What dramas have you had on Vacation?

[superme80]

Nothing as crazy as most of you. Worst as a kid was constant fighting with my sister on a 2 week trip to England and Wales. I ended up punching her, and she finally left me alone.
Worst as a family was Disneyland 2015. DH was off his anxiety meds and it was one giant panic attack for the entire trip. 2018 was my make up trip.

 

[Kittyblue]

I got burned so bad on my shoulders in Mexico I blistered and couldn't wear a bra for several days. I was grateful I didn't know anyone there. Looking back, I'm also grateful I was in still my 20s

 

[low-key]

We went on a family vacation to Cali when I was like 11,, we drove, when we were about 1 hour from being back home my dad for some god awful reason, siad lets stop and eat, we were at some restiruant, they were so slow, we all wanted to get home, I got spaghetti, when it finally come, it was so watery, it was like pasta in red sauce, I just broke down and ugly cried, then my sister and mom started ugly crying,and so my dad just paid the bill and took us home

 

[kanerf]

weren't the 80's great ????

I was a 60s kid myself and on weekends and school holidays I would disappear from the house and hang with friends until dinner time. No cell phones, no way to tell where I was. It was on an Army base, so fairly safe. These days a kid can't walk to the park without their parents being arrested.

 

[TLSnell1981]

We arrived at the Prague train station a little early due to weather conditions. MIL had Alzheimers and we tried to keep things drama free. I knew the situation was serious when I saw ALL trains running hours behind schedule. SIL told me not to worry..."probably happens all the time." Um no...it doesn't. Light ice had shut down the entire railway system in the Czech Republic. I was told they would only run 'important' routes for a few days. I called our previous hotel...asked them for accommodations and to please send a car. Our driver jokingly told us he would drive us to Vienna. I looked over and asked him how much. I spent most of the night on the phone with AMEX for help with nonrefundable tickets. We hired the car...five passengers with two pieces of luggage each. Somehow it all worked out.

 

[rigs32]

#1 - It's only because of the over abundance of Starbucks in Seattle that I didn't get shot.

Went to Seattle in the spring of 1999 with my then boyfriend. He wanted to grab a cup of coffee from Starbucks before heading back to the hotel. We see one two blocks north and walk across the street. I see that there's another a half block west, so we stop and wait to cross the other way. As we wait, a car flies through the intersection at rush hour and several cop cars follow him through. We realize this is bad. As the car passes us, the passenger sticks his hand out the window and he's holding a gun. The gun fires. We run around the building to hide and the gun fires a few more times. Thankfully no one got hit, but we would have been in much more danger had we continued walking north.

#2 - A beach trip broke up a marriage.

A huge group of us booked a beach house in SC. On night one there was some minor infidelity between a married person and an engaged person. The married couple broke up for good two days later. Kinda put a damper on the rest of the trip, but my SO and I did our own thing much of the week to stay out of it.

 

[bjscheel]

Nothing too major. Once we took Amtrak from Iowa to Colorado, but due to flooding in Iowa, they weren't running trains back east. We had to ride a bus with a/c blasting overnight through Nebraska, stopping at every dink Amtrak station in case anyone were to get on or off- they didn't. So no zipping through on I-80. Amtrak left us in Omaha to find our own way home from there.

One WDW trip several events conspired to deprive me of sleep. I think the first night was the Pulse shooting. Another night I didn't feel well. One night was when the little boy was attacked by an alligator and we could see the helicopters from our window which all made me so anxious. Younger DD got a bad cold so when she was snoring I couldn't sleep and when she wasn't I would think she'd stopped breathing so couldn't sleep then either.

 

[VandVsmama]

I've got 1 more. About 2 years ago, DH thought it would be a good idea to take his mother with us to Disneyland. We drove from AZ to Anaheim. 6 hours in the car with Grandma. Help me, God. Stayed at one of those awesome little motels directly across the street. Made sure that Grandma rented a scooter ahead of time and had it delivered to the hotel.

