Vacations are always powder kegs just waiting to explode. Moms and dads fighting, kids screaming, teenagers acting like jerks. If you’re lucky, you have a nice trip that you’ll remember forever – but, let’s be honest, a lot of time it’s a total disaster.

These someecards users recount their disastrous vacation stories for our reading pleasure!

1. Camping = Not worth it

Months in advance, I booked and paid for a family camping trip on the coast of California for myself, my husband, and our four children, ages 7-14. A month before we were to leave our SUV broke down, needing more than $1,000 in repairs.

I broke the news to the kids that we couldn’t afford the trip after paying for the repairs and couldn’t get us all there in our smaller car, so we wouldn’t be going. They refused to accept the situation and shocked us by rallying together to come up with a plan. I had some stuff stored in the garage for yard sale so they went through the whole house cleaning all our closets, etc., and had a huge yard sale.

They raised over $500 for our trip. I was so proud on them! It was cutting it close with the budget, but we had to take them at this point. So we loaded up and went!

On the way there, my son’s stupid 14 year old girlfriend was threatening to break up with him because she was mad that he was leaving town. So he sat pouting the entire ride. Then the brakes on our “newly fixed” car overheated. We pulled off the road and there was nothing around, so we could do nothing but wait for them to cool off.

Well, I had to go to the bathroom. Bad. We had no other cover around, so my husband opened both of the passenger side doors and I squatted down between them. Of course a car came by right as I was doing my business. It wasn’t until they yelled and whistled that I realized I was squatting too low, and they could see EVERYTHING. Lovely.

We finally get there and open our tent to find mice had chewed holes all over it, so my husband patched it with the only thing he had, neon green zebra striped duct tape. All our neighbors had beautiful, high end looking tents. Our site looked like the ghetto! Then we decided to walk to the beach. That was when we found out that the beach was a several mile hike in high winds over sand dunes. The kids were all whining and one was crying from getting sand in her eye. It was not the relaxing beach vacation we were looking for, to say the least. I was pissed!

We finally went to bed. About midnight, someone pulled into the site next to us. The husband got out and started screaming at his wife and kicking dents into their car in front of their crying kids. I walked to bathroom and quickly alerted security. Well, they got the campsite number wrong and the security crew drove up our campsite and started yelling at MY husband, who was all confused. He finally pointed to the next camp site and they went over there. They spoke to them and everything quieted down and we went to sleep….only to be woken up by the (late to arrive) police about 2 am. Their drama basically kept us up all night!

It was miserable the rest of the weekend as well. We packed up and headed home finally. We took one of my husband’s famous “shortcuts’ and I got carsick from the winding roads. At one point the kids spotted a lost dog which they guilted us into chasing through the woods to try to save. We never did catch him, but I got several cuts trying to.

Then we almost ran out of gas and were sweating it for MILES. When we finally arrived at the gas station ON FUMES, my husband checked our bank account. Turns out we had an unexpected expense hit our checking account early and we didn’t have enough money to get gas to get home! We said a prayer and my husband swiped. Thank God it let him fill the tank! So we arrived home filthy, exhausted, stressed out, and with an overdrawn bank account. Haven’t been camping since!​

2. Oh boy…

We just had our vacation to Padre Island ruined because the Department of Homeland Security busted down our doors, dumped out all our food and trashed our house.

We own a 2 story duplex [back at home]. They were interested in a renter who lived upstairs. There is no connection to our part of the house.

The only thing they found on him was a small amount of heroin. They kept the rest of the tenants in handcuffs while they searched the entire property, and supposedly found a “pipe bomb” which turned out to be an empty pipe! So we rush home and our tenant is out of jail before we even make it home.​

3. Grandma Bully 

This was back in 2003. My sister and I (ages 11 and 10) were sent on a highly anticipated and extremely rare vacation to visit our distant father and grandparents in Florida while our parents moved our household from WI to VT. We were supposed to have six beautiful, uninterrupted weeks with our Daddy. Stoked.

This trip lasted a week. During that week, my grandmother felt it necessary to bully my sister and I for choices ranging from not wearing our hair in braids to our desire to get the fifth Harry Potter book on the release date. She even criticized our desire to talk to our mother EVERY DAY, despite our father being four days late showing up.

