I know that a lot of people probably think that Rodney Villanueva is a great entertainer....however, we had a very, very bad experience with him. I am hoping that this review will also help him out.
We heard great things about Rodney and saw some Yelp reviews, so we decided to hire him as an emcee for our party. We were totally shocked to see how unprofessional he was. We had texted him to confirm his time that we were hiring him for.
First of all, he arrived one hour late and said that he thought we had told him he was suppose to come at 11, when our text had 10 am on it. Then he went on an ego trip and tried to tell us how busy he was and how he was really booked - we didn't care how busy he was, we just wanted him to do his job. We had to ad lib for an hour because of his tardiness. Then, to add insult to injury, he didn't have the decency to apologize for being late and instead, went straight to the food table and made a plate to eat! I don't know of any professional entertainer that does this...usually, you do your job and then the host/hostess will invite you to eat!
His jokes were not really funny and he made a lot of ethnic jokes about Samoans....not being sensitive that the next entertainers that were coming up were from a halau that had a lot of Samoans....now, i know that it is okay to do ethnic jokes, but i think that he should have been more sensitive and professional about it.
The icing on the cake was that afterwards, he approached the the mother of the girl that he was emceeing for and asked, "Where is your other half?". When she answered that she didn't have one, he proceeded to ask why such a hot woman like her didn't have one (none of his business...it was a very sore point for her), and then said that she should go out with someone like him; that he would be a barrel of laughs for her....why on earth would he do this at a gig? he followed her around and tried to make conversation, and continued to put the mac on her, probably not even aware of how uncomfortable and upset she was with him about being late, unprofessional, etc., and now hitting on her. She was so uncomfortable that she went to others in the party to help her avoid any further conversations with him, yet he still tried to hang around to talk to her.
I hope he takes this review to heart....it is not meant to insult him...it is meant to give others information so they can make an informed decision when selecting entertainers. I hope he makes sure that he is 1) on time or even better, comes in a little earlier (would be nice if he can scope out the place and see what the environment is like so he wouldn't be doing anything silly like insulting Samoans who are part of the entertainment); 2) Be prepared to eat after his gig; 3) Keep his gig professional and not hit on any ladies; 4) Take the time to apologize...maybe you may think that you are either a big star and don't need to, or maybe you thought you were right, but business sense should tell you to always be humble and apologize if you sense something went wrong. read more