Vacations from Hell lets hear them (rental, hotel, hotels, train station)

[phonelady61]

I can only recall one and I will tell it after I see the rest of the stories thanks .

[annerk]

I've had business travel from hell and I've had some bad vacations, but never a vacation from hell.

That said, here's a vacation that had a rough ending...

We were booked on flights from the Northeast to Florida. It had started snowing pretty hard when we arrived at the airport, and they weren't sure that the flight we were booked on would make it out. They told us that if we hurried we could make a flight leaving in 15 minutes. (this was pre-9-11) They cautioned out luggage might not make it on the same flight, but we had a couple days worth of clothes in our carry on's so we were OK with that.

They quickly printed our boarding passes and sent us to the gate where we got on just as the door was closing. We landed in Florida, got our rental, and enjoyed our vacation. When we arrived at the airport to fly home, we ran into a huge problem. It seems that when they rebooked us on the way down they hadn't done it properly, and because we hadn't been on the flight originally booked, we were listed as no shows and the return tickets were cancelled.

They finally got it straightened out--or so we thought. We boarded the flight and took our seats. We had an hour long stop with no change of planes on the way, and left our coats and a suitcase on the plane (people used to do this all the time, it was actually encouraged by the airlines--how times have changed!)

When we went to reboard, we were told we learned we had never actually been issued boarding passes for the second leg, just a ticket. The counter agent in Florida had lied through his teeth to get rid of us and figured it would be the problem of the people at the next airport.

The flight almost took off with our coats and suitcase! Finally a station manager came and got it sorted. We got on the flight and there were people in our seats, they had stuffed our coats into balls and put them on the floor. We were livid. The FA made them move. Then to add insult to injury she skipped our three seats with the beverage service!

Long story short we all got free round trip tickets to Florida for the troubles. We used them and never flew that carrier again.

By the way, our luggage all made it with us on the way to Florida, but all three bags were lost for a couple of days on the way back. When they were delivered the guy left them on the driveway in front of the garage door in the snow instead of on the covered porch. They never called to say they were being delivered or I would have worked from home that day.

[prospectheightsresident]

The only vacation from hell I had was due solely to the company that I kept. I traveled to Turkey with three other friends. Two friends (call them Friend 1 and Friend 2) have a history of being cliquish when together, and Turkey was no different. Still, despite their history, I was hoping that the trip would be a solid, fun, all-inclusive 4-some. Friend 1 and Friend 2 went off on their own mostly (and when we were all together, me and the other "outcast" were left in a way that we may have as well been alone), and failed to engage us in conversations. Friend 3 and I couldn't believe what we were experiencing. That put a damper on the entire trip for the two of us who were left out of conversations, etc. And I didn't confront the two of them about it as I felt that the mood would only worsen. Plus I knew that they weren't doing anything to be malicious; quite frankly, they were merely discussing things that the other friend and myself knew little to nothing about. Odd thing is, despite myself and Friend 3 being visibly upset/peeved when Friend 1 and Friend 2 were at their worst, those two still think that the trip went swell and are asking for another international excursion I've always declined, though I would have no problem (and have) traveling with Friend 1 or Friend 2 alone, but just not with both together.

[BD1978]

Went to a private resort on Grand Bahama Island for a friend's wedding for 4 nights during Memorial Day weekend 2009. It was very expensive, and because the resort was so isolated, there were no alternate lodging options. We were expecting lovely weather and lots of wonderful amenities, and a good time in the sun with friends.

The trip turned out to be terrible. First of all, the drive from the airport to the resort was incredibly depressing. We drove past starving stray dogs with their ribs showing through their gaunt bodies, and homes seemed to be largely piles of rubble from a hurricane the year before. People who looked like drifters were just randomly walking on the side of the highway, and it was a truly sad scene.

We arrived at the resort, and it was sunny for literally 3-4 hours the first day we arrived, during which time I foolishly burned myself pretty badly. Then the rain came, and never stopped until we were driving to the airport on day 5. In the meantime, the resort had virtually no indoor amenities - no pool tables, movie theater, nothing - and so in bad weather you were just stuck inside in what felt like the middle of nowhere, with my terrible sun burn killing me. The resort only had 2 restaurants and 1 was mediocre with poor service, and the other was a conch shack outside by the pool, which was hardly open.

