"The Trip" Travel Disasters podcast: What's your personal favorite travel disaster tale?

[VandVsmama]

I just listened to this week's podcast for "The Trip" regarding travel disasters. I have an epic one for you (well, I have more than one, but let's just stick with this one for now)! I'm curious what everybody else's worst travel disaster has entailed?

About 7-8 years ago, my parents planned to take a really incredible cruise. The cruise started in Florida and would go through the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, and finally ending in Chile. The cruise set sail on Christmas Eve and my parents were quite excited. Mom and Dad lived in California at that time, so they flew to Florida on December 23 so they would have some “wiggle room” in case there were any problems with their flights.

Their plane ride to Florida was uneventful and the following morning, they went to the cruise ship dock to check in. Because the cruise was ending in a foreign country, they had to have their passports with them. My mom got out her passport and handed it to the cruise ship employee, who confirmed that everything was in order…you may board now, Ma’am. Then my dad got out his passport, only he and the cruise ship employee quickly discovered that in his haste to get ready to leave for the airport the day before, my dad didn’t pay attention and he grabbed his expired passport instead of the valid one!

They did not let him board the ship. He had a photocopy of the passport with him in his luggage, but that was not considered legal enough to allow him to board because once the ship docked in Chile, he would have been prevented from entering the country because he didn’t have a passport.

AND to make matters worse, the ship was not going to be staying at any one port long enough for him to get an emergency replacement passport.

So at my dad’s insistence, my mom got on the ship without my dad. My dad then called me on Christmas Eve, desperate for help because he needed a last minute plane ticket from Florida to California so that he could go home and retrieve his passport. He didn’t have a laptop with him OR a smart phone and this was before the age of tablet devices and widespread Wifi. I helped him book a very expensive one-way ticket on Christmas Eve back to California.

THEN from the airport at home in California, he took a cab back to his house – an hour’s drive away from the airport – ran inside to get the passport, and then took the same cab BACK to the airport to board another equally expensive plane ride from San Francisco International Airport to the island of Aruba.

You see, we had to arrange for him to meet up with the cruise ship at a particular port on the day that the ship would be at that port. Otherwise he would again be in traveler’s No Man’s Land.

So at something like 11:00 pm local time, he checked into one of the last hotel rooms available in Aruba for one night’s stay at the crazy rate of $900/night. And the following day (now it’s December 26), he met up with the cruise ship and with my mom.

My mom got to spend Christmas by herself on the cruise ship. And my dad’s mistake cost them about $3500.00 for him to get back to the ship. Needless to say, they didn’t take a whole lot of cruises after that.

 

[VandVsmama]

Horrific travel tale #2:

Oh wait - I've got another one! When I was 13 and my sister was 10 1/2, my parents had us travel unaccompanied to visit my grandparents on the East Coast (we lived in CA). This was in the 1980's before the Internet, before everybody had a cell phone, not every home had a personal computer in it yet. My sister and I were to spend 2 weeks with our grandparents and we were very excited about the trip.

Our epic journey to New Jersey started at San Francisco airport on World Airways (which doesn't exist anymore). Mom and Dad saw us off at the gate, saw us get on the airplane, and yay! We're ready to go! Except we weren't. There was a mechanical problem with the plane and we would have to wait. After awhile, they had everybody get off the plane. There were about 10 of us who were unaccompanied minors and they put us in the hands of a couple of very nice World Airways employees.

So the phone calls started. My parents spent the afternoon in San Francisco and then got home to discover that our plane had not actually taken off...they learned this when they got a frantic phone call from my grandparents wondering where the plane was at Newark airport and why hasn't the plane even left San Francisco yet?

For 6 hours, my parents, my grandparents, and World Airways spent on the phone continually getting busy signals because they were all trying to call each other. This was before Call Waiting was an option. In the meantime, World Airways has been able to reach all of the rest of the unaccompanied minors' parents & guardians, but not mine & my sisters.

Finally, we are all set to board the plane again. The plane's malfunctioning part had been replaced and away we go! YAY! Plane is scheduled to make a stop in Baltimore and then continue on to Newark. We land in Baltimore and the pilot announces that this is where the plane is stopping for the night and that the flight is NOT continuing on to Newark. It's about 11:00 pm at this point.

We then spend the next 2 hours at the Baltimore airport while World Airways employees figure out what to do with us 10 unaccompanied minors. My sister and I ended up being driven by a World Airways employee to a hotel, where we were checked in for the night into a room....alone, scared, with no luggage or anything. And we then had to be awake 4 hours later so we could go BACK to the Baltimore airport (again, drive by a World Airways employee) for a morning flight to Newark.

We arrived safe and sound the next morning in Newark and received relieved hugs and kisses from our grandparents. And that was the first and last time that my sister and I ever traveled anywhere by plan by ourselves again.