Once he did show up, all hell managed to break loose. We could not understand why they needed to be so nasty to us and talk shit about our beloved mother to us, expecting us to join in. We didn’t. The trip ended with him threatening to leave us with CPS unless my mother picked us up THAT DAY. She ended up having to take a bus there to fetch us and we had to bus all the way back to VT.

We didn’t end up speaking to our father again for over five years, and we both consider ourselves estranged from the family now.

It’s all good though; Mama showed up with the fifth Harry Potter book for us to read on the way home!

4. Strip Club Hotel

When I was a child, my parents were fans of spontaneous weekend road trips. Friday after school, my parents packed the coolers, loaded the car and we were off. This was a time before cell phones, and no reservations had been made at any hotel. They had done this with us many times before and had no problem finding a place to stay during our trip.

11pm we arrive at our first stop, we are roughly 2 hours from home. No vacancies at any hotels. My mom asks the lady running the front deak of the 5th hotel we inquired into if there are any motels. THERE IS!! 10 minutes down the road and always have vacancies. My mom recalled a wink… My dad denied any winking. It is to be assumed she thought my dad was looking for a spot to hook up with my mother, my brother and I were waiting in the car.

This motel was connected to a strip club and had “hourly rates available”… I remember my mom screaming at us not to touch the walls or pull down the blankets! We did not stay for our complimentary breakfast. Thankfully, the rest of our mini weekend vacation ran smoothly staying at hotels with pools and clean bed sheets. I enjoy bringing up our motel stay just to watch my mom roll her eyes.

My dad had wanted to take us to the beach a weekend my mom had gone to work, my dad is a cheap man. He pulled up to a gas station, told us to get out and follow him around the gas station to where there was a steep hill that ran into the lake. Across the lake was the beach. My dad wanted my brother and I to swim across the lake to the beach so he wouldn’t have to pay for us to get into the beach and he would meet us there. My brother and I were excellent swimmers and it wasn’t a large lake, but I am petrified of frogs, turtles, fish. It wasn’t an enjoyable swim and I secretly have plotted revenge on my father.

5. Road Trip!

Every year, we would make a trip from the Midwest to Miami to visit family. The last year we drove down, we did not know would be the [last].

The trip went about as well as it always did. The night before we left we went to a family members house for dinner. She told us she had bought food by the pound! Ate dinner went home and left at 4:00 am.

About an hour or 2 in, my granma starts saying she does not feel good. She then proceeds to throw up in the car. There were 4 of us is a Taurus. We pull over and she goes to a bathroom.

While my sister, mom, and I are cleaning up my granma comes running out yelling”run!” We all ran, not sure from what and got into the car. When we got in she told us she had diarrhea and she got it everywhere “On the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling.” We are still not sure how it got on the ceiling.

The rest of the trip was food poisoning slowly taking ahold of all of us and a lot of vomiting and shitting in the car. We flew from then on and luckily the car was a rental because that smell lingered.

6. Quality time with the fam

Went to Florida with mom, step dad, my son, my grandmother and my 14 year old cousin.

My step dad picked on me all the way from Tennessee to Florida. I can’t stand being picked at and he did it just for spite. I was making hamburgers and couldn’t take any more so I threw a wad of raw beef at him and told him to cook his own damn dinner.

Grandmother kept trying to get me to go bar hopping with her. I have never been so desperate that I had to party with my grandmother.

Went on a dolphin cruise and my mom gets sea sick and pukes off the top deck where the wind catches it and blows it back onto the passengers on the lower deck. People are screaming and sliding in the puke and I’m on the phone with my brother who’s back at home and were laughing our asses off.

That was ten years ago and the only place I have been with all these people since then is a funeral.

7. What a terrible guy

So my ex was a very angry and bitter guy. We never had a honeymoon, and right after our 7th anniversary I won an all-expenses-paid trip to San Diego and was obligated to take him. I honestly hoped that this trip would breathe some fresh life into our sad marriage, not so much.

He insisted we drive to Los Angeles where traffic is worse than horrid, and I live in Atlanta where it is pure misery. After many beers on his part he insisted we go to Pinks hotdog place. We don’t have GPS and the person on the phone just says yeah La Brea and that’s it.

