Carlos Whittaker

May11

What’s Your Worst Travel Story?

Posted by loswhit in Travel

I have had some bad luck in the airports lately.
I’m stuck in the Phoenix Airport trying to get to Catalyst Dallas.
But nothing like a 3 day stint in the Las Vegas airports spending my life savings in the terminal slot machines.
What is your worst travel story?
Los

Andrew

My wife and I getting explosive diarrhea on our honeymoon in the demonican republic. We had to come back 2 days early. Horrible…

http://www.messycanvas.com Mandy

We had this happen too, only we were in Grand Cayman, and it happened the first day we got there, so we didn’t go home early. Agreed – it was horrible.

http://www.refinedinchrist.com Phil

Then the day we flew home from a vacation in Spain when I was a teenager. I had bad food poisoning and diarrhea on the plane which was not very nice at all. Had to have a doctor come out and see me. Was so glad to just get off the plane in the end.

That was my worst travel story!
http://www.nateaton.com Nate Eaton

Coming home from visiting family in Alabama over the Christmas holidays, we first got re-directed from Dallas to Tyler, TX, where we were not allowed to get off the plane for 2 hours. We then got re-directed to Shreveport, LA, where we had to spend the night in the airport because Dallas was still shutdown. The next day, we just barely were allowed back onto our plane because other stranded people were also desperate to get to Dallas. Once we got to Dallas, we were stuck there for three days because the shutdown had delayed all of their flights for that long. They put us up in a hotel (at a discounted rate. they didn’t foot the bill)in the middle of nowhere in Dallas. The nearest food was a Whataburger at a gas station about two miles down the road.
We were traveling with my in-laws, my wife’s elderly grandmother, and my sister-in-law’s family, which included an 11 month old. Our luggage continued on to our destination in California without us, so we wore the same clothes for 4 days.

I’ve got NO love for Dallas. God speed getting there for Catalyst, Los.

JaxFost

Geez.That’s awful!

http://rollinghills.org Aaron D

Being diverted to the wrong city in the middle of China on the day we were going to meet our adoptive daughter…no guide, no phones, and our passports are lost. Read on for the gory details.

Part One:
http://doerrstops.blogspot.com/2009/10/scary-story-for-halloweenpart-1-blog.html

Part Two:
http://doerrstops.blogspot.com/2009/11/stranded-in-chengdu-part-two_01.html
http://ristowswife.wordpress.com/ Katie Ristow

My hubby and I went on a cruise for our honeymoon. The first two days were spent seasick. We took some non-drowsy dramamine from room service, and spent the third day sleeping. The fourth day, we went onland and did an amazing hike through the jungle. But I got stung by a big black hornet- looking thing. I told the tour guide, but he laughed it off saying that I couldn’t possibly have been stung by that because it would kill me. My arm swelled up and I spent the next two days with an excruciating headache. But I survived to kayak in waters that I later learned are infested with violent squid.
http://www.justafishinabowl.com Angie

My Roadtrip Nightmare: Getting out of the car at 4am to pee on the side of a stretch of deserted highway and peeing on my socks and into my sneakers. It was about 20 degrees and we had six hours to go. My suitcase was buried under a pile of luggage and we had to unpack the car to get out my only other pair of shoes: a pair of 3″ strappy silver heels. They looked amazing with my sweats, if I do say so myself!
http://www.messycanvas.com Mandy

Emergency landing in witchita, Kansas. Not fun to land and see fire trucks and ambulances driving beside you on the runway. Then i saw our landing on the news later that nite!

