What was the worst vacation that you've ever had?

Originally Posted by 357

This is a pretty good, er bad one.

Here is my planes, trains, and automobiles story...

I was going to college in Springfield, MO and got a ride with my roomate back home (Detroit) for Christmas vacation. It is about a 12-13 hour drive normally. I was going to get a ride back with him after New Year's but he decided to drop out and not return. So, I bought an Amtrack ticket for $75. This was going to get me from Detroit to Chicago and from Chicago to St. Louis where my other roomate (who stayed in Springfield) was going to pick me up. This was no small feat for those who know St Louis is about a 3 hour drive from Sprinfield, then he was going to be nice enough to turn around and drive me 3 hours back. Good guy.

Anyway, I was scheduled to leave Detroit on 1/3/1999. For anyone in Michigan or Illinois that day, you'll probably remember it. Detroit got 20 inches of snow and Chicago got 22 inches, overnight. My parents had to push through snow banks over the hood of our car to get onto and off the freeway. See the interstate was plowed (still huge amounts of snow on it), but the ramps were not. This was just to get me to the train station. Train showed up and left about 1 hour late. I had a great time on the train to Chicago chit-chatting with this smokin hot nanny. We grabbed a bite to eat in the diner car and relaxed. Her and the family she was with got off in Joliet. I made it to Union Station (i think that's the name) about 1-2 hours later than planned. No big deal as my connector train was running late.

My connector train was delayed again and again for 7-8 hours before they cancelled it. The station made announcements that the track switches were frozen and they couldn't direct train traffic so they were getting us charter buses. At this point I called my roomate who was supposed to pick me up and offered to pay for a hotel room if he would wait in St. Louis for me. He declined the room and said he would stay until 3:00 AM and then had to head back to Springfield. I don't remember what, but he had some obligation. I had two huge bags of luggage, each about the size of a black lawn/leaf garbage bag, jammed to the brink. The train station in Chicago had big lockers and I was able to store them while waiting and eat dinner. Charter buses show up. There was supposed to be 4, each one making a different length trip with the 4th one going all the way (no stops) to St Louis. My bus, the 4th one didn't show up. So, they jammed us onto the 3rd bus cheek to cheek. This also meant frequent stops that turned a 5 hour drive into a 10-11 hour fiasco. I am 6' 6" and I do not fit into bus seats very well. This was a long uncomfortable ride.

Of course I get to St Louis about 2 hours after my roomate had to leave. It's about 5 AM, I'm in St Louis, 3 hours from my destination and I have no ride. With no other apparent option I have to get a cab from the train station to the Greyhound station. I buy a ticket, but the bus doesn't leave until 10:00 AM or so. There are actually 3 buses travelling together for whatever reason. If you've ever been to the Greyhound station in downtown St. Louis, it's not exactly the Ritz. I am forced to sit there for 4-5 hours watching my luggage so it doesn't grow legs and take off. We finally board the bus and get on our way. The bus was only 1/3 full or so and I was hoping to stretch out my legs on the way. No such luck.

We stopped only a few minutes away at the airport and picked up a bunch of Army soldiers. They were cool and we get moving again. Not one hour later we stopped again. This time the driver says there is something wrong with one of the three buses. She said go into the truck stop and grab some snacks when you get back we'll be on our way. So, we all head inside. When we come out the sides of the buses are open and people with dogs are going through our bags. It is the DEA! We are then questioned at length about who we are, where we're going, where we were born, and our carry on bags in the bus are searched one at a time with us present.

2-3 hours later we're allowed to continue on our trip. Fortunately this was the last speed bump along the way. I arrived in Springfield Missouri over 36 hours after I left Detroit. No sleep, little food, stinking, and wearing the same clothes as when I left. I was so suprised to get there. I thought for sure a meteor was going to fall from the sky and finish me off. LOL

P.S. sorry for the long story

Why yes that is epically bad.

