Any of you have any vacation horror stories you’d like to share?
Here’s the rules:
- Keep it brief.
- Keep it sorta light (please no stories about waking up next to a friend who died in his sleep).
- Keep it true.
Here’s two examples (sort of) from my life:
1. About 5 years ago my wife and I went to Cancun with our friends Matt and Kendra. I started to feel sick the day before, and had already been dealing with a sore back for the month prior to leaving. 3 days into the vacation I had full blown strep throat but didn’t know it yet, and the infection attacked my sore back to the point where i could barely move. That afternoon I laid down on the bed for a minute and my back seized up. I couldn’t move, and wasn’t found until 45 minutes later when Erica came looking for me. I had to pay $75 to see the Nurse at the resort, who shot muscle relaxants into my butt (ouch) and suggested I buy some amoxicillin at the gift shop. Thanks to Senorita Needle, I was able to enjoy the last few days of vacation.
2. Back when my wife Erica was in high school, her parents left her and her older brother Chad alone overnight for the first time. (I think they were skiing in New England scuba diving in North Carolina over a long weekend). Well, in the evening of the first night Erica was crossing a busy street with some friends and her ankle got clipped by a car. She took a nasty spill and suffered a concussion (she doesn’t remember any of it, but the doctor told her later she had asphalt in her teeth). Needless to say, my in-law’s vacation was a bit ruined when they got the news that their daughter was in the hospital…though thankfully she was okay. Rumor has it that Chad still had a party at the house that night, even though his sister was laid out at Lancaster General Brandywine Hospital…though I could not confirm that report at the time of this printing.
What about you? Any quick vacation horror stories you can share with us?
Posted by Bryan AllainTags: Vacation Horror Stories
Last year on vacation, my dad was so relaxed by the 2nd or 3rd day that he went in to the ocean forgetting he had the car keys in his pocket. Now normally this would not be an issue, but the rental car keys were electric and shorted out. This meant they couldnt start the car and were stranded miles from the vacation house. Some hours and hundreds of dollars later, help came with a new key, and it was something they had to keep dealing with the rest of the vacation..quite hilarious to me now though in the moment it wasnt.
A few years ago my wife and I went to an all-inclusive resort in St. Lucia and I had to pay – PAY! – for a Sprite. The vacation was ruined at that very moment.
We were on our way out to Tennessee from Wyoming and made a stop in Denver to see the grandparents before we left. My grandma had an old skateboard that once belonged to my uncle. I thought I was cool and would show off. Ended up on my back, writhing in pain from a broken tailbone. ouch. I had to sit on four pillows, leaning forward with my head on the back of the driver’s seat for two very long days in the car.
A couple of years after my wife and I were married, we decided to take a late-season camping trip to Colorado. We drover overnight from Iowa, leaving the radio on the next morning to keep us awake as we drove up into the mountains. We listened to the live radio coverage as the twin towers went down. Yep, September 11 2001. We went ahead with the remainder of our trip, but it was a downer.
My entire extended family takes a vacation every year to South Carolina. In 2007 I was 8 months pregnant and caught a flu bug and couldn’t keep anything down for 2 days. Out of the approximate 60+ family/friends on vacation that week, about 20 people ended up with some form of the bug…some got it on the 16 hour drive home!
A couple years ago my wife and I were driving to visit a friend in Edmonton, Canada. We were making good time, and should have arrived by 7pm. That is, until we got a flat tire just outside a town 2.5 hours away. No problem right? I know how to change a flat. We didn’t have a full size spare, but we could limp back to town to get the other fixed. Except that the wheel was seized on. Again no problem, we’ll call CAA. Some nice cops had stopped to make sure we were safe. A 1/2 later a tow truck arrived. It was a new kid. I say kid because he was only a few months out of high school. He was unable to get the wheel off. So he decided to two us back into town. Town was 5 minutes away. Sounded good to us. Only he got stuck in a ditch trying to turn around. How you get a tow truck stuck it beyond me. He tried for another 1/2 hour, or more, to get the truck out before he called his boss, and I’m guessing he grossly undersold how stuck he was. In all his attempts to get the truck out of the mud it sunk in deeper. His tow truck was now axle deep. We waited another 45 minutes for the boss who showed up in his pick up truck. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as mad as that guy. Fortunately he was equipped to help us out. Not to two the truck out, because of the soft sell of the situation he only brought his pick up. However, he had the tools to get the wheel off. I think this may have been the kid’s last day on the tow truck. The whole ordeal, including getting a new tire, set us back five hours. It was a very long day. We arrived in Edmonton around 12:30am.