I was traveling alone and had to spend the night in a hotel in KS. I did meet an old man having a drink in the creepy lounge and he gave me his phone number. He told me if my girlfriends and I ever came to CA we could ride in his yacht. Hmmm.
pdoc72

Ok, this is a long one, but I’ll try to be as brief as I can. It all started when my Father-in-Law had open heart surgery. My wife and I had planned to leave the day after the surgery to go on a trip to Europe. Her dad wouldn’t hear of us cancelling the trip and kept on us to go. We decided to wait and see how the surgery went. Everything went wonderfully, and so we decided to go ahead and make the trip. We met up at the hospital with some friends that were making the trip with us. It was fairly late, and we had an early flight, so we decided to head back to their house and kill a couple of hours before heading to the Atlanta airport. Atlanta is a couple hours drive from us and we made the trip, arriving around 4 AM (a couple of hours before our flight time).
And here’s where it all starts to fall apart. There are apparently only 2 pilots that make the flight from ATL to Dulles in Washington D.C. (our connection). The one that was supposed to fly us to Dulles called in sick. FAA regulations state a pilot must wait a certain amount of time before flying again. Safety and such. So, our flight to D.C. got off about 2 hours late. The problem was that we only had a couple of hours layover for the connection. So, by the time we got to Dulles, our flight to London was gone. Well, that wasn’t the worst thing in the world. There are two flights from Dulles to London a day. We could just catch the later one. We get on the late flight, sit at the terminal and do all the pre-flight checks. And sit…and sit…and sit. Turns out we were having trouble with engine #1. Skipping ahead a bit now…we sat on that plane, at the terminal for 5 hours. I’m a pretty big guy at 6’6”, so sitting in coach for 5 hours without making any actual progress wasn’t fun.
We spent the night in the airport with tiny blankets. Early the next morning, we get back on the plane. We backed out of the terminal and paused, again, for the pre-flight checks. All together now…and sat…and sat…and sat. So, the part they replaced for engine #1 fixed that issue, but did not, however, fix the new issue with engine #3. So, we get back off the plane and wait in the terminal for them to replace the newly bad part. Skipping ahead again, they fixed the other engine just in time to delay us for bad weather.
We finally took off that night and landed in London long enough to clean up and then grab another flight to Glasgow.
So…in summary, we slept in our bed on Tuesday night, sat in the hospital all day Wednesday, flew to Atlanta early Thursday, spent Thursday night in the airport in Dulles, still in the terminal all day Friday, flew overnight to London, then to Glasgow on Saturday to catch a city tour and finally, on Saturday night, sleep in a bed again. We slept about 7 hours out of 84. We later learned we could have been declared clinically insane due to the sleep depravation. That wasn’t surprising, considering the only compensation they gave us was 3 five dollar vouchers.
So, yeah…that was my worst travel story, and why I still loathe the Dulles airport…sorry it was so long.
Fay

Getting sick on a bus in Mexico and dropped of on the side of the road, too sick to notice (or care about) the burro standing over me, sniffing my ‘fro.
molly

Had my 18 month old son at airport by myself. Flying from Atlanta to Memphis to go visit some family. Flight got canceled that night due to weather. No big deal, I’ll just drive home and come back early in the a.m. Took baby and all our stuff on Park-N-Ride bus, got all the way to car… realized that I had checked the car seat as baggage, AND THE BUS HAD ALREADY PULLED AWAY! Stood in the dark parking lot till another bus came around, rode bus back to airport, slept in airport, holding on to 18 month old son with dear life!
http://charlieschurchofchrist.wordpress.com Charlie’s Church of Christ

stuck in Europe for (extra) week due to the Iceland volcano – so missed a week of work AND spent money we didn’t have on an extra week of hotels and food.

and my wife was 6 months pregnant
http://plct.blogspot.com keturah

have you ever taken a bus in Africa? that will top any bad travel story. the roads are ridiculous. there are 2 people per seat, plus chickens, goats, and other livestock on board. [not to mention deodorant is very uncommon in much of Africa.] if you’re a white woman crossing an international border with a US passport, get ready to be charged a skin tax. at every stop, you will have 15 or 20 people bum-rush YOUR window holding up baskets of bananas, cookies, and unidentifiable snacks, and yelling for you to buy them. you may want a bottle of water, because it will probably be between 85 and 110 degrees out, and they’ll charge you like 6 bucks for it. a lady you’ve never met will likely hand you her baby and then take a nap while you look after it. your luggage may or may not get stolen, but you will definitely be scared of that happening every time you stop. you may also think a fight is breaking out at each stop, but you’re not sure because they’re yelling in another language. 16 hours later you’ll arrive at your destination.

