OT-Holiday Travel Horror Stories

Our adventure starts tomorrow when we travel from the west coast to Germany with two very young ones.

6/9 years either my wife or son got a GI bug around Xmas and everyone was vomiting. I tend to end up in the ER with 4 bags of IV. She was in med school, son was in daycare so we got everything and it always hit around Xmas. That's all I got. So far so good this year.

Believe me when I tell you that 30 years from now you'll be telling this same story, but with a big smile on your face. Happy Holidays!

We once forgot our son Kevin at home for days. We are currently flying now. Ill never make that mistake again... hey wheres.... KEVIN!!!!

had spent a few days downstate with family and wife and (at the time) 2 kids were with me in my old 4wd suburban.   we are heading west on the 41/28 in a pretty good snow storm near newberry.   it gets to two lanes each direction through town and a slow old rear-wheel drive car pulls out in front of us.   bad driving on their part, but i brake and slide over to the open lane on the right, so no big deal.  well he then turns right across my lane without signaling, and if i hadn't been paying attention we would've t-boned that [expletive goes here].   i go hard over to the right, off the road, and am able to split the posts of the gas station sign at about 25 mph, no damage but the kids are curious why we're going off-road.

the other [expletive] never even notices and we kept on going.  but that was the moment i said, 'never traveling during the holidays again'.  i  have kept that promise. 

OP: Sorry about the beef jerky. (But, I can see where eating the whole bag would have made sense.) To complete the experience you should feed the dog a couple of pounds of fish.

The worst travel experience I can recall at the moment:

It was very cold in SE Michigan in late December, 1989. I headed south by (2WD, rear) car with some family to visit other relatives in Florida. I think it was slightly above zero F when I left and all temperatures were well below average all the way down. Driving straight through, we hit big trouble (ice storm) just after entering Florida.

We managed to stay on the road, but it took about eight hours to drive forty miles at one point. What I would have given for an SUV with 4WD ...

It was about 35F when we finally reached our destination (Deerfield Beach). The temperature didn't clear 60F until our last day there.

Not that bad in retrospect ... I'm sure plenty of people can top it.

 

Any holiday travel that involves being with my in-laws is a horror.

One year after Christmas my wife and I decide to take our two kids to Florida for a week. My 2 year old has an ear infection so before we leave my wife takes him to the doctor to get some antibiotics. Later that night at the airport I go to change his diaper and notice a couple of red bumps around his waist area. Told my wife and decided to check it out when the plane landed in Florida. Once we land we take a shuttle to our condo. I put my so. On the bed and undressed him to change his diaper. Now his entire body is covered in red spots and his feet and ankles are swollen. We have no rental car yet to get to the ER. My wife calls 911 and of course the whole condo complex comes out to see what is going on. We get to the hospital and the doctors have no clue. They give us some meds and send us on our way. Had to call a cab of course. Now it's 3am and we put our kids to bed. Three hours later my wife goes and checks on our son. She comes running and screaming into our room holding a 2 year old boy that I don't even recognize. It's my boy!! Another 911 call and w are back at the hospital. They run tests and determine that he is allergic to penicillin. We spend a night in the hospital and cab ride back to the condo the next day. My wife called my inlaws and they decide to drive down so they can try and help. By the time they get down to Florida the meds kick in and my son is fine. Now I get to spend the rest of my Florida vacation with my inlaws. Happy Holidays!!

A couple years ago we went to Mexico to spend Christmas at my in-laws' vacation house. My 2 boys (8 mo and 18 mo at the time), wife and I all caught some sort of parasite and spend 3 entire days puking, shitting and generally feeling horrible. To top it off, during our layover in Atlanta my oldest had too much lemonade at the airport chick-fil-a and pukes all over my wife. We got home to find out a pipe had burst in our basement and there was sitting water/water damage everywhere.

Drive down to Flaorida and go in a bar called the Beachcomer in Daytona. Come out and the truck is gone. Police said they hardly ever get them back. That sucked.

Invited my cousin and his family to Christmas one year.  They traveled to our home in their RV.  Woke up to this actual footage...

I wake up, head down the stairs, grab a coffee and sit on the couch.. It is a struggle hosting Christmas.

I will be driving 12 hours to, and then staying for four days in Columbus, OH. None of you can beat that.