This is one I wrote about about a little over 3 years ago about getting stranded in a similar snow storm.

Its a little long but also a memorable miserable experience.....I am copying and pasting this from an old facebook note I wrote

OK SO I am by no means writing this out in order to garner any sympathy or anything along those lines, this is simply steven venting and sharing after a horrific two days it took blair chase and i to get from Eagle/Vail Colorado to Tampa.

We get up at 7am on Sunday morning and drive 30 minutes to Eagle/Vail. We arrive on time and in fact rather early for our flight. We then wait and wait and wait and our plane apparently had mechanical failure and they had to switch it out which caused the plane to be about an hour late. At this point, thats fine our layover in Denver is an hour and a half anyways, itll just be a little close.

We then board the plane and then sit on the runway for another 40 minutes bc Eagle/Vail wouldnt put us at the front of the line for departure....the wait was the straw the broke the camels back here. We get to Denver and watch from our plane, the plane to Tampa taxing down the runway without us...

I then get off the plane and run as fast as i can through the terminal to the United customer service desk in order to get in front of the line of screwed passengers..I end up being 20th or so in line and have to stand there for 2 hours before I get to the desk...the line behind me had about 40 more people in it. The United desk then proceeds to tell me that all the flights on EVERY AIRLINE to tampa are full for the rest of the day and the best they can do was the next night which would've put me into Tampa after midnight and therefore Tuesday. So the clerk asks me what are some good cities to connect to to get to tampa (inside my head my jaw dropped, i was thinking, isnt it YOUR JOB to know that?) so i start just dropping cites ive used before that have worked, Dallas, Chicago, Cincinnati, Miami, Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston.....the list got to be about 15 cities long and with the help of blairs dad on the phone (not the clerk) we were able to get seats on an American Airlines flight that left monday morning from denver to st. louis and then st louis to tampa.

So our way home got worked out. The airline then tried to get us a hotel for the night which we just said nuts to that and peaced out. Blairs parents got us a hotel close to the airport. Apparently they were trying to put people in some ramada downtown. If you know anything about denver you know that the airport is literally in the middle of nowhere waaaaaaay outside the city and with an early morning flight taking their crap was not an option.

Next step. Getting our bags for the night so we could change clothes etc. Requesting the bags takes 2 hours for them to be sorted and then retrieved. After lunch and roaming around we get 2 out of 3 bags....mine and blairs. Blairs bag is fine however mine has a rip in the side of it and one of the shoulder straps was ripped out. I then file my claim and chase tries to round up his bag....and the attempts of takes another hour. The end result was chases bag making the full 430 flight that day to tampa.

We then take a taxi to the hotel and pass out/watch basketball. We the did have a nice dinner at a Japanese steakhouse in Denver. The rest of the night was uneventful other than I finally went to bed at about 2am

We then woke up at 6 am to catch our 930 flight to st. louis. We arrive at the airport and then attempt to check in at American and the clerk who was giving us some attitude for no reason tells us that we were confirmed for the st louis to tampa but not the denver to st louis....they send us back to United, but blair calls her dad who turns out had reserved 3 seats on it just in case.....We then go back to American and get other clerk (thank god) who just starts plugging away at her computer and we had our boarding passes and checked our bags within 5 minutes. There were various freakouts among our party's members, thats all ill say

All 3 of us were selected for the special search for chemicals etc at the security checkpoint which added time and inconvenience but thats it. We get to st. louis (we flew over the gateway to the west which was neat) had lunch etc, it was a 2 hour layover. We then get on our plane and as its backing out we hear a huge crash and the plane stopped dead in its tracks. Turns out the pin to the tractor ripped off the plane and it bent a panel on the plane back....it took another hour of sitting on the tarmac before we got to moving.

I arrived home in tampa at 7pm....chase found his bag and that was that. But yeah thats my story of being one of the 100,000 people stranded in different areas of the country due to snow storms in the NE combined with spring break and other general failures. In conclusion dont fly united.