Gone Fishing
Ted Hastings thought his colicky baby would be the most stressful part of a trek with his wife from Waterloo, Canada to a lakeside cottage in Ontario—and he couldn't wait to break in his brand new Audi A4.
But when the family arrived, things took a foreboding turn. As Ted later told The Loop, “My wife’s last words to me as I parked the car in what appeared to be a reasonable place were, 'Are you sure we should park this close to the lake?'"
Later that night, the Hastings were awoken by a fellow vacationer, whose barking dog alerted him to a mysterious floating object in the lake: their brand new Audi. It was sailing by with its alarm blaring—not to mention a baby stroller, car seat, and Ted's golf clubs trapped inside.
It took a crane, a tow truck and another trip to the Audi dealership to rectify the situation … but we bet Ted will never forget to put that emergency brake on again.
Earth, Wind and Fire
When Swedish newlyweds Stefan and Erika Svanstrom set off on a four-month honeymoon with their infant daughter, they were expecting an adventure. But narrowly escaping SIX natural disasters along the way? Not what they had in mind.
The travel-loving duo left Sweden in December, 2010. As soon as they boarded their first flight, a huge snowstorm swept Europe, grounded flights and left them stranded at the airport.
A month later, they were met with monsoon rains in Bali and devastating brush fires in Perth, Australia. Then a trip to nearby Cairns forced them to evacuate their hostel when it was found to be in the path of a category 5 cyclone.
From there, it was off to Brisbane, where massive flooding found them, and finally New Zealand—just in time for a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Quite the finale.
Family Ties
When former Jezebel writer Anna North was 12, her family took a complicated trip to upstate New York that almost never happened. The family was leaving from two different locales—Anna, her brother, and father were taking off from L.A., while her mother was leaving from St. Louis after a family event. Their plan was to meet up during a layover in Chicago, board a flight to Montreal and drive down from Canada through New York. (Got it?)
There was just one hiccup: A rash of recent high-profile kidnappings left airport attendants on high-alert, and Anna and her family were denied at the gate, for fear her dad was a kidnapper. According to the agents, this could be rectified if the children's mother gave her consent and/or their original birth certificates were presented. But alas, neither of those options were current possibilities.
With no amount of pleading or bribery working, the threesome was forced to go home, and return the next day with birth certificates in-hand. The one spot of luck? Their mother had been denied at the gate in St. Louis, too—so they didn't have to worry about her arriving in Chicago with no family to be found. (After all, these were pre-cell phone days, aka primitive times.)
Photo via Vox Efx/flickr
The Not-So-Great Escape
During iVillage reader Alison's trip to Hershey Park, things first kicked into high-gear when the family car died "a blazing death" along the highway. Two crying kids and one tow truck later, the family was packed in a rental. Unfortunately, that's also when stormclouds rolled in, thunderstorms began, and the kids started crying again.
The misery didn't end there. Once the family reached their hotel, they realized their room was right next to eight of their irritating neighbors from home—people they were trying to avoid with the trip. But when Alison's 2-year-old experienced an intense allergic reaction to the hotel bed sheets, there was only one option for sleeping arrangements that night: the backseat of their rental car. By then, the fact that their neighbors were in such close proximity was but a harmless detail.
Trip of Doom
Ben Hatch, a father and the author of Are We Nearly There Yet? booked a lodge in Northumberland (in the UK) hoping to have a nice family retreat, but the trip was pretty much doomed from the start. As he told The Guardian, it began on the drive up: "Taking a 'nature wee', our daughter was nearly blown up in a field of live ordinance."(American translation: Bombs. Live bombs.)
Upon arrival, whispers of snakes on the loose in the area left Hatch's young son so fearful that the poor guy slept nightly in his slippers. In a cruel twist, it was actually bats that invaded the family's lodge and circled overhead as they slept.
Finally, It all ended in a trip to the emergency room, when Hatch's daughter tripped and bit right through her lip.
An Expensive Movie
Every parent uses the old TV babysitter at times. But the Gibsons'—of Weyborn, Canada—attempt to keep the kids entertained on a trip to Arizona last year cost them $10,600.
Setting his kids up with a laptop and wireless card, dad Jason let them stream Netflix movies like Curious George and Shrek. His one tragic mistake? Not realizing that roaming charges would apply. According to ABC News, just one viewing of Spider-Man required a download of 400 megabytes—at $6 a pop. Ooof.
The oversight wasn't noticed until later, when the bill came in the mail and Jason's jaw "hit the floor." The good news is, the Gibson’s Internet service provider, SaskTel, agreed to knock off a whopping $9,600 from the balance. Still, dropping a grand on a couple of kids’ movies is a tough pill to swallow.
An Epic Misdiagnosis
When 17-year-old Bruce Bush and his family took their first vacation to Hawaii, they immediately fell in love with the island. But, as he later told CNN, his stay in paradise was plagued by a nagging sickness that left him mysteriously ill for much of the trip.
Finally, three days before the family was due to leave, Bruce wound up in a Waikiki hospital. The diagnosis? Cancer.
While this sort of revelation would leave most parents in hysterics, a gut feeling kept Bruce's folks from taking the diagnosis as the final word. They refused treatment and instead decided to seek a second opinion back home.
Turns out Bruce's parents had some killer instincts: A doctor found it wasn't cancer after all, but rather a nasty case of mononucleosis. … Talk about a close one.
Photo via skyseeker/Flickr
A Comedy of Errors
Feeling stressed and disconnected, Aaron and Karel Treister booked a trip to one of their favorite vacation spots in Maine for some R&R. But this trip, there was one difference: They now had two unpredictable kids in tow. As Aaron later wrote in Redbook, the newbie parents hadn't anticipated a toddler meltdown of epic proportions, which came on fast and furious, and prompted them to go home.
On the long drive back, the couple was caught in a downpour, during which their son suddenly announced his sister was "covered in green." Spinning around, Aaron and Karel soon discovered an enormous diaper explosion had just occurred in their backseat, courtesy of their daughter.
While the rest of the trip was spent battling traffic and terrible weather, it was clear that the real low-point of it all was the time Aaron spent cleaning out the car.
Six Days of Torture
As told to the Boston Parents Paper, Massachusetts mom Jo Hannah Katz's family trip to New Hampshire looked a little something like this:
Day 1: 9-year-old daughter discovers Epi-Pen and stabs herself straight through the thumb. 30-minute drive to the E.R., with a return time of 2 a.m.
Day 2: 16-year-old daughter slips on stairs, breaking ankle, requiring crutches, and is in desperate need of an orthopedist.
Day 3: Son loses prized video game. Drama ensues.
Day 4: Previously mentioned son also learns that cell phones are ruined by water.
Day 6: The car battery has died overnight. Thirty minutes spent waiting for AAA are followed by getting locked out of the house and missing a previously planned boat ride.
Totally. Pooped.
Few people appreciate a truly good vacation disaster more than British comedian and writer Emma Kennedy, who chronicled her own hilarious family travel tales in the book The Tent, The Bucket and Me.
One standout trip? A childhood getaway to France, during which she was vomited on by a fellow ferry rider. And as if that wasn't disturbingly gross enough, a trip to the bathroom to clean her up only led to further disaster when her young self accidentally toppled right into a nearby squat toilet. As Kennedy later told BBC News, "[My parents] had to wrap me in a bin bag, take me to a garage forecourt and hose me down."