My youngest son was on an extended vacation in Thailand. He left for Michigan on Friday at 7AM or time and didn't get in until 11AM on Monday. All this without leaving an airport. It included multiple, multiple-hour layovers in Beijing, Los Angeles, Denver, and Philadelphia. It's sure not a route I would have picked, but when you're young you can afford to be stupid!

15 hours in the Detroit Metro International Terminal when my 7am Peoples Express flight was cancelled due to fog.  It was the 2nd consecutive day of cancellations at Metro and People's Express didn't replace flights they simply stuffed you on the standby list and there were hundreds of people on that list.  I ate a terrible airport sandwich that made me sick, finally boarded a plane to Newark, NJ where we would then be placed on another standby list to possibly get to Sarasota, Fl.

This was back when Newark's airport was a huge shithole of an airport with cramped hallways and gates, some of it temporary to support People's Express..  After a couple hours in Newark we were rewarded with a couple seats to Sarasota at something like 11pm and arrived in Sarasota just ahead of the fog bank sometime after 1am.  We missed an entire day of only a 3 day trip to Florida to see my grandmother.

 

Another holiday trip we were rerouted from Atlanta to Columbia, SC due to fog in Atlanta and our plane not having enough fuel to circle.  The delay caused us to miss our connecting flight to Puerto Rico which meant we would miss the launch of our cruise ship.  So Delta hooked us up with a nights stay at a cheap motel and a flight first to Puerto Rico then aboard a piece of junk Eastern airlines flight to Barbados where we would be holed up in a janky hotel for two nights as we waited for the cruise ship to arrive.

With my nephew around Christmas driving from the Detroit area to Glen Arbor. We were in his Mom's car so he was driving. He did not have a ton of experiece and I am suggesting he slow down a bit as it was snowy - but I'm just an Uncle and not his Dad so I'm not sure how much he is listening.

So we are on County Rd 677 - the one that takes you in the road between big and little Glen Lake. We just crest a hill and what do we find on the other side? A pickup with a trailer jackknifed in the road. So my nephew swerves to avoid them truck, over corrects and we end up in a ditch on the roof of his mom's now totaled Jeep Cherokee. We were not hurt and the aig bags did not deploy. All I lost was the beach stones I forgot to get out of the car.

There are no such things as cabs, Uber or Lyft in northern Michigan. The police give us a lift to the Homestead Resort. We find a private cab service in Traverse City - which for an arm and a leg will come pick us up and drive us to Traverse City Airport where we can rent a car.

Original itinerary was to fly Austin>O'Hare>Columbus, hang with the in-laws for a night then head back to Ann arbor to see my family. Flight to O'Hare was delayed to the point that we couldn't hit our connection, which was the last flight out of O'Hare. So had to head back from the airport last night and then back to the airport again this morning at 5am. Now I'm in Charlotte waiting to hit my connection to Columbus, which is now just dead weight on the trip as we won't even have time to see the in-laws.

It was very cold.  Subzero lows and even some highs in the days leading up to Christmas.  The at the time "future wife" and I were driving from Chicago to Detroit to be with family for Christmas when the car gets a flat tire on 80-94 about 6 miles into Indiana.  We've got a long way to go yet.  It's -10 degrees outside and very dark.  I had to pull most of the stuff out of the trunk to get to the spare and discover the spare is about half inflated at best.  No choice but to put the spare on the car.  I had future wife get out of the car when I jacked it up to at least minimize the potential for more disaster, so she's freezing her ass of alongside the freeway while I'm changing the tire and really freezing since I've been out in the cold a lot longer.  I have the spare on the car and I'm tightening the lugs nuts and at that time a state trooper finally arrives to offer some help.  Thanks man, I got it.

We spent the next hour or so at a sketchy Amoco station just off of 80-94 in Gary getting the tire patched, because the spare was never going to make it to Detroit.  Good thing we did, because we hit the lake effect snow zone and crawled through that from around Benton Harbor to Battle Creek.  A long and frustrating night....

I've been fortunate enough to spend the last 20ish Christmas' at my own home with friends and family.  No travel for me. 

But I did stub my toe traveling from the family room to the refrigerator for another beer that one year.  Hope that qualifies me commenting in this thread. 

Not a terrible travel story, but we just drove with two kids under 3 and a dog in a Dodge caliber from NYC to Metro Detroit in one day. It says 10 hours, but it's always closer to 12 or 13. We always swear off this drive, then get pregnant and don't wind up doing it for 2 years so that we forget how long it is. For a variety of reasons there won't be a third kid, but we aren't doing this trip again ever.

