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What was your worst vacation ever and why?
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Replies to: What was your worst vacation ever and why?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/07/08/one-year-old-girl-dies-after-falling-stories-cruise-ship-window/?utm_term=.5fb2ec059ef5
if link is behind a firewall:
https://www.local10.com/news/international/attorney-of-family-whose-child-fell-from-cruise-ship-says-grandfather-didn-t-drop-toddler
We have had a few challenging travel snafus, but I have changed my mind and realize I have been fortunate to be able to travel and travel well. No complaints after all.
Also, please note that I'm not dogging on anyone posting here or suggesting that if no one in your party died, you have no right to relay your bad experiences here. I just happened to see this headline on another window I had open at the same time as I came on to CC. I just cannot imagine going on a much anticipated vacation with excitement, only to find life forever horribly altered only hours into the trip.
So we fly to DC to meet my parents, my sister's family, and my aunt and uncle. Oh, yeah, we forgot our hanging close bag and had to stop to buy a suit and dress on the way. Dad was being inducted into the National Academy of Engineering so we had to look good, ha.
Everywhere we went, people stared at poor DS, who looked like he'd been through a tough prize fight. One lady gave him a lollipop. I'm surprised nobody turned us in!
It was also tough because we had a total of six kids, age 6 and under. In DC, you walk and walk and walk... Ack! We had a couple of pretty impressive melt downs - kids and adults! I remember sitting on benches with my sister as we both nursed infants - we missed a lot of museum touring.
I was ready for a vacation after that.
I think I've had that dream just as many times as the recurring nightmare about signing up for a college math course, only to realize the night before finals that I never dropped it and never attended.
I can't even fathom the story in post 21. Just totally heart breaking.
That time we camped next to the stream and heavy rains not only flooded it but made it next to impossible to get the car up the hill (this was after another car issue on the same trip).
That time on the ten hour car trip it finally occurred to two PhD's that you could offer the cranky baby a pacifier when he wasn't in bed.
That time our 4-year-old tried popcorn for the first time, overindulged, and then we left on a five hour car trip with her in the middle seat.
Lots of people do die on vacation. Often it's because they are less careful about their behaviour, drinking, etc, than they wuld be in everyday life.
@iaparent: my parents once found a small child sobbing outside their hotel room. He was convinced it was his family's room. They took him down to reception, where it was established they had the same room the floor below. Not sure if his parents had missed him.
On our second beach trip with her (MIL was too worried about alienating her son so say she wasn't welcome, which we understood) she really outdid herself. She got into a thermostat war with H. Everyone else was hot, she insisted she was freezing and the thermostat needed to be set to precisely 73 degrees and any less she would surely die of frostbite (bear in mind it was summer and there were piles of blankets in the condo to use). When he blockaded the thermostat with his sweaty, shirtless self and offered a hug if she wanted to turn the thermostat up again (not the most mature response but the only alternative at this point was for everyone but her to be uncomfortable), she started screaming, punching, and scratching H and then barricaded herself in her room (also tried to call MIL, who was out with friends, to tell her that she had to make her son let her turn the thermostat up). I could go on and on about this particular trip but she was an absolute nightmare for the rest of the week, and BIL quietly made plans to move out of their shared apartment the moment they got home. Happily he met a wonderful gem of a woman after this who is a pleasure to be around, so family vacations are a lot more peaceful now.
We took a canoe trip once and camping with the family that lives in infamy. The water levels were too low in areas. My biggest fear was falling in, it was narrow and dark and I was sure full of snakes. My dad used my boat to try and pull himself up and he flipped me. I spent the rest of the trip with wet shoes. It was buggy and uncomfortable and I really embraced the no camping after that trip.
Now that she is long gone, have you ever revealed to your BIL what a nightmare you all thought she was?
We also had a vacation that I planned where we were staying in a different national park most nights, with a longish drive to get from one park to the next. We were supposed to stay at yet another hotel to break up the long drive from south rim of the Grand Canyon to LA but the kids begged us to just drive straight there and forego the hotel, so we did. I had a lot more cooperation in planning our trips thereafter and we’ve always stayed several nights at each place since.
Happily most of our vacations never came closer se to some of the challenges many faced in this thread.
> FH managed to get food poisoning with the usual 24-hours straight of vomiting. (I say "usual" because the food-poisoning-while-traveling thing seemed to be rather common for him.
> I started off with a cold that turned into pneumonia by the end of the trip, which in addition to requiring medical attention also meant that I wasn't allowed to fly, delaying our return for several days. (Fortunately, it was bacterial and cleared up with ampicillin, once we finally figured out that I really, truly did need to go in for urgent care.)
> FH also managed to wreck the camper van we had rented -- it was driveable, but a humongous dent on the front.
> When we finally did get home, we had been robbed by our pet-sitter-- car stolen, a check forged, and all my inherited silver gone from the apartment. Plus our dog & 4 cats had been left alone & unattended for at the time between our planned homecoming and actual arrival.
I still adore New Zealand. (Excellent health care system; American Express paid the damages to the rental; and our stolen property & money was recovered --- so no long-term ramifications other than a traumatized cat that ran away and refused to return even after he was located. )
I get to the airport and it is revealed we are going to Cabo San Lucas. Yippee....except I am 7 months pregnant, cannot drink anything and really don’t want to waddle around in the heat in my bathing suit. It would have been fine and I would have made the best of it, but we were on some kind of package deal at a horrid cheap chain hotel surrounded by Spring Break partiers.
That is the first, last and only time he planned one of our vacations.
We were vacationing with my sister and her 5-year-old D. Somehow my niece and my D (who was eight at the time) decided that they MUST go to the haunted house but they couldn't go by themselves. Of course, they both started screaming (loudly) as soon as we got inside this place - yes, it was scary, IT'S A HAUNTED HOUSE! We had to drag them through this hot, humid, loud, dark, sweltering place, and it took forever to get out. And then they wanted to go back in!
On the plus side, no one got sick and no one vomited. On the down side, we spent a week feeling miserably hot and tired (who could sleep?) Sometimes, in my nightmares, I can sill hear my niece screaming in the Haunted House, and to this day, when one of this is complaining about the heat, some one will say, "Yes, but is it Panama City hot?"
Post #13209 https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/62644-sinners-alley-happy-hour-p881.html
Of course, now I'm wanting to book a trip to Egypt... We loved Jordan, but we didn't go with any sort of planned trip! We survived (and thoroughly enjoyed) the Dominican Republic this past March too, but again, on our own renting an awesome AirBnB and not at a resort.