We learned on that trip that if you're too blind to drive a car anymore, then you're also too blind to drive a scooter. On that trip, some of the insane antics included:

1. Grandma running over ODD's foot and then laughing when we told her about it.
2. Grandma stealing some other old lady's scooter and then laughing about it.
3. Grandma's deaf enough now that she needs hearing aids but is also too cheap to get any, so we had to shout at her the entire time. Many times, we'd shout directions to her on where we were headed next. She'd nod and acknowledge that she understood and then jet off in that damn scooter as fast as can be in the opposite direction.
4. Grandma taking almost 30 minutes in the bathroom every time she had to go potty. It took her so long that YDD started saying, "What's Grandma doing in there anyway, having a pool party or something?" Now sometimes when 1 of us has to use the bathroom, we'll say "I'm gonna go have a pool party now."
5. Grandma lost her ID months before the trip, but didn't tell DH about it until 2 days before we were supposed to check into the hotel. Not enough time to get a new ID. Hotel required a permanent ID, not a temporary one. Because she lost her ID, now she also couldn't pay for her room with her credit card, because doing so required a valid ID. So we had to transfer the reservation to our credit card and DH took her to the bank the day before the trip so she could get out a big wad of cash to pay for the room in cash.
6. And the entire reason for the damn trip? Because Grandma wanted to eat at the Blue Bayou. Our immediate family couldn't afford the Blue Bayou on that trip. Grandma didn't offer to treat us. So just DH & Grandma ate lunch at the frickin' Blue Bayou while the kids and I had QS lunch at the French Market (which was lovely, by the way, I just love the food there and the atmosphere). And what gets even better...Grandma didn't even offer to treat DH for lunch. DH bought Grandma's meal.
7. Not once the entire time did Grandma ever offer to treat ODD or YDD to anything. Not even a stinking Mickey ice cream bar or a bottle of water. But later on, *I* was blamed by her for Grandma not getting enough time to shop for herself in all of the Disneyland stores around the park. Of course, she didn't say a darn thing about wanting to shop more.

That was a 'one and done.' Never again are we taking Grandma there. Ever.

 

[ShirikiUtundu]

When we went to Australia - there were a few dramatic things that we laugh about now:
One hotel we stayed at was very, uh, rustic, but we could have made do for a week or so except for the ENORMOUS gecko running around/living in the bathroom. That was pretty much a dealbreaker for me. We moved to another hotel. We took a boat ride out to the Great Barrier Reef to snorkel and scuba dive. The ocean was extremely rough that day and before I knew it, I was vomiting so much that a couple crew members had to pick me up and haul me out to the deck because I couldn't take my head out of the bag, and when I got the deck my partner was having the same issue. Finally, we stayed at a super fancy glamping place so I guess my partner took a video of the room when we first got there. I was so out of it from sheer travel exhaustion I was just trying to get myself together a little bit before the next event. So several days later we were flying home my partner says oh here's the video of the room I put on youtube for the family to watch, and there I am, in the background, getting undressed. I could not stop laughing and he was like OMG I never even noticed that.

 

[Praying Colonel]

In September DW and I were in Perdido Key, FL when Hurricane Sally veered east and a Hurricane Warning was declared for our area. We didn't take all out stuff out of the condo--huge mistake.

We bugged out and spent 3 days in central Florida then drove back to the panhandle, hoping we'd be able to get back in. Luckily we were able to, but we just as easily could've lost some valuable stuff because we didn't take an extra hour to get all our stuff when we left.

 

[starry_solo]

I've got 1 more. About 2 years ago, DH thought it would be a good idea to take his mother with us to Disneyland. We drove from AZ to Anaheim. 6 hours in the car with Grandma. Help me, God. Stayed at one of those awesome little motels directly across the street. Made sure that Grandma rented a scooter ahead of time and had it delivered to the hotel.

We learned on that trip that if you're too blind to drive a car anymore, then you're also too blind to drive a scooter. On that trip, some of the insane antics included:

1. Grandma running over ODD's foot and then laughing when we told her about it.
2. Grandma stealing some other old lady's scooter and then laughing about it.
3. Grandma's deaf enough now that she needs hearing aids but is also too cheap to get any, so we had to shout at her the entire time. Many times, we'd shout directions to her on where we were headed next. She'd nod and acknowledge that she understood and then jet off in that damn scooter as fast as can be in the opposite direction.
4. Grandma taking almost 30 minutes in the bathroom every time she had to go potty. It took her so long that YDD started saying, "What's Grandma doing in there anyway, having a pool party or something?" Now sometimes when 1 of us has to use the bathroom, we'll say "I'm gonna go have a pool party now."
5. Grandma lost her ID months before the trip, but didn't tell DH about it until 2 days before we were supposed to check into the hotel. Not enough time to get a new ID. Hotel required a permanent ID, not a temporary one. Because she lost her ID, now she also couldn't pay for her room with her credit card, because doing so required a valid ID. So we had to transfer the reservation to our credit card and DH took her to the bank the day before the trip so she could get out a big wad of cash to pay for the room in cash.
6. And the entire reason for the damn trip? Because Grandma wanted to eat at the Blue Bayou. Our immediate family couldn't afford the Blue Bayou on that trip. Grandma didn't offer to treat us. So just DH & Grandma ate lunch at the frickin' Blue Bayou while the kids and I had QS lunch at the French Market (which was lovely, by the way, I just love the food there and the atmosphere). And what gets even better...Grandma didn't even offer to treat DH for lunch. DH bought Grandma's meal.
7. Not once the entire time did Grandma ever offer to treat ODD or YDD to anything. Not even a stinking Mickey ice cream bar or a bottle of water. But later on, *I* was blamed by her for Grandma not getting enough time to shop for herself in all of the Disneyland stores around the park. Of course, she didn't say a darn thing about wanting to shop more.

