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What was your worst vacation ever and why?
taverngirl
1708 replies45 threads Senior Member
in Parent Cafe
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Replies to: What was your worst vacation ever and why?
Got back and the rest was the weekend wasn't horrible, but we came him early to go to the doc. Not a virus. Flu. Year of the fly shot shortage. Omg. I wound up catching it and got pneumonia. H got it with bronchitis. Most pitiful week ever. And the last time I took the family on a race trip.
We have a couple of fun stories of spending the night at a Steak & Shake in FL when we didn't realize all campgrounds/overflow areas/motels in the peninsula - east to west - would be booked due to the Super Bowl and Daytona 500 occurring at the same time after we had finished returning from the Dry Tortugas and spending the night at Little Truckee's campground outside of Lake Tahoe - on a very, very stinky night (not sure if that's normal or what), but those are just fond stories we reminisce. We knew they would be that when they were happening.
So it rains the entire week. His brother, wife and 3 kids want to come down and stay in our place - I say no. So they come down and rent a campsite in the area, which floods and they come to our place and basically blame me. At one point during the week there were 12 people sitting in our place (his parents, siblings just stopping by!!) It was a nightmare.
My Dad was a difficult, controlling man to be around. I swear he had bipolar disorder. Anyway, when the kids were 11 and 8, we went to see them in Florida over spring break. Our car was packed to the gills!
Dad decided during the middle of the week he and mom wanted to go back with us in the van, and we said no, the van was too full, there was no room. He was so angry that he had to drive that he made the rest of the vacation miserable for all of us. Glaring at us, not speaking, etc. I swore I would never visit and stay with them again. I didn’t for 10 years and broke down for just 3 nights.
We call it the Vacation from Hell.
Our worst non-vacation was the lakeside rental donated by one of the VPs in a company auction. The description was idyllic so we happily bid and invited friends for our week of sun and fun. Thankfully I checked it our before we went. It was tiny, lightless, unsafe for children, infested by mice, and smelled strongly of mold. You couldn't have paid me to stay there.
When my youngest was a toddler we again visited MIL. She had had a fountain built out of an enormous copper vat on legs, flowing into a base, and my daughter and her cousin were playing in the fountain. DD pulled herself up on the lip of the fountain to look in and it collapsed, crushing her between the vat and the edge of the base. It was Christmas week, so the hospital was a horror show and the private doctor's offices were all closed but we were able to call in a favor and get a friend's pediatrician to open her office and the doctor called in a radiologist to do X-rays.
The radiologist whipped out his hand-held apparatus then looked at my MIL and said, "I think I know you." "I don't think so" she responded. "Yes, I do know you! I see your dog!" he crowed. Yup, he was the local veterinarian.
DD lost a few teeth and had a chipped jawbone but luckily her check and eye socket were okay. We brought her home and I slept beside her that night. In the morning I woke up and found her next to me covered in hundreds of mosquito bites. They must have smelled the blood on her breath and ignored me for her. She looked like she had a virulent case of chicken pox.
To top it all off, later that day she had a little sip of juice that turned out to be detergent. Who puts pictures of cherries, apples and grapes on cleaning products and sells it in a single sized juice-shaped container?! She spat it out and was thankfully no worse for the wear.
Through it all DD was a trooper. Except for a little crying when the fountain hit her she didn't complain once. Whever we talked about the incident her brother used to add a little sidelong "Ruff, ruff!" The rotter.
I think all of this might make me the worst, most inept mother ever. How my children made it to adulthood is beyond me.
Gives another meaning to a "double room," which is now how we describe it when reminiscing.
I often find Florida trips disappointing in some way (the development/lack of zoning/blocking beaches always bums me out), but have had enough good experiences to keep going back (swimming in a mineral spring, finding a quiet state park beach, renting a neat houseboat room on airbnb).
Our first trip to Riviera Maya... Mr. decided that it would be fun to rent a car to be able to move around freely. I read up on it and was not so sure... there were stories about rogue cops, car rental agents demanding bribes upon return... lots of shady stuff. Well, what they said on the web was completely true! As we were pulling out of the hotel's drive, a cop stopped Mr. "for speeding." We were going 10 mph below the speed limit. I quickly told Mr. that the standard reply was "how much?" $150? Mr. pulled out his wallet, and luckily he only had 3 $20 bills in it. Apparently, that was enough. The cop quickly shoved the money into his pocket and went after another victim coming down the driveway.... While we were looking for Costco in Cancun, an angry dude trew a rock at us from his car. Luckily, he was not that good at aiming, and the rock missed the windshield. Upon return of the car, the Hertz agent claimed that we lost the spare tire and needed a deposit of $1,000 because the car was not rentable without one. Or he would call the cops. Mr. showed him the photos and the notation on the rental contract that clearly showed there was no spare (again, I insisted on all of that because that's what I read on the internet, lol). Plus, we wisely bought extra insurance... and we told the guy that we would pay with a credit card and then dispute the charge. A big mess averted. Needless to say, I will never rent a car in Mexico.