We finally pull over at some Burger King and they say that we are about 15 miles away. He loses his mind calling me every name in the book so l unleashed on him with no mercy about how he ruins EVERYTHING even a free vacation that should be the happiest time we ever had.

The customers were trying to get me to come inside and calm down it was that bad even strangers stepped in. I drove back to San Diego with him passed out drunk and eat at the pizza place that I loved and was happy as hell. I don’t even like hot dogs.

Months later l saw that he had opened an Ashley Madison account the day we started our vacation. What a loser! That was the beginning of the end. Now I am happy and free so yippee!

8. The dreaded family cruise

I was about 11 years old when my family decided we were going to go on a family cruise. This was the first time we were going as a large extended family. There were upwards of 20 of us traveling together, along with a few randoms (my sister included) who flying from different locations and meeting us in Puerto Rico (where the cruise was leaving from).

The day of the trip we got multiple messages about our flight being delayed. Finally, we were expecting to leave at noon. After arriving at the airport, our flight continued to get delayed. Finally after 12 hours in the airport waiting (with only a hacky sack to keep us occupied) our flight takes off at midnight. We arrive in PR at 3 AM. Many other people on our flight were getting on the same cruise, because it was a bundled package. We were told over and over again that since so many people were held up on this flight, the cruise couldn’t leave without all of us. Upon arriving in PR, we and all others trying to get on the cruise are taken into a room and told that the cruise has left without us. The airline assures us that they will be putting us up and arranging flights for us to meet the cruise at its next destination.

The airline gives us vouchers for a hotel, which is about 2 hrs away. We finally arrive there about 5:30 AM. The women and children go back to the rooms and the guys are smoking cigars by the pool. My mom is calling the cruise line desperately asking if my sister is on the cruise. She just turned 18 years old, so they would not release that information to her and we had no way of getting in touch with her.

Around 7 AM – we are woken by loud banging on our hotel doors. It’s the police, who are screaming at us in Spanish. We put together that we are basically not welcome and need to leave. After my mom discusses the situation at the front desk, we are informed that the airline went bankrupt, and our vouchers are worth nothing.

We make our way back to the airport, realizing we might not get set up with a flight to meet our cruise after all. No one has tons of cash on us (cruise was all inclusive), so we end up staying at the airport hotel in the meantime. A high school student with us, who thinks she can speak Spanish, says there is a pool in the hotel. We go out in search for it, ends up being the airport holding cells. That evening, we decide to give our vouchers for the airport food court a try. To our surprise, they work. So everyone splits up between the few places to choose from. A little less than half of our group ended up with food poisoning.

Finally, the next day we get on a flight (that we paid for) and head to Aruba. We get on the ship and find out my sister (along with other cousins & etc who were meeting us in PR) have been on the whole time and are having a great time. We missed about half of the trip.

Got another free cruise out of it though.

9. Man, even Hawaii got ruined?!?!?

Visited family in Hawaii. I was 4 months pregnant and we had a 13 month old son. Two days into the week, I came down with blisters on my butt cheek, went to a clinic because I thought I had gotten bit by something in the sand, but was told to go directly to the ER.

After being seen, was told by a nurse that I had HERPES and that I needed to talk to my husband since I had not had any new sexual partners!

Doctor came running into room and told me (and the nurse) that I did NOT have HERPES, I had HERPES ZOSTER (otherwise known as SHINGLES). What a relief! But then he tells me that the shingles virus has most likely killed my unborn child.

So, I was alone in a hospital with them doing an ultrasound to see if my baby was still alive. Talk about heart wrenching! Thankfully everything was fine with the pregnancy and I got medicine and pain pills to deal with the shingles. I make it through the rest of the week in lots of pain…but ok.

Then, on the last day of our trip, our 13 month old comes down with a TERRIBLE fever. We couldn’t get it down with medicine, so we eventually decide to take him to the ER. By the time we get into an examination room (they took FOREVER in registration waiting to make sure our insurance would pay) his temperature was 106.4!! The doctor asks us, has he started having seizures yet?

Spent the night with him on my chest and both of us being covered in cold, wet towels. We were not allowed to fly the next day and the next flight we could get wasn’t for another week.

10. A little more puke to finish things off

Drove about 400 miles with 3 kids. 15 minutes from the hotel, the 2 year old vomited chocolate milk all over the minivan. Good times.