believe it or not, that may not be my worst travel day. i made a video about the day i went from thailand to burma to get my visa renewed: http://vimeo.com/13201940
adam

Getting patted down twice, missing my plane, while in my UNITED STATES NAVY UNIFORM.
http://www.dirtygirlsministries.com Crystal Renaud

Johannesberg, South Africa to Washington, DC (18 hour flight) only to miss our connection back home to Kansas City (daylight savings time goof-up by the airline).

Had to fly (instead) to St. Louis and rent a car and drive home.

Yes, 18 hour flight—only to have to fly 2.5 hours to St. Louis—to then rent a car to drive 5 hours home after all of that.
http://www.frenzy-tracy.blogspot.com Tracy

WAIT!! HOLD THE BUS..aren’t you supposed to be in Eugene and Portland?? What the what??
http://blog.connormcc.com Connormcc

mmmm…. probably nearly running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere in Australia…
http://blog.connormcc.com Connormcc

or a 6 hour layover in LAX on our flight from Fiji to NYC that was awful…
Dagny

This is a little long, sorry!

In August 2005 I was moving to Australia to go to bible college when this -> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4142408.stm happened. Ground staff at Heathrow went on strike in support of the catering staff (for planes) that got fired.
So 98% of the flights were cancelled and thousands of people were stranded.
I was supposed to fly out that Friday night and I landed at Heathrow around noon.
Some guy working at the airport just told me to chill, go into the city and come back around 6pm.
When I came back not only had my flight been cancelled but the destination changed from Sydney to Melbourne!!!
I was a bit freaked out. Found airport personnel and asked them what I should do. They pointed at the line in which 2000 people were currently sitting in, yes sitting in, to change their tickets. I looked at the line and thought, not a chance.
Found another lady and asked her if she could help me and she said no, I’m sorry. (Then comes my favourite part because God is awesome!)
Then about an hour later after a minor freak out over the phone to my mom that same lady came up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry about what I said before but I can actually help you. I have a friend that works at the ticket desk and she can get you THE LAST SEAT on a flight going to Sydney. There will be no food on the flight but we’ll give you a voucher to buy food at the gate.’
Then after my 12 hour flight to Singapore… I ran to Mcdonalds..I’ve never been so happy to see that golden arch in my life!

So … it ended well but it was horrible.

And for another one, never fly Ethiopian Airlines!! haha
11 hour red-eye in a seat that cannot recline… not the greatest flight I’ve been on.
http://rvharrison.wordpress.com rach

Spent a ten day trip to Hong Kong throwing up, stomach infection apparently. Was too sick to get on the flight home so they had to have the doctor come to the airport to inject me with something which stopped the sickness and made me really drowsy. They had to hold the plane for me: the glares as we walked on board were not fun!

http://www.calebgordon.com Caleb Gordon

now that is a classic story there!

http://www.calebgordon.com Caleb Gordon

Coming back from FL we got stuck in Dallas, TX on the plane on the runway the pilot says we’ve found a problem with the plane please sit back and relax and watch a movie while we fix it…what movie was it you may be asking?

BUCKET LIST…not the best movie to watch while they are fixing a “problem” on the plane…then 2 hours later…they say “please exit the plane…we can’t fix the problem…” now i feel REALLY good!