The kicker was that after getting into our pajamas and lying in bed the first night, my wife screams "what is that?!" as a huge cockroach crawls from the floor across our bedspread and onto the floor again. We immediately called the front desk which acted like we were inconveniencing them, and about 40 minutes later a security guard with a bad attitude came by and killed the insect for us. When we woke the next morning, another very large cockroach was sitting on the floor and appeared to be dying or half dead. We demanded that the front desk change our room, which they finally did hours later after giving us a bad attitude.

I'd say that of the 20 plus vacations my wife and I have taken during our years of marriage, this was by far the worst one.

[annerk]

Not a full vacation, but here's another I thought of. We had booked a very upscale resort in New York State for the first two nights of a week long trip. We arrived around midnight and were given the key and map to our room. This particular resort has rooms in the main building and "lodge buildings" scattered around the complex. Our booking was for a deluxe non-smoking king in the main building, and they had taken the first nights payment as a guarantee when we booked months in advance.

When I looked at the map, I realized we been gotten assigned a room in one of the lodge buildings. I was told it was the only room left that evening. I told her that I had paid for the room in the main building several months earlier and she informed me I would have to work that out with the manager the next day.

We didn't have much choice, as the resort is quite a distance from anywhere and it was very late. We took the lodge room and drove over there. The minute we walked in I had an asthma attack due to the mold. It was in the basement with no view. There were two double beds. Some start to a romantic vacation.

The next morning I went to the main building to speak to a manager. I was sleep deprived, sick from the mold, and furious. The manager tried to blame us for arriving so late. I pointed out that they had taken the credit card payment for the first night five months earlier, and the time we arrived should have no bearing on the issue. He claimed that a wedding party had taken all of the deluxe king rooms in the main building and they couldn't accommodate us there. All they could do was move us to an upstairs unit in one of the Lodge buildings. Then they said we would have to check out of the room we were occupying by 11:00 and wouldn't be able to check into the new room until 4:00.

The room they moved us to had a king bed but still no view unless you walked out onto the desk and hung way over and craned your neck, then you could see a glimmer of water. The final straw was when we went to the bar to have a drink after dinner and members of the wedding party ended up in a brawl that required them calling the police.

We were beyond happy to get the heck out of there the next morning, and would never go back.

[Icemodeled]

Mine isnt real bad, but we went up north around Sandusky in the fall. I liked the idea of the lakes, maybe cute shops ect. When we got their it was a ghost town and everything was closed. Very disappointed, I didnt think about the time of year since it wasnt cold out yet. We got fast food, stayed the night and went back home after. Pretty lame trip!

[katharsis]

Mine was not terrible, but just very disappointing. It was about 1990.

This was a cabin in Washington State on Whidbey Island (sp?) that had a four star rating in the AAA book, but it was the most inhospitable place I have ever encountered. It was a second home that was let out during much of the time, along with other cabins close by. We chose it because of the photos, location, privacy, views, and AAA rating.

Well, it was like living in a museum. There were signs EVERYWHERE saying "Don't Touch." "Private." Etc. Plus, there were animal heads on many of the walls, and their idea of decoration were depictions of "*****ninnies" in the form of dolls, prints, and knick-knacks. And by *****ninnies, I don't mean to be disrespectful to black children, but these were HORRIBLE representations. (In short, they were of the grotesquely thick-lipped, watermelon-eating, stereotypical and vastly insulting variety). In other words, it seemed very much to us that the cabin belonged to racists who had very bad taste -- or at least a very poor sense of humor.

And to think we paid about $300 a night!

[EveryLady]

Most of the ground portions of trips and vacations have gone well. Instead there have been a few plane trips from hell.

Flying Air Bangladesh in the 1980s on the Thailand to Burma to Nepal routing thru Dhaka. Back in those days, visas to Burma were limited to 7 days and so as you travelled thru Burma fellow travelers tended to ask if you were a "Monday" person, a "Tuesday" person and so on. Our flight into Burma nearly crashed on landing with no way to exit the country due to rebel fighting on the borders except by boarding the same flight a week later - with dread mounting throughout the week in Burma. When hearing which "day" you were, folks invariably asked if you were a passenger on "that" flight - the one with the horrendously bad landing.