 

[superme80]

VandVsmama hands down you win! The worst for me was when we went camping and my dad got a kidney stone. It was his first, so we had no idea what was going on. My mom, who is scared to drive anything bigger than a car, had to drive our 1963 Ford truck with the trailer attached. It was a very scary 3 hour drive home. Thankfully my dad was ok, and my mom's driving was ok.

 

[KingLlama]

One time, back around 1990, my wife and I were going to take our kids(and some extended family) to Paris for a Christmas vacation. The night before we were set to leave, our 8-year-old got mouthy, so we sent him up to the attic to think about his attitude. Well, the next day, we were in a huge rush to get to the airport one time(because we overslept!) and because a neighbor kid was hanging around our shuttle, we accidentally left the eight-year-old at home. BY HIMSELF.

We didn't realize it until we got to Paris, and we couldn't get home because all the flights were booked. Meanwhile, the eight-year-old realizes he's home by himself and gets into all kinds of shenanigans. A couple of local hoodlums had been scouting our neighborhood for houses to rob, and realized that our son was home by himself. So they kept trying to break into the house, but some quick thinking by our son scared them off.

My wife finally made it back to New York City, but AGAIN, all the flights home were booked. Thankfully, there was a polka band who was stranded at the airport also. They heard my wife explaining our situation, and since they were in a similar conundrum, they offered to let her ride with them in a moving van, since they'd be headed past our town on their way home. She reluctantly agreed.

Meanwhile, back at home, our eight-year-old overheard these two hoodlums saying that they were going to break into our home ON CHRISTMAS EVE. Instead of going to alert the police, like most reasonable people would have done, he instead went back to our house and came up with an intricate plan of booby traps. Sure enough, those ne'er-do-wells came back that night, and BOY WERE THEY SURPRISED! He had rigged the whole house with things like feathers, ice, swinging buckets of paint....the works, really. They kept on trying to get in and get him, but he kept coming up with crazy ways to elude them, that rascal. He fled our house and went to an empty house nearby, but those two burglars caught him there! Then an old man knocked them out with a shovel, and the police hauled them off to the slam.

Finally, after an hours-long ride in that moving van, my wife arrived home on Christmas morning, to find our son safe and sound. What my wife DIDN'T know was that we had found a flight home from Paris, so we arrived only a few minutes after she did! We were all so excited to see our son, and we started hooting and hollering right there in the foyer. Meanwhile, our son wandered off to the window and looked over into that old man's yard. That old man was standing with some people, but he wasn't hitting them with a shovel....he was HUGGING them.

I'll never forget that Christmas, or that vacation "disaster"!

 

[samsteele]

About 5 years ago I decided to be intrepid and take a bus tour by myself without family or friends. All of my friends are busy raising (rather expensive) teenagers and have no disposable income for personal travel. So I booked a 2 week Trafalgar Tour. To Turkey. Yeah. My first major trip on my own and I choose Turkey. I can speak some basic French and German from high school. Did I go to France or Germany? No, of course not. I decided to go somewhere a bit more exotic. I've always loved ancient history and archaeology. Turkey delivers that in spades with Troy and Ephesus and much, much more. The night before I had to leave for the airport, I was on the phone with my Mom and having some pre-trip jitters. She told me, "Look. If you're worried you don't have to go." But I had already paid for my trip and my flights and felt I was pretty much committed at that point. I got to Toronto's Pearson Airport, boarded the plane but to get to my seat in economy, had to crawl over a rather inconsiderate man who refused to get out of his seat to let me get into the window seat. As I crawled over him, I could hear/feel something tear in my knee and knew I was in trouble. But being wildly optimistic, I thought its probably nothing. Get over it. Just suck it up. So once we got to cruising altitude, I asked the attendant for some ice and I rolled up my pant leg and iced my knee. Overnight, my knee really began to throb. The next morning, I asked the attendant for assistance in getting the monster passenger next to me to get out so I could hobble out to the toilet and back. I should have asked for her assistance in the first place and never tried to get past a large 6 ft seated man in economy seating. Lesson learned. The hard way. We landed in Frankfurt and I had my connecting flight to catch to Istanbul. Of course, the connecting Lufthansa flight was way out in Siberia and I had an hour's walk through at least 2 security check-points to get to the gate. I was limping badly by that point and was very worried. What if I had done something permanent to my knee? Should I miss my flight to Istanbul and get medical assistance? I decided to soldier on. As we were descending into Istanbul, I could see the minarets and domes and thought simultaneously "Isn't this exciting!" but also "What the heck am I doing and what am I going to do with this knee!". I was picked up by the tour company and shuttled to the hotel. I skipped dinner and the intro briefing and went straight to my room where I iced my knee and elevated it with some extra pillows I found in the closet. I wrapped my leg with towels soaked in cold water. I did this all night. The following morning, the swelling had gone down and the pain was doable with Tylenol. I got my bag out into the hall for collection, had breakfast and got on the bus. Thankfully, I hadn't torn an ACL or done anything serious. Over the next two days, my knee improved greatly so by the end of the first week, I was fine. This tour turned out to be the best vacation of my life. I was incredibly fortunate to have an exceptional guide, wonderful busmates (mostly Aussies & a few Kiwis) with a sprinkling of South Africans and a few young Californians. It was a trip of a lifetime and I am so grateful that I went. I also had a great deal of pure dumb luck with that knee. I pushed the envelope but was fortunate it was simply a strain or slightly torn ligament and nothing more serious. This could easily have become a serious travel misadventure. However, with a huge amount of luck I ended up having an incredible travel experience. I also gained a great deal of confidence but also some caution and more common sense. In the future, I won't be reluctant at all to ask for help from airline attendants when necessary. Its what they are there for. Better to ask for help rather than plunge ahead and have to deal with the consequences on your own.