I did finally make it home though. Gotta love American.
http://www.bohemianbowmans.com/ Jessica

All of my worst travel stories involve poop. Like the time I got pooped on on train in Europe. Or the time I got pooped on on a trans-atlantic flight…

Oh the joys of traveling internationally with babies.
http://mikecelebrating.blogspot.com mike

My wife and i made plans to visit central Illinois for my grandmother’s 80th birthday. We packed a small duffel bag with two days of clothes and were scheduled to leave Sept. 11 (already a little nerve wracking) We got to the airport to see what we assumed was a large line waiting to check in. By the time we realized what was going on they told us they had overbooked the plane and had to put us on standby, but not to worry they’d have a hotel if we needed it. (the airport was less than 10 miles from my house.) All in all, not terrible, we’d still be able to make it for grandma’s birthday, except this was coming at us in the Gulf: http://a11news.com/images/ike-satellite-view-friday-noon.jpg

The good news is we got to leave on the 12th and celebrate with the family. The bad news is the hurricane wiped out a good portion of the gulf coast on the 13th and we couldn’t fly back into Houston for 9 days. We got to hang out with the family and visit Chicago on two days clothes and came back to a disaster area.
Jeanna B

Well, I will share, though mine is not nearly as bad as most folks, but here goes. I was getting out of the army back in 07 and caught a terrible stomach virus the week before my final moveout. I ended up in the hospital because I got so dehydrated that my blood pressure had dropped dangerously low (like 74/48 or less). Finally I get somewhat better about three days before the final moveout. Well, the morning before I was suppose to clear military housing I ran to walmart with my, then five month old, son to pick up mulch for the flower beds. As I was coming back onpost I fainted, punched the gas (this is what I’ve been told) and slammed my ford expedition in a foot wide pole set has a barrier between the incoming and outgoing traffic. The pole sliced through the front end, the radiator, and the driver’s side axle almost making it to the firewall. Thankfully, I and my son were left uninjured, but the suv that was intended to pull my trailer full of household items was totalled. We ended up having to fly my cousin, who had come up with her 16 y/o daughter home, my husband back up to washington, rent a uhaul that could pull our trailer and a car that probably could have fit inside my expedition. My 16 y/o cousin, 4 y/o son, not quite 2 y/o daughter, 5 month old son, and I squeezed into something like a rav 4 for five days of driving from Fort Lewis, WA to the middle of Arkansas. AND because my cousin didn’t have her license yet guess who did ALL the driving! We did get to see some pretty cool stuff, but I have none of the pictures because I lost the phone that held them about three days after finally making it back to my home state.
http://www.rychus-ruckus.blogspot.com Billy Starkweather

I call it Windy City Stupidity:

I was scheduled to speak at a Family Camp in Wisconsin. Flying from Phoenix to Green Bay with a lay over in Chicago. Flight from Phoenix to Chicago = peachy. Had a two hour lay over not bad so had a time to get a bite to eat.

We boarded the plane in Chi-Town @ 6:00 PM for our ONE HOUR flight North to Green Bay. I noticed in the sky ONE cloud the size of a chicklet. Sat on the plane. Taxied around the airport to where they test engines. Pilot announces that there is a storm approaching so they have to come up with a plan. At about 7 PM we taxied back to the terminal (we should have been landing in Green Bay within 30 min at this point). In the time it took them to come up with a plan for avoiding the storm somewhere in America that still wasn’t in Chicago burned too much fuel while we sat there. We get off the plane and wait. Still no storm.

At about 10:30 PM (3 HOURS AFTER our plane should have arrived) they decided to have us reboard the plane. The storm finally was hitting Chi-Town. The tarmac was drenched. The sky was bright with lightening and our ears deafend by the sound of thunder. We boarded. We taxied away. After waiting our turn we took off at about 11:45 PM.

So in our efforts to avoid the storm we waited till the conditions were extremely worse before we flew away. Even the pilot said, “We won’t be serving any refreshments because of the extreme conditions of the flight.” Windy City Stupidity.
amykay

i had to drive from my college to minneapolis airport tp go visit friends in florida for spring break. it’s about a 3 hour drive so i left in PLENTY of time, probably 5 hours before my flight. oh except somewhere in between the perfectly fine weather at my starting point and destination, there was a blizzard. cue driving 20 mph on the highway.