That was a 'one and done.' Never again are we taking Grandma there. Ever.

I remember that trip report!

 

[Deb & Bill]

I got run over by a llama at the children's zoo. It hit me from behind and I went down hard.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

I've got 1 more. About 2 years ago, DH thought it would be a good idea to take his mother with us to Disneyland. We drove from AZ to Anaheim. 6 hours in the car with Grandma. Help me, God. Stayed at one of those awesome little motels directly across the street. Made sure that Grandma rented a scooter ahead of time and had it delivered to the hotel.

We learned on that trip that if you're too blind to drive a car anymore, then you're also too blind to drive a scooter. On that trip, some of the insane antics included:

1. Grandma running over ODD's foot and then laughing when we told her about it.
2. Grandma stealing some other old lady's scooter and then laughing about it.
3. Grandma's deaf enough now that she needs hearing aids but is also too cheap to get any, so we had to shout at her the entire time. Many times, we'd shout directions to her on where we were headed next. She'd nod and acknowledge that she understood and then jet off in that damn scooter as fast as can be in the opposite direction.
4. Grandma taking almost 30 minutes in the bathroom every time she had to go potty. It took her so long that YDD started saying, "What's Grandma doing in there anyway, having a pool party or something?" Now sometimes when 1 of us has to use the bathroom, we'll say "I'm gonna go have a pool party now."
5. Grandma lost her ID months before the trip, but didn't tell DH about it until 2 days before we were supposed to check into the hotel. Not enough time to get a new ID. Hotel required a permanent ID, not a temporary one. Because she lost her ID, now she also couldn't pay for her room with her credit card, because doing so required a valid ID. So we had to transfer the reservation to our credit card and DH took her to the bank the day before the trip so she could get out a big wad of cash to pay for the room in cash.
6. And the entire reason for the damn trip? Because Grandma wanted to eat at the Blue Bayou. Our immediate family couldn't afford the Blue Bayou on that trip. Grandma didn't offer to treat us. So just DH & Grandma ate lunch at the frickin' Blue Bayou while the kids and I had QS lunch at the French Market (which was lovely, by the way, I just love the food there and the atmosphere). And what gets even better...Grandma didn't even offer to treat DH for lunch. DH bought Grandma's meal.
7. Not once the entire time did Grandma ever offer to treat ODD or YDD to anything. Not even a stinking Mickey ice cream bar or a bottle of water. But later on, *I* was blamed by her for Grandma not getting enough time to shop for herself in all of the Disneyland stores around the park. Of course, she didn't say a darn thing about wanting to shop more.

That was a 'one and done.' Never again are we taking Grandma there. Ever.

8. Grandma on the way back to Arizona

 

[VandVsmama]

8. Grandma on the way back to Arizona
View attachment 541583

Also on that trip, for some reason, Grandma decided that she had to bring THE world's largest purse with her into the park each day. I mean, that thing was so large that you could have fit a toddler inside it. And she'd loop it through the handle bars of the scooter. She hardly had anything IN the purse, but you could have smuggled a small person in the purse if you wanted to.

And since Grandma has a pace maker, she couldn't go through the metal detector, so Security had to hand pat her down every time. This took forever because we went in March that year and it was chilly, so she had on 2 jackets. And had to take 1 of them off. Then she had to get the person-sized purse out from the scooter and have that searched. The entire process took 15-20 minutes every time.

And we took afternoon breaks at the hotel each day. So 2 rounds of this every day. By the morning of day 2, YDD said to me while the kids & I were waiting for DH & Grandma to get through being searched, "Mama, we're THAT family, aren't we?" Yes, child, we are. LOL!

