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Everyone who travels has stories of vacations gone bad. Sometimes it’s missed, delayed or cancelled flights and being stranded for days on end (I’m looking at you, people who got stuck in Southwest Airlines’ meltdown last Christmas). Maybe you got robbed by one of the people these heroes warn visitors about. And I bet every Maui tourist who safely escaped the blaze in Lahaina a couple of weeks ago will forever consider that to be their worst vacation ever.
If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you may remember our friends who got stuck on a cruise ship in the middle of nowhere in the Indian Ocean, where they were running out of food, with no port willing to take them, during the earliest days of Covid.
Us? When Joe and I were on a Disney Cruise in Alaska in the spring of 2011, we received a phone call a couple of days into our cruise that Joe’s mom had passed away. That would probably go down as our worst vacation ever, for obvious reasons.
So yeah, everyone’s got a story. Some are tragic. Some almost were. Some were probably just really annoying things they hope they never have to go through again.
Which brings us to a question someone asked on Reddit about a month ago:
What’s the worst thing to happen to you on vacation?
Last week. Me and my parents took a highly anticipated week-long trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We had a great trip, but halfway though the week, I was up all night in the worst pain of my life. I couldn’t sleep, was crying, groaning in pain, and pacing. I had a terrible toothache from a filling I got a few years ago that I think was worsened by the elevation change that I’m not used to back home. We ended up wasting an entire day in the Tetons because I ended up needing a root canal to relieve my tooth pain. Yes, I had to spend most of the day at the dentist getting a root canal on vacation. 0/10 would not recommend. In my case, it’s probably the worst thing to happen on a vacation yet. What about you? — kgaviation
They got nearly 1,500 replies; here are some of the best (well, worst) ones:
- I got detained at a border crossing and then quarantined in an Ebola hospital in Tanzania on suspicion of having Ebola. Spoiler alert: I didn’t.
So Ebola had just been declared a public health emergency in nearby Democratic Republic of Congo and border agents at the Kenya-Tanzania crossing were taking people’s temperatures as a precaution. Guess whose passport confirmed they had recently been to Congo… and who was apparently running a slight fever that day? Lucky me! Had to sit for hours in a room by myself while people outside phoned the US Embassy and the health department asking what to do with me, then was transported in an ambulance (repurposed 80s station wagon with bloodstains on the floor) an hour away to the facility. Now this facility was not technically finished being constructed and as its very first patient they had to find a bed in town and bring it into the empty building for me. Men in full hazmat suits drew my blood and sprayed sterilizer on the floor everywhere I had walked and then left me in the building alone overnight while I awaited the test results. In the morning they confirmed I wasn’t infected and everyone was very apologetic and wanted to take photos with me.
Edit: some of my pics here — SPACEC0YOTE - My husband and I went to New York on our first vacation as a couple, arriving on September 10, 2001. We went to the Financial District that night but we were too late to ride up the elevator to get the view from the top of the towers. We watched them fall with our friends in Bayonne NJ the next morning. — Zatopa
- A guy I bought a car from (Frank) – him, girlfriend and a 2nd couple were driving from the airport to their hotel in the hills in Barbados, I believe.
Brakes failed, car careened down the hill. the other 3 were fine but Frank was pretty severely injured, ended up being air lifted to Miami.
During full body scans (MRI? CAT scan? i dunno) they discovered he had Kidney Cancer – Stage 1.