checked in 10 minutes before take off. put on standby, didn’t get on for two flights. finally got to atlanta. put on standby, waiting for the last flight out i finally broke down in tears. keep in mind i was a 19 year old girl traveling alone and in the atlanta airport!

luckily a very nice dad-age guy came up to me and asked if he could help, whipped out his phone and called a bunch of people trying to help, talked to the gate agent and got me bumped to the top of the standby list. it didn’t get me out of atlanta until the next morning, but he did get the airline to pay for my hotel overnight and meals! he said he traveled all the time for work so i asked him what he did – this was in the height of the anthrax craziness and he said he worked for the bush administration in bioterrorism! he helped because he had a daughter my age and was picturing her in the same situation. lesson learned: have compassion for people in the airport.
http://lukeellard.wordpress.com luke ellard

12 hour layover after a 4 hour wait in hong kong flying back 14 hours to los angeles, then another flight to houston with a 3 hour wait, then back home in louisiana…
http://carolesmithturner.com Carole Turner

It was 13 years ago. We were driving to Florida from Louisiana with our then 2 year old daughter. She had just turned two and she had just been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. It was 2am and the bottom had fallen out of the sky, my husband could hardly see to drive it was raining so far. So when my daughter woke from a sound sleep in her car seat with a panicked afraid look on her face, I thought it was the rain, but soon she started jerking and the sides of her mouth started pulling downward and she launched into a full on seizure. I had orange juice in the car and started trying to give it to her with a straw while my husband looked for somewhere to pull over and call 911 (that was the days before cell phones) he found a rest stop, jumped out in the pouring rain, and called them. By the time they got there she had drank the orange juice and recovered so they didn’t take her to the hospital. The rain stopped, we all had a good cry and then got back on the road.

You NEVER forget the look of your child having a seizure.
http://jennyrain.com Jenny

Trying to get back from South Africa in 2005. The very DAY that I was going home, South African Airlines went on strike. just me and 3000 people stuck in Jo’berg South Africa w/no way home.

It was a total Divine Set up because Every.Single.Stinkin.Person I met was a missionary in Africa.

I threw an internal temper tantrum and told God I would NEVER be a missionary in that “God-forsaken Africa.”

That didn’t work and I’ve been back every year since. Almost went full time, but chickened out. Then got married. Two weeks after being married my husband tells me “I wonder if God is calling me to Africa. So many things are lining up for me to be there.”

All because SAA went on strike.
http://theblanchard.com John Blanchard

When we moved to OKC from CA in 2007, we got snowed-in in Albuquerque, NM for three days. Couldn’t leave in any direction cause of snow and ice. The 40 was completely shut down.

After three days of snow, ice, restaurants closing at 3PM, etc…We bought a map and carved our own way through the state. South to Roswell, East to Lubbock, TX, North to Amarillo, East to OKC.

All in all, we spent almost 24 hours straight driving to make it there. Then I had to start my new job the very next day, on about 4 hours of sleep.
http://justopenthebook.com David Edmisten

Worst by far – a few years back, was in sales and scheduled for a trade show in Lewiston, ME. Flying out of LA, departure was delayed for 2 hours due to rain in Chicago. Finally got out, land at O’Hare, 4 hour delay there waiting to fly to Portland.

We spent an extra 30 minutes in the plane on the ground waiting for a flight crew change. Get in air, as we are about an hour out from Portland, the captain tells us Portland is fogged in. We re-route and land in Boston.

In Boston, they give us cab vouchers for a two hour cab ride to Portland. The cab is packed and I end up in the front seat next to the cabbie. His cooler is competing with my over 6 foot frame for foot room. He’s smoking, so in 30 degree weather we drive with the window open for all 2 hours.

I get dropped off at the Portland airport and pick up a rental car at 3 am. I then drive another hour and a half in the dark, in Maine fog, to finally arrive at the hotel in Lewiston at 4:30am. I get to sleep at 5 am, scheduled to be at trade show booth at 8am.
Total travel time from LA to destination – scheduled for 6 hours, took me 19.5 hours. Fun.