On our first trip to the Caymans after a wonderful week at the beach, we had a flight that was scheduled to land in Tampa FL. After circling the airport for 45 minutes due to severe thunderstorms on the ground(with horrible turbulence the whole time), we had to turn around and go to Miami because we were running out of fuel. After landing in Miami and refueling, our plane went back onto the runway and sat for over 2 hours waiting to go to Tampa, but the thunderstorms were still bad and they wouldn’t let us leave. Mind you, we had no lunch, only snacks, and I had a 3 year old and a 4 month old in tow (thank God for my husband and parents who were along). Another 2 hours later (over 4 waiting to see what would happen) they finally let us into the Miami airport (homeland security was giving us problems because we were a foreign flight not scheduled to land there). We couldn’t get any flights home and ended up having to board a Coach bus for a 4 hour long ride to the Tampa airport in the middle of the night, slept in the back room of Cayman Air at the Tampa airport, and finally made it home almost 24 hours later than we should have. My sister’s may be worse though..she was stuck in Cancun during a hurricane w/ her husband and 2 year old in a school room w/ 30 other people, no toilet (just a bucket in the corner), no water, and very little food for almost a week. She almost ran out of diapers, and had a very difficult time getting out of the country because there were so many people trying to get home too.
this isn’t really a horror story, but it was pretty crazy
my family went backpacking in europe. one night we caught a train from rome and was heading towards switzerland. we were really tired from all the walking and sightseeing that day, but we got one of those train cabins where you can pull out the chairs and they make a bed.
that night, we all slept in this setup. my mom by the door. me next. my two sisters. and then my dad on the inside by all our precious stuff (ie. passports and money).
that night, my nose began to run, so i was sniffling. my mom, got up to get me a kleenex but when she looked down she realized there was another person in our cabin! she told me to get up and turn on the light and when i did, there was this italian man lying in between my two sisters!
my sisters screamed. my dad got all angry and told him to leave. and the guy pretended to not understand us, but eventually he left. but before he did, he reached under the seats and grabbed a set of keys. we think he was trying to steal our stuff, but we never found out. in any case, that was one night we will never forget.
wow, these are fantastically horrific. keep em coming!
don’t have a horror story, but i may be able to confirm the party that Chad had while parentless Erica lies in the hospital!!
about erica’s accident… we were in north carolina scuba diving and erica was in the brandywine hospital!!!!
thanks for the corrections Mom, story has been updated with correct details.
Two stories:
1) July 4th weekend 1997 I drove from Pittsburgh to NJ to spend the holiday with my college roommate and the next day picked up my future wife at the camp she worked for a day at Dorney Park. I felt a twinge in my back at 10am when I picked her up. Around 4pm, I coughed a single cough that knocked the wind out of me. I thought I had a back spasm and allergy attack. Left the park after drinking fluids didn’t help. Went to a friend’s house to rest and then to Sat night church. Then our friends wanted to see “Face Off” (2.5 hours). At 12:30am I couldn’t get up from the theater seat, passed out and went into full respiratory arrest with a collapsed lung I was walking around with since 4pm. That won me a week long stay in the hospital with a chest tube.
2) May 2001 on our honeymoon on Nassau/Paradise Island, Bahamas. We went horseback riding. I was someone experienced, but never had on ridden English style saddle. While on a dried-up river bed, a lightning bolt struck the brush about 100 yards away, spooked my horse and threw me off about 10-15 feet onto my back. My back was completely ripped up by the river rock. After getting yelled at by the horse owner for not controlling the horse all the way back to the barn (about 20 minutes), he quickly apologized seeing my shirt soaked in blood. They had no medical supplies for humans, so they put on horse antiseptic cream on my back. We had a couples massage scheduled in the resort spa the next day; that didn’t feel as nice or relaxing as it should have.