Once in Dhaka matters did not improve as monsoons hit. We waited a couple of days in a challenging hotel for a flight out then several hours at the airport on the appointed day only to be directed to board the wrong plane, a fact that became painfully evident when the on-board sweeper used his broom to bat us back down the steps. The correct plane eventually took off only to hours later have the pilot announce that due to increasingly bad weather he would be unable to climb over the Himalayas.

Back again to Dhaka. At this point, other airlines stepped in to deal with the passenger backup and I was pointed to a Royal Nepalese flight on the tarmac. We crowded around the steps - there were no issued boarding passes for the flight or even an exact available seat count. The attendant asked for my original Air Bangladesh boarding pass. Not my ticket (which I had) but the used boarding pass. What? I'd stuck it in a book someplace; others pushed ahead of me. So what do you do then? Beg. Really BEG. They waved me aboard and, once seated, I ordered a scotch and soda only to see that the young man across the aisle from me had no luggage but was gingerly holding a covered basket on his lap. It contained a snake - a live one.

Simpler stories include US Airways routing us on a foreign carrier to the wrong country (yes we had the right plane) … that one had a nice resolution with lovely rooms and food and rebooked flights at great times once they were convinced we were Americans (passports, you know) and really wanted to go home to America (I waved our original booking) ...

a LONG flight from India to the United Kingdom on KLM with a baby in my lap - someone ELSE's unknown-to-me baby (not my choice or offer) …

playing Russian Roulette with seats in British Airways club class and losing (that's a long complicated tale but it wasn't pretty) …

spending many, many hours stranded on a hot plane at Gander Air Force Base in Canada on a US
Airways flight from Philadelphia to London when the plane left Philadelphia without enough fuel but then had the wrong type of fuel added in Gander, which wasn't used to serving commercial airliners. (Turns out that it doesn't take that long to add fuel but forever to siphon it out.)

There are probably more stories. I love traveling.

The trickiest ground portion was traveling on my own in Pakistan as a young woman in the early 1990s. Hotels were a tad difficult (really needed to pile furniture in front of my hotel room door and tell the switchboard to forward NO more late night calls to my room). On the plus side, I ended up very ill right before I had to take a domestic flight from Lahore to Karachi. There were NO seats at the Lahore airport and few women around. Barely able to stand, I plopped myself right down in the middle of the floor. A ticket agent ran over and got me onto the absolute first flight out. Thank heavens.

The only issue once on the plane was that a burka covered woman was in my assigned seat. It is very difficult to start a conversation - language barriers or not - with someone whose eyes you cannot see. So I sat down in the first empty seat only to be roundly scolded by a flight attendant. I simply pointed at my correct seat. She opened her mouth, gulped, shut her mouth then patted me on the shoulder and said to stay put. Not a problem.

[Alaskan Mutt]

For me it was when I was in college and decided to go home for the Thanksgiving break. the plan was to take the train from Bozeman, MT to Spokane, WA on Tuesday evening and then catch an early Wednesday morning commuter flight to Pasco, WA. Due to bad weather the train was going to be 6 hours late getting into Bozeman. When the train was about an hour away my roommate gave me a ride to the train station. As soon as he left they announced that the train had broke down about 40 miles form Bozeman. The train finally showed up 12 hours late. We lost more time due to weather and did not get into Spokane until Wednesday night. Trying to catch the last commuter flight for the day I ended up being on hold for 30 minutes without ever talking to a live person. I gave up and went to the bus station where there would be a 2 am bus to Pasco on Thursday. Only problem was the highway was closed due to freezing rain.

At this point I gave up and decided to go back to Bozeman. The 5 am bus heading East was cancelled due to freezing rain. I called Northwest Airlines to see if they had a seats on their Thursday flight to Bozeman. Lots of seats. Only problem was I was 5 dollars short of being able to pay cash and they would not take a check not written on a Washington state bank. So I had to have my parents go to the airport in Pasco and pay for a ticket and have it transferred to me in Spokane. Finally at 1pm on Thursday I arrived back into Bozeman. By the time I got back to the dorm I had been traveling for 45 hours and got nowhere.

[wit-nit]

We went to Hell a few years ago...Hell (Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands): Address, Phone Number, Tickets & Tours, Reviews - TripAdvisor