UPDATE:
Voting is now closed. I will announce the winners
sometime in the next 24 hours.
Thank you!
You guys did not make it easy for me. There were some really good stories of your worst vacations, but I had to pick ten stories for the final ten. If your story was chosen, congratulations....if it was not, it was not, I am sorry, I wish I could have had a top 25! I feel for all of you--in reading some of the stories, I felt I was right with you when it happened--some of these stories are just beyond craziness!!
First the voting rules, and then on to our top ten!
To vote for a story, please pick the # to the corresponding story # by indicating numbers #1 - #10, and writing it in the comment area below. Write something like: I vote for story #___ because it is funny/sad/scary etc. The story with the most votes by July 14th at 11:59 P.M. (Yes, I gave you a few extra days to get votes) will win the Flip Video Camera. The second place winner will win a $25 Visa gift card, and I will also announce the winner of the random giveaway of the $50 Visa gift card too! The winners will be announced July 15/16th.
For those whose stories have been selected in the top ten...you can ask your grandma, your mailman, and your dentist for votes. You can ask people by twitter, facebook etc, for votes. Anyone can vote for you, but they can only vote once, by name. I do not want to be so strict that I check IP addresses (although I will if I see voter fraud) I am trusting you and your peeps to be honest, and vote only once per name. So if your Aunt Tilly votes for you, she cannot vote twice. Capishe? Have fun and good luck!! (You guys rock!)
STORY #1: C. Dziuba
In a moment of temporary insanity, my husband and I booked a cruise out of Florida to the Caribbean. Besides my husband and me, the traveling party (our kids) consisted of one sullen teenage girl, a pre-teen boy, a five-year-old girl, and our 11-month-old baby boy. Nuts, right? I booked our flights with KIWI Airlines, and that should have been the first tip-off, because our plane became as flightless as a kiwi.
We arrived at Newark, NJ Airport at 7:00 AM for our 9:00 AM flight, laden with many suitcases and bags. We went through security and baggage check, and at around 9:00 I mentioned to my husband "That's weird, there's no plane at our gate". Not only that, there was NO ONE at the Kiwi desk. Our flight was going to Orlando, and at least half of the passengers were kids. At about 9:30, a bedraggled Kiwi mechanic appeared at the desk, and he said over the microphone "Ladies and Gentlemen".....I'm sorry to say.....the plane is broken". With that, the woman behind me screamed "THEN FIX IT !!!!!!!!!" That truly was the beginning of the end. My husband instructed me to take the four kids down to the luggage carousel to get our bags, and he said he'd stand on the 200+-deep line to se what our options were. All of this occurred well before there were such things as cellphones.
I rounded up the kids, and went down and watched the luggage carousel go around and around, and finally, our bags came out. The carousel stopped, and the man next to me went up to a Kiwi employee and said "Hey, my bags didn't come out", and the Kiwi man said "That's all there is". So, there was never a plane, and he still lost his luggage!
As we were waiting for my husband to figure things out, a Kiwi lady said they found a plane, but it wouldn't be leaving until 2:30 PM. Wow. I mean, there was no time to go home and come back, and we figured it was 5 hours to kill in the airport, so we braced ourselves for 5 more hours with our four kids....and all the restless, crying, distressed children at our gate. We did everything imaginable to kill time and to keep the baby occupied, and at 3:00, we were told the plane would not be leaving until 5:00. Then 5:00 became 6:30, 7:30 8:30, and finally 9:00.
At 9:00, a full 14 hours since we'd set foot in Newark Airport, we boarded the plane. Stupid me figured the cruise pier would be right near the airport. Not! That was another hour-long ride to the hotel near the pier. My husband and I were at each others' throats, the kids were on meltdown, it was a fiasco.
The cruise itself was just OK. All in all, it was soooooo not worth it!
Story #2 S Lang
My kids and I went on a trip after so much hassle to get a rental car. We were finally on the road and had been driving for what seemed like to my kids FOREVER. We went on the turnoff and drove a while toward our destination. Then I hit a deer! In my rental car!!!! Only the deer didn’t die, it started bucking at the car after we hit it. My kids were screaming. I was frazzled and in shock. I threw some items out the window toward the trees and the deer got spoofed I guess. I dialed to get ahold of the rental car company and lo and behold, there was no service out there on my phone. It was getting pretty dark and I didn’t know what to do! So I grabbed the kids out of the car and put the hazard lights on. We walked a mile back and there was some old guy at the gas station who said he would check it out. I talked to the rental car agent and they asked me to take pictures of the car and email them immediately. The guy looked at the car and said that it would work just fine. So off we went to continue our adventure. When we finally got to our destination, our family couldn’t believe what had happened. We got to bed, woke up and my son threw up all over me. It turned out that he came down with a pretty bad bug and was sick all weekend. L The day we were heading back home, my daughter somehow managed to get the same thing and without me knowing. While we were driving, she threw up all over in the back seat. L Remember, this was a rental car. I couldn’t pull over fast enough. So disgusted and frustrated, I started crying. My daughter started crying thinking I was mad at her. I cleaned the back seat as best I could and gave her a bag to throw up in if she needed it on the way back. Next thing I know, I had to pull over to throw up. Let’s just say the entire ride home was a horrible scene between her and I throwing up.