 

[samsteele]

One time, back around 1990, my wife and I were going to take our kids(and some extended family) to Paris for a Christmas vacation.

King . . . by any chance is your son's name Kevin? Merry Christmas!

 

[GAN]

I believe this post should be in this thread....

http://www.disboards.com/threads/my-nightmare-solo-vacation.3468657/

Just in case anyone missed it.

 

[Alicenwonderment]

I have many stories of traveling. I'm not sure this one was a disaster for me and my sisters but it was an expensive one for the parents. Growing up every Christmas we would travel to Kentucky from New England. It is a two day drive. My parents would put the 3 kids in the backseat and three dogs (My dad had to take the hunting dogs to hunt.) Whenever we stopped at a rest area each kid would walk a dog. Anyways we would help pack the car with our bags and bring all the presents out to the car. One Christmas Eve as we rolled over the border to KY my parents remembered ummm they forgot to pack the Santa stuff for us. Since it was Christmas Eve most of the stores had already closed. It was pretty late and my parents didn't have anything for us from Santa. My mom called my uncle and when my parents got into town they dropped us off and my aunt's house and my uncle had opened up his furniture store and had a friend that had a convenience type store open up. My mom tells me that the guy wasn't really charging prices. She said they had given him some drinks and he was putting random numbers into the register. At the time (I think I was 8) we had no clue when we woke up Christmas morning what had happened the night before. When we returned home Santa had been there too and left more presents. lol. My mom said she used some of the presents at the house for birthday gifts all year. I'd say this is my favorite story.

We have had a lot of car adventures too. Transmission died on Christmas eve one year about an hour from my grandparents house. Another time my dad had made a little house on wheels so that there would be more room for packing. It was fun to get people's reaction when we passed on the road. Well about 12 miles from our destination all the sudden we feel shaking in the back of the car and barking noises. The axle had come unhinged from the car. We were lucky that our dogs were o.k. My uncle had to come get us and get the dog house towed. It sat in KY for many years.

 

[SorcererHeidi]

I have many stories of traveling. I'm not sure this one was a disaster for me and my sisters but it was an expensive one for the parents. Growing up every Christmas we would travel to Kentucky from New England. It is a two day drive. My parents would put the 3 kids in the backseat and three dogs (My dad had to take the hunting dogs to hunt.) Whenever we stopped at a rest area each kid would walk a dog. Anyways we would help pack the car with our bags and bring all the presents out to the car. One Christmas Eve as we rolled over the border to KY my parents remembered ummm they forgot to pack the Santa stuff for us. Since it was Christmas Eve most of the stores had already closed. It was pretty late and my parents didn't have anything for us from Santa. My mom called my uncle and when my parents got into town they dropped us off and my aunt's house and my uncle had opened up his furniture store and had a friend that had a convenience type store open up. My mom tells me that the guy wasn't really charging prices. She said they had given him some drinks and he was putting random numbers into the register. At the time (I think I was 8) we had no clue when we woke up Christmas morning what had happened the night before. When we returned home Santa had been there too and left more presents. lol. My mom said she used some of the presents at the house for birthday gifts all year. I'd say this is my favorite story.
Some great memories there. Even the ""bad things" become cherished times to look back on in the future. That's what "memories" are to me.

We have had a lot of car adventures too. Transmission died on Christmas eve one year about an hour from my grandparents house. Another time my dad had made a little house on wheels so that there would be more room for packing. It was fun to get people's reaction when we passed on the road. Well about 12 miles from our destination all the sudden we feel shaking in the back of the car and barking noises. The axle had come unhinged from the car. We were lucky that our dogs were o.k. My uncle had to come get us and get the dog house towed. It sat in KY for many years.