Was deciding to drive the 8 hours(which became 10 hours) to Petersburg, Michigan with a screaming, confused, and fussy toddler most of the way. My wife just about had a mental break down during that trip. 

Was my husband for a second. My youngest out of 3 loves to eat too much spicy food and puke. But I knew it wasn't my hubby when he said he cleaned up the puke and wifey fake slept. Other way around in our house! You are a good husband!

It was getting close to the holidays in late November and I was sitting on my couch, and JT Barrett came up obviously short on a 4th down but the stupid fucking officials gave him a 1st down. Yup still not over it. Happy holidays!

Was it 2 or 3 years ago we had the early January Midwest snowstorm that closed schools for 3 days? (AAPS anyway)?

The kids and I had gone to Chicago for a couple days after New Year's.  We arrived on Amtrak, as years of airport experience had taught me that trying to get on a flight on a bad weather day was not the type of adventure we were looking for. It was snowing heavily even when we arrived; we walked around Michigan Ave. in the snow, got hot chocolate, without a care in the world.  Settled back in the hotel to watch football.  Ah, vacation!

In my previous job, the weather was always the #1 factor that influenced how your day would go, so for years I was a compulsive weather junkie.  After having left the airport, I'm still a weather junkie but don't follow weather events with quite the same zeal or dread.   On this trip I not only didn't pay attention to weather developments, over the 2 days I slid further and further into blissful denial.  What did a little snow matter, and it was so pretty! I missed my airport job but not the intense pressure of working on bad weather days.  No more would I have that, or working holidays for that matter!  Besides, we were returning on the train!  

The night before we were to return home, I was packing up our stuff when the reality of the situation finally started to dawn on me.  A friend texted me to say she was cancelling a holiday luncheon that was still several days away, citing travel safety as the reason.  That was interesting, I thought to myself.  Why cancel this far ahead of time? Well, I'm not worried, we're on the early morning train, should be OK.  I said nothing to the kids.  

We were up early and the snow was fallilng thickly.  It took a while to get a cab, and the driver was grim, saying, "Good thing you're leaving now, because otherwise you won't be leaving for a week."   Once at the Amtrak station, the waiting area was packed, in fact the entire station was packed.  Trains were delayed.  We were lucky enough to find seats at the Wolverine boarding area, as the departure time came and went.  Eventually an Amtrak employee announced that we would be delayed as the train engine was frozen.  No other information was forthcoming and he advised everyone to wait.

It was cold in the boarding area, and the sliding glass doors that opened to the outside didn't help matters.  The temperatures outside were dropping, too.  We shivered in our coats and stamped our feet.  We didn't want to go stand in long lines for breakfast and miss the boarding time, so we stayed put.  We did each take a turn going to the restroom, which proved to be wise.

A full 3 hours later, the announcement came that a replacement train was on its way.  it was not only a replacement engine, it was an entire train, and long distance equipment at that - apparently the engines on the cross country trains can handle more extreme temperatures and snow levels.  Amtrak boarded us all very expeditiously and we were on our way!

We enjoyed the view from the upper level windows in the coach cars, and started to think about getting something to eat.  Then the conductor announced that the restrooms in our car were out of service.  Frozen.  Long story short, the restrooms froze in each car, one by one as you got farther from the engine, so I told the kids, "OK.. no eating or drinking until we get to Ann Arbor."  We arrived home 6 hours later, just in time as it turned out things only got worse from there.

Actually it was kind of fun, other than the 3 hours freezing in the station part.

Years ago I was driving home from work on I-94 in Detroit. Trunk was packed with luggage and presents so I could leave early next morning to head to hometown Grand Rapids for holiday. I got a flat tire near French Rd. This was before cell phones. I looked up the embankment and could see a tip of a Shell station sign. I had a hooded sweatshirt in the car which I put on with the hood up, trying to disguise the fact that I was a very young woman (22).

Got up to the station and it is just gas and a food mart.  Clerk was behind several layers of bullet-proof glass with a revolver laying on the counter.  He looked a little seedy himself so it was difficult to determine which side of that barrier was safer.  He called a tow truck to help me out.  

After about 30 minutes, the truck arrived. I got in to ride back down to my car on the freeway shoulder and as the driver  turned to me when pulling away I smelled strong odor of alcohol. Thank goodness he was a friendly drunk and actually was able to put on the spare tire and helped load everything back in the car.  I tipped him generously and was never so glad to get home safely.