At the time (early 2000s) there was no early detection test (I don’t think there is, still, but i’m not an MD), so the car accident ended up saving his life! — stacey1771 - During out vacation in Sardegnia, during a long trip from one hotel to another, we stopped at this tourist attraction. We arrive at our destination at our hotel and naturally, the receptionist asked for our passports. Guess what? We couldnt find them. We had no photos of them on our phones. We spent more than half an hour looking for them in our luggage and rental car. I had seen them earlier that day. Mom and dad panicked and my mom had a breakdown. We called up to this tourist attraction to see if they found them, as well as the previos hotel, but to no avail. The receptionist I think even called the police. The receptionist still gave us the rooms, and after more than another hour of searching and panicking, we find them in my mom’s laptop case. What a relief! — LivingLifeThing
- Stayed in a bedbug infested hotel room. Apparently I am REALLY reactive to bites and I had hundreds of painful sores. Nobody else in my family ever showed a mark but I ended up looking like I had smallpox and people at the sights on our trip really gave me a wide berth. — mumblemurmurblahblah
- Coming back from Greece, I started getting sick on the plane, and barely made it off at my layover in Germany before I started throwing up. Somewhere in the airport, I also noticed my makeup bag was gone out of my carryon. It had my luggage key in it. I struggled to the hotel, where I experienced a violent, 12 hour stomach flu. I still couldnt get into my luggage, but I did not honestly care because I wanted to die. The next day, I headed back to the airport in my only clean clothes, (which were my pjs), makeup free, looking exactly like I had been throwing my guts up. Then security picked my luggage to search, which I still could not open, so I had to check it for a ridiculous additional price. I made it home in my pajamas, looking like hell, to find that my luggage did NOT arrive with me, and my car wouldn’t start. Zero stars. Would not recommend. — nikils
- This is an easy one. Friday June 18th, 2004, the day before our 5th wedding anniversary. We were in Disney World with my in-laws for the week. This was our last full day there. Wife was about 6-7 weeks pregnant. It was going to be our first. Early in the morning she started spotting. Later on it got heavier and early afternoon contractions started. She miscarried in a hotel room in Pop Century resort. We cried and comforted each other. Then we got cleaned up and went to dinner and Magic Kingdom with her parents trying to salvage what was left of the night.
The silver lining is that we waited almost a year to try again and had no issues. He’s now 17 years old and just started his senior year in high school. — stantheman1976 - Went to Florida and got severe swimmers ear in both ears. Completely deaf and in excruciating pain. I didn’t eat for 3 days and just stayed in bed. Mom said I ruined the vacation.
She took me to urgent care where the guy lectured me about my weight while I was groaning in pain holding my ears. After day 4 my mom took me to the ER where they scolded me for coming in for an ear infection. The Doctor looked in my ear and gasped saying this could spread to her brain very soon.
They gave me some strong med to fight it that I found out I was allergic to when I went into cardiac arrest. After being resuscitated I zpent 30 hours on a drip antibiotic then went home feeling so much better. — Pool_Admirable - Husband (now ex) and I were slipped roofies in our drinks at a beach bar in St Martin. My ex wandered off back to the hotel we were staying in and left me with a male stranger who I’m certain was the one who drugged me. I am out of my mind and this guy and I start making out! Cut to : a couple from Minnesota who had been watching the whole scenario unfold came to my rescue and was like let’s get you back to your hotel. I was able to tell them where I was staying and they got me safely returned. When I came to the next morning, belongings were missing from my bag but at least I was alive. I think about that a lot and wonder how I would have ended up if those Minnesotans hadn’t intervened. Shout out to them. — yelloweyedsurprise
- A stupid accident on the M-4 to LHR made me miss my flight, my boss threatened to fire me if I didn’t make it to work at 8 a.m. on Monday.
I had to get very creative with the routing, bought a new ticket with a connection in EWR to LAX, then the flight came in late, making me miss my connection. Flying out the next day was absolutely out of the question.
Managed to find a late flight to Vegas that left at 9 p.m. and arrived in Vegas around midnight. The only car they had was an overpriced and tiny Geo Metro convertible. $129 a day. A compact would have been $25 a day, luxury for maybe $60, but Geo Metro? C’mon.
Left Vegas at around 2 in the morning, made it to work at 8:00 a.m. wearing the same clothes from London.
Didn’t get fired. — DoneTraveling - My little brother almost got kidnapped on vacation to Gatlinburg, TN in 2010. I was around age 13, making my brother 10 at the time. We were on vacation with our grandparents and were walking about 5 feet behind them on the street. A man came up to my brother and put his hands on his shoulders and started to pull him away before I grabbed my brother’s hand and pulled him in my direction and called for our Grandad. The man didn’t let up until my Grandad heard me call for him and started coming our way. He had ahold of my brother’s shoulders so hard that he left bruises and I’m sure that if I wasn’t paying attention, he would’ve picked my brother up and ran with him. SOOO scary. — notreallykatie
- On vacation in Hawaii in January 2018 when we were awoken by our phones blasting a warning that there was an incoming missile and it was not a drill. Spent a few hours trying to figure out if it was true but there was little to no information that was credible on twitter and other sites. The hotel had an intercom system where they were giving us instructions to stay inside the bathroom while we were frantically making phone calls to loved ones.