Funny why you try to block out ; )
We didn't meet up again until our flight back home. Back then you couldn't change seats online (heck, there was no online) and so we had a very uncomfortable and quiet trip back to to the US. I came back broke and having no more vacation days for the year -- but at least I had closed the chapter on that relationship once and for all!!
The next day we start at Magic Kingdom and as we are waiting for the Dumbo ride he starts vomiting again. Back to the hotel. The following day we are driving to Universal and half way there he vomits again, we stop at Walmart and buy a new outfit. While at Universal my wife takes the baby to a show while I watch the birthday boy. I swear I never moved but he couldn't find me so he went to the show and had it stopped to make an announcement for my wife.
The next day, back to Magic Kingdom and as we pull into the lot more vomit. Back to the hotel so my wife can take him in to change and send the birthday boy out with towels to clean the back seat. Once he arrives with the towels I send him back to the room to get out of my hair. Ten minutes later my wife shows up with just the baby. Panic ensues as the 6 year old is missing. Eventually the phone rings in our room and he is at a near by room, lost and upset. It never occurred to me that all hotel rooms look alike to a 6 year old. The first room he knocked on they slammed the door in his face but the second invited him in and gave him a doughnut while trying to locate security and us. I still have to live down losing a child twice in two days.
The last day we drove to the space center, you guessed more vomit but now it was both of them. I had looked at our possible flights and there was one out of Orlando and one out of Tampa, 2 hours apart. I confused the two and we showed up in Tampa too late and with not enough time to go to Orlando. We were able to route through DC to get home and sure enough, right after takeoff, on the first leg, more vomit and the flight attendants were of no help. When we arrive in DC I went to clean him up and my wife checked us in and thankfully first class was open. By this time we were out of clean clothes and I had to choose the least smelly of the bunch, he stunk. When we got on the plane you could see the other first class passengers looking around to find the smell. My older son and I were in the row behind my wife so we ignored them and went to sleep, letting my wife absorb the stares, not my finest hour.
We made it home but learned Dramamine is our friend and have not had a repeat occurrence.
I haven't had any bad trips, just bad moments on a few trips. We kind of joke now that it's not travel without one of these.
1. The mildest - took a train from Salzburg to Prague, four years ago, so the kids were 10-18. My oldest was recovering from a mild virus she'd had for a couple of days in Prague. We were meant to arrive in Prague around 6pm I think so we had food and water for lunch and snacks. We changed to a Czech -run train at a town near the border. Sometime after that the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. Announcements were made in Czech (which we don't speak) but eventually we found out that a tree had fallen on the tracks somewhere ahead of us and we were delayed until it could be removed. There was no food service on this train. Eventually they backed us up to the previous station and gave us a small amount of water and let us get off the train for a while but it was a tiny town and there were no shops in the station or anything like that. Finally we got going again and arrived in Prague just after 10pm... which is of course when all of the shops in the Prague train station close. We did eventually get food after we got to our airbnb.
2. A few years ago minus my oldest kid and plus my elderly parents, we rented a condo in Playa del Carmen (Mexico) and rented a minivan from a budget rental car company. There were warning lights on the dash all week... I thought that was normal as they had been there when we got the car so I assumed the people at the rental car place had checked the car out before loaning it out. Oops, no, bad assumption. We set out for Chichen Itza, a 2 hour drive into the heart of the peninsula. Had a lovely tour... it's quite an amazing place.. and then were on the road to the town of Valladolid when the van broke down with some alarming smoke coming out of the engine. We pulled over and everyone got out and we got all of our things out just in case the car caught on fire (it didn't). So we are on a remote road with 2 teens, my 80 year old dad and 71 year old mother, I'd had one year of Spanish and that made me the expert of the group (!), luckily we did have cell signal out there and were able to get ahold of the rental car office but since it was a budget place they didn't have any other outfits any closer than the Cancun airport so we had to sit tight and wait for them to send people out. There was some miscommunication about when they were going to send people out (we thought immediately... they didn't end up leaving for another couple of hours). We asked if they could meet us in Valladolid if we could find a ride into town and that was fine. So my husband started walking to town... ended up getting picked up by a honeymooning couple who gave him a lift to the next small town and he found a guy with a van who was willing to give us a lift to Valladolid where we were able to get lunch and wait. When the rental car people finally did show up they came in 2 sedans since they didn't have any more vans and we had to wait for them to go check out the van (which really was dead) and give them a lift back. I drove back with my mom and kids and my mom wouldn't stop talking the whole way back which was just what I needed (not) on top of an already really long day. Let's just say Cervezas were consumed that evening. (On the good side - I never got a traffic ticket nor did the budget rental car place try to get any money out of us for that van meltdown).
3. The time I got stuck in Beijing and the rest of my family didn't. Another really long story if I told the whole thing involving flying on frequent flier tix which give you no status at all if you get bumped from a partner airline and every routing possible on mileage seemed to be booked. I spent the night in an airport hotel, bought a one-way ticket to Sydney for full price while my family was enroute to Sydney, and went to sleep, when they landed my hubby found a real United employee in the Sydney airport who finally found me a mileage seat that day and I was able to get my full fare ticket refunded, phew. And that's the story of why I get to check the box that says yes when they ask "Have you ever overstayed a visa?" on the Chinese visa application form :-).