time of booking the trip. Single bookings were like triple the price of staying in a double occupancy. This meant my best bet for a good seat without going broke (Atlantis is not cheap) was to get a roommate. I was not going to go all the way to The Bahamas and be sitting way in the back.

The main reason I was going was to see the show headliners, New Edition (NE). Well actually lead singer, Ralph Tresvant is what it’s all about for me…but of course “the others” would be there as well😁. So I actually ended up rooming with a fellow fan I met on social media that was also looking for a roommate. We corresponded for a couple of months leading up to the event and I felt confident that I made a good decision. However I was a little apprehensive. I had never met her in person prior to this trip, but we hit it off and had an amazing time. We bonded over our love for Ralph. We are still in contact and have hung out at a couple of other concerts around the country since then. The accommodations were great. The room was spacious and the grounds were beautiful.

We were very happy with the room. However we were both really anxious to find out where our seats were located. When we finally got to the first event and located our seats we were not very happy. We were seated in like the 6th or 7th row. If you know me, you know I like The Front Row. Based on the prices we paid we were certainly disappointed but we made the best of it.

I believe the event was three nights total. There was a comedy show the first night and then concerts the other two nights. There were also a couple of parties and a Beach BBQ. Of course the highlight of the whole event was Ralph (NE) closing out the show. We did get two opportunities to get close to the stage. Eric Benet, invited fans to come up to the front and he grabbed my hand and sang to me😊. When NE performed both Johnny and Ralph came off the stage into the audience when they did their solos. So went I up there to experience the RT Magic. Didn’t get as close as we wanted but I caught an up close glimpse of him gliding by doing one of his Sexy Signature RT Moves with his Lil Cute Self❤. My roommate loves Johnny almost as much as she loves Ralph, so she was excited when Johnny came down there. He performed first. I was like, I’m waiting on Ralph🤣😂🤣. I do enjoy Johnny’s music as well, but I think everyone probably has a favorite NE member and mine is, was and will always be Ralph….

Steve Harvey