Story #3 S. Hickmon
My funniest vacation story is from when I was 17, and it was the last weekend before I started my senior year of high school. I went camping with a big group of people and I got dared to go skinny dipping. It was past midnight so the beach are was closed. I got a few other people to go with me and we snuck in a got undressed. We were only in there for maybe 2 minutes before the beach security came in and made us all get out - naked. I was humiliated! To make matters worse be the time we went to school that monday just about everyone knew about it, and one of the girls that was there announced it on the school news.
Story #4 R. Titanic
My craziest summer vacation happened 55 years ago when my family was traveling in upstate NY. We were all tired, my dad had past many motels along the way, but wanted to push it a little farther. We came across a sign for a Peter's Motel, then another sign, then another for about 45 minutes we couldn't find it. When we finally did, we were all exhausted and rented one of the rooms. Inside there was nothing - no A/C, a television with only 2 channels, but it was a room. When we were ready to check out, we noticed their ashtray on the table. It read "easy to find, hard to leave". We have since laughed about that ashtray for 55 years now but it was hard to find and easy to leave.
Story #5 Jill L
My craziest vacation luckily happened before we had kids. My husband and I went down to Mexico to visit a friend who had just started working down there. Well he hadn't really planned anything for us to do. He decided we should take a 12 hour trip through the desert to visit the Mummy Museum - Guanajuato, Mexico. It was just crazy. The car was not air conditioned. He didn't want to spend the money on the nice toll road and there was nothing on the radio. Of course since it was my husband's friend, I was stuck in the backseat the whole time. When we finally get into the museum, I realized the tour was pointless because I couldn't speak any Spanish. Now if you don't mind seeing preserved bodies, it was pretty cool. Wouldn't do it again though.
It was a crazy trip though from trying to order room service to asking directions. Now I could ask the directions, but I couldn't understand the response!!! Turned out to be a very crazy week.
It was a crazy trip though from trying to order room service to asking directions. Now I could ask the directions, but I couldn't understand the response!!! Turned out to be a very crazy week.
Story #6 C Wilson
We don't vacations very often, so when we did finally get to go on one, my family and I were ecstatic. Just 100 miles down the road, we should have seen the sign that this trip wasn't going to go very well, and we should have just turned around and went home. But, NO, being the optimist we are, we continued on. What happened, you ask? We got about a 100 miles away from home in Texas, and we decided to stop for a bite, since this was going to be part of our vacation theme (we are total foodies). Well, we have a very nice steak dinner at a place that serves peanuts at your table. You just crack them and throw the shells on the floor. My 5 yr old loved this idea, until she started to choke on the peanut. When I realized that I could not clear it out myself, I started screaming my head off! Someone called 911, but thankfully before they arrived a nice lady (I think she was a P.A.) was able to get the peanut out. Whew. Yep, we should have turned right around and went home to recoup. But, my daughter was fine and we keep going. Next in New Mexico, we stopped at our next food destination. Food was great, we got our tummies for and went to the hotel to relax from a long days drive. Approximately at 2:00 am, I woke up sick as a dog. Food poisoning we think, but instead of going to the hospital we rode it out an extra day in the hotel till I was travel ready. The vacation just became more unbearable as attractions we wanted to see were closed down due to unknown reasons. It was just a mess. We were about 6 days into our vacation on the California coast when we surprised our family with a visit. Well, little did I know, they didn't take to well of just showing up for a visit and they were very rude to us. So after spending the night at the hotel, we decided to just go on home. Straight driving, no stops unless someone was desperate for a potty break. LOL We have not been on vacation since. Although, we are talking about trying it again.
Story #7 Julie H
Ok this is not the greatest story but it is now that I am well so here goes 8 years ago onthe 4th of July at the beach I had horrible girl issues could not stand the pain hubby took me to ER they told me I had a miscarriage knew that was wrong told 2 years earlier we could not have kids so gut instinct and listen to it always said go to your reg dr. they did tests and called me next day had endometrial cancer at 33 ..had to have hysterectomy and chemo and radiation ..lost hair bought a wig itched lost it working out with the ladies that was funny hey you have to laugh or it will kill you..got to adopt our beautiful daughter 4 years ago andnow cancer free That was a summer I will never forget!!
Story # 8 W. Powelson
Funniest story was when i was child on family vacation. we were driving home on eight lane highway when all the sudden we were surrounded by semi's all around us running eighty miles an hour. this seemed go on for miles causing us to miss our turn off, and unable to turn till sometime later. being children, my siblings and i thought this was the coolest thing ever. as an adult and driving in similar circumstances, my father had to be stressed to no end. this had to feel like an eternity to him.
Story #9 C Miller
the funniest vacation story I've experienced is my husband and I traveling with our two boys up to Ogunquit Maine to spend a few days. We got almost to maine on a stretch of highway where there wasn't really any thing around. Our tire blew out, we got safely to the side of the road, looked in the trunk of the car, there was a spare tire that had a different number of lugnuts than the ones on the car it wouldn't fit. My husband walked miles to some farm and the farmer had a spare tire that fit our car. I had thoughts of having to sleep in the car but after about 4 hours we got going again.
Story #10 Lyndsay
My funniest vacation story was when we went to Arizona for a family vacation and I got sun poisoning and then got bit by a scorpion. It is funny now, not then LOL .