Was very real and very scary for what felt like forever. After it was confirmed that it was all a mistake, I crashed super hard and took the deepest nap on the beach from all the adrenaline wearing off. — kellyfunk
- I found out my brother died 2 minutes after getting through customs in Cabo for a bachelor party I was the best man for and planned. Had to find a flight back to Chicago immediately.
Chicago was having a terrible snowstorm and we circled midway airport for an hour waiting for a clear window to land. I then had to explain to the American customs why I had stopped in Mexico for under an hour and came back. I then had to wait another 90 minutes to try to get a cab (none were available readily due to the snowstorm). In total I spent about 18 hours traveling that day.
The worst part was all the reservations I had booked for the group (a total of 12 guys) were under my name with my credit card down. So I was trying to coordinate both a funeral and make sure my friends who were still in Mexico made it to their reservations so i wouldn’t get charged no show fees. — Recent-Sentence2900 - A scorpion stung me while I was in Mexico when I was 9. We were in a remote area with no hospital nearby. I almost died.
I didn’t even know what stung me at first, just reached my hand into a couch cushion and felt a sharp pain. A few minutes later I was having trouble breathing. Someone from the resort drove us to the nearest town about 30 mins away. The clinic was closed, so they knocked on doors until they found out where the doctor lived and woke him up. He opened the clinic and hooked me up to an IV. I was unconscious by then.
That was the first night of the vacation. I recovered, but it definitely put a damper on the rest of the trip. — TheDarkGoblin39 - I was laid off on my first day of an already-planned vacation after being heavily recruited to work at a startup, six weeks after my first day there.
I left a cushy job as a principal level software developer and respected subject-matter expert at one of the largest tech companies at that time for a small startup with 3 full time employees and 2 marketing contractors. The startup CEO and CTO assured me throughout the interview they definitely secured $5,000,000 to get the business to the next level. Spoiler alert: they did not secure $5,000,000. — kingmakerkeys
- I went on a 4-day cruise to celebrate my mom’s birthday. Got excellent rates out of Galveston – it was cheaper than a B&B in Fredericksburg! The trip was great until we awoke on the last day at sea to weird announcements over the intercom system.
Turns out, there was a fire in the engine room, which ended up disabling our ship, leaving only emergency power. So we’re on a floating barge in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. It took the cruise line so long to figure out what to do that we ended up drifting so far east that their plans had to change.
They sent two tugboats from Mexico and started… pushing? our cruise liner to the US. Other cruise ships would stop and give us supplies and we could get wifi signals from them to contact everyone back home. But it was too dangerous to get us off the ship in the middle of the Gulf, so we just waited to get back to shore.
Meanwhile, passengers were going NUTS. The first day or so, food was meager, so people started hoarding, which meant even LESS for everyone else. There was luckily enough power to run the kitchens (and the dishwashers!) so the food situation improved, but we had some weird sandwiches in the meantime.
We had a balcony room, so even without power, we were pretty comfortable. We’d prop open the balcony door and our room door, and the breeze kept us cool. But there were tons of people camping outside on lounge chairs because they couldn’t stay in their rooms.
The worst part for me was the bathroom situation. The toilets would work for a while, but they would back up quickly. They ended up telling us to go #2 in hazmat bags and… leave it outside our cabin door. I made it three days before I finally had to give in and use a bag. My friends and my mom cheered when I came out of the bathroom, and I proclaimed that I would never be going camping lol
Everyone had been making fun of me for how much reading material I’d brought, but they were thanking me for having such a variety by the time we were done!
When we returned to port (in Mississippi, in a shut-down cruise facility), I got my 15 minutes of fame for the one tweet/Facebook post I managed to get out, that I had used to tell everyone in my life that we were marooned. I was on CNN a couple times, the Today Show and several podcasts.
The total time at sea was 5 or 6 days? And upon returning home, I immediately got vertigo, from being slightly tilted for the past week (the boat couldn’t right itself properly). And our shuttle bus to NOLA broke down in the middle of the night and they needed to send another to pick us up. — square_donut14
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