And, of course, DH and Security had to shout at her the entire time because she couldn't hear what they were telling her to do.

Then on the drive back home, DH blurted out, "Hey Mom, do you want to go again next year?" OMG, WHAT THE HECK DID YOU JUST SAY? Of course, Grandma said yes. The kids & I were horrified. Once we got home and I got DH away from everybody else for a private conversation, I told him, "Next time before you make an announcement like that, run it by me first. You're welcome to take your mom again to DL next year if you want, but the kids and I will NOT be going with you. Never. Again."

 

[BrianL]

One "vacation drama" we had was when my mom took us to WDW. My sister was in her late teens and she was notoriously slow to get ready. It was our first day and we were all ready to go but she wanted to shave her legs - that's like a hour long process for her and we all knew it. This of course led to an argument and eventually he deciding to wear long pants - in Orlando, during June. She was just determined to have a miserable time and make us miserable too. But, here's the thing - we get to Magic Kingdom, absorb the sites and get in line for our first ride (20,000 Leagues I believe) and all the attitude just melted away into happiness and laughter. The magic cannot be denied!

 

[whatever789]

So much what I see as unnecessary drama. Splitting up and not being smart enough to have a phone on you or a meet up spot and time. Complaining about long lines. Arguing over what to do and when to do it. Arguing when you're late for something, cause fighting about being late isn't going to make it better. Arguing about a person being on their phone or using a TV to get to sleep because the noise helps them to fall asleep. Arguing and blaming someone for everything that goes wrong and arguing because you want to stop and take a photo of and with every square inch of a location, but the other person wants to keep on moving.

 

[disneyseniors]

I;ve got one I've written about before, so if you've read it once, just skip it

When the grandkids were little, we went on a family trip to WDW with my daughter(who recently lost her beloved husband), her 2 little ones ages 3 and 5, my son and his daughter age 7.
My daughter was especially nervous about "losing" her youngest son, and made us all promise to hold his hand when she wasn't doing it. He was stuck to her like glue most times.
Well, we stayed off site at a great hotel. Can't remember the name of it, but it had a small railroad which the kids could ride outside. All of it was suited for kids and disney, including the decorations in our rooms. The restaurant was right across the lobby from the game room. Each morning we would meet in the restaurant and plan our day, which park to go to. You could do that back then. It wasn't such a big deal as it is now with fp's and adr's. You just picked your park and went, ate where you wanted, and we rode everything without getting there at rope drop!
Well, the older kids wanted to go play in the game room, so off they went and we could easily see them from our table. My daughter, in a complete panic, yells, "Where is Joe?????" Looking around and scared. We all just looked at her and said, " He's right there on your lap". She looked down in her panic and yep, there he was, the adorable 3 y/o was on her lap the whole time.
We have never let her forget it either, LOL.
That was a great family trip, even with our daughter who was, understandably, overly nervous about losing her kids in WDW, even with all of us helping her.

 

[crazylady]

The frst time I flew by myself I was in HS. My first flight was delayed and when i got off the plane in Philly, the attended asked where I was going and I said Hartford instead of Concord. I had to go down the steps and shuttle to the other terminal and got all the way there before I realized my mistake and that I needed to be in the first terminal. Of course I missed the.connecting flight.

 

[DL55]

Spring of 2019 (seems like a lifetime ago. LOL) went on a river cruise. Everything was fine until we headed home. First plane ended up 6 hours late. DH and I almost missed it as we had wondered off and the PA system was awful. So we knew we missed our connection even before we left. Half way through the flight there was a medical emergency! So we land in Iceland. Note: I've been told Iceland is fascinating but sure isn't at the airport. We sat there for a couple of hours, people walking about like a cocktail party. It felt so strange to see people just walking about the plane. We land in Toronto and stay overnight. We eventually get home only a day later.

As a child we were camping in the Sierras in a canyon with only one road that ended at the lake. One day a fire started near the entrance. I remember my parents trying to decide where they can go to stand in the lake if necessary. Turned out not necessary as the fire was put out.

 

[Moliphino]

My oldest sister and my parents came to Paris with me for my 30th birthday. We did DLP first, then took the RER into the city. When transferring from the RER to the metro to get to our hotel, I got on first and the doors immediately shut behind me before anyone else could get on. Thankfully my sister was bringing up the rear and was with the parents, because neither of them had any clue where we were going, but my sister was at least mostly sure what stop to get off at. I had a tense couple minutes waiting at our stop unsure if they would make it.