The best bunch of holiday disaster stories you'll read! – Mummascribbles

We are off on our hols shortly, and fingers crossed we have a wonderful week. The other half’s Mum and Dad have booked a huge house (it’s more of an estate) in Herefordshire, there are about 14 of us in total, mostly adults and a small bunch of kids, and I’m so pleased to not be doing the school run for another week! Yes, we are taking a term time holiday, but it’s OK – the school have totally approved it (since we didn’t actually book it so had no control over the date, and also because it’s a huge family celebration for important birthdays). I do love Zach’s school!

Fingers crossed we have a good week of weather. Being so close to Wales, well – we just don’t know what’s going to happen – but as long as it isn’t going to rain the whole week, we should be OK.

Going away though, it got me thinking about holiday disasters. We have all had them. They might not be hellish disasters, just things that have happened that at that moment, seemed like the worst thing in the world.

We haven’t had many huge disasters (unless I have blanked them out), but we have had a couple of tales to tell.

One was when we went on holiday a few years ago. It was pre-Oscar and it was another holiday with the in-laws. We had all arrived and we went for a walk down to the beach. In the excitement of seeing the sea, Zach and his two cousins went burning off, only Zach tripped over and cut up his knees really bad. There was blood everywhere, it was obviously painful, and he freaks out massively over the sight of blood. It put a real dampener on the start of our holiday, and it made him pretty fretful over his injuries for the duration. Sand and fresh cuts isn’t a good combination, and neither is the sea…ouch!

The other thing I remember, and while it wasn’t a disaster, it was a pretty scary day! We were on our Eurocamp holiday when Zach was 2, and we were in a mobile home. We had the biggest storm. There was thunder, lightening, and gales. It just came over, sat over us, did its stuff, and then overnight, disappeared again. We had managed to go to the swimming pool in the morning, but from lunchtime onwards, we were camped in our mobile home not going outside at all!

I thought I would take it to my lovely blogging community to hear their holiday disaster stories! Over to them…

We turned up at our booking.com property and found this idyllic cottage in a perfect lakeside location infested with hundreds of dying flies. We had to wait outside whilst they tried to clean up, we stayed but didn’t sleep a wink due to the noise of the ones they hadn’t manage to clean out, and left at 4am. I wrote a blog post on it!

Have Kids Will Travel UK

I went to Egypt in 2008 with my then boyfriend for a two week all inclusive holiday. I was loving sampling all the local cuisine and having a fab time. We booked a camel ride and on the way there, the road was really bumpy, didn’t think anything of it but my stomach was churning. Later that night we went out to an outdoor rave and I couldn’t face having a drink…(should have realised then what was to come!)

When we got back, I suddenly had the urge to vomit, but as I did so, the urge to do the same out of my back end came. I quickly sat down on the toilet and let the world fall out as I continued vomiting all over the bathroom floor.

I was room-bound for four days and as soon as I was better, my boyfriend started with it…

Travelling With Boys

We forgot Bear. Bear, who our then 3 year old son had slept with every single night of his life. Bear who was a unique, not-available-in-the-shops, one of a kind. (gifted by a friend and was of course the one he chose to be his nighttime friend). I realised two and a half hours into our three hour journey. I had visions of tears at bedtime. I imagined a week of no sleep and our holiday being ruined. I felt like the worst Mum in the world. I cried. I panicked. I rowed with the husband. I googled where we could get a substitute Bear. We arrived at our destination not talking to one another and dreading bed time. Turns out the three year old couldn’t have cared less. He went to bed fine and never mentioned Bear once!

Life, Love and Dirty Dishes

I had an allergic reaction to the detergent a hotel used and my face swelled up like I’d been beaten up. The staff at the hotel accused my boyfriend of assaulting me and asked if I wanted them to call the police. Oops. 

Girls Gospel

The owner of the place we booked for our wedding night was meant to leave the key under a plant pot as he had a last minute errand to run. We searched under every plant pot and stone and couldn’t find it. We couldn’t get hold of them as their number kept going straight to voicemail. So we had to get a taxi back to the in-laws who then tried to find us alternative accommodation at such a late hour as they had guests staying over. The guests even joined in to ring nearby hotels etc. Eventually found somewhere but at this point the tiredness had well and truly set in so it was a case of straight to bed really 😂

The Growing Mum

We arrived at our honeymoon destination at 3am after a 5 hour delay (not ideal with 2 children under 4!) to find the apartment infested with cockroaches. They moved us to another room, but the next morning told us that was only temporary so we had to up and move everything again. Two days later in the early hours of the morning, we awoke to the sound of someone breaking in, my husband armed with the pole of the sun umbrella scared him off! They decided to move us to a completely different hotel, so our third lot of packing and this time it was an all inclusive hotel which was full of drunk people keeping the two little ones awake all night! Not exactly the honeymoon I had dreamed of!!

Big Family, Little Adventures

My entire family got sick, and my husband got taken off the plane – and it was delayed for hours while they checked him over. I didn’t know if he was going to make it back on to the flight; they even took our bags off with our car and house keys in there. You can read the entire story here, it was bloody awful!

Whinge Whinge Wine

Ours was probably missing our flight to Portugal due to a delay at outsized baggage. Except we didn’t miss it at all, the plane was still there, but the airport staff refused to let us and two other families through the gate. After a 4am start this was not good news and we had to wait to be escorted back through customs. Luckily we managed to get a rescue flight from Gatwick later that day, so a train journey and several hours later we finally arrived.

Back With A Bump

We booked a coach tour to the volcanoes in Lanzarote

Toilet stop at the top, everyone got off the coach for ten minutes.
We took kiddies to the toilet. Went back and the coach had left without us at top of the volcanoes with two kiddies 😱

Luckily there was a restaurant there and we were able to call a taxi!

All things baby and me

This is more of a near miss than a full disaster. We were driving in France as a family with four bicycles on a tow-bar carrier. Despite checking the weights carefully against the car handbook, the suspension spring snapped on the nearside rear wheel. We could hear a knocking noise but didn’t know what had happened. We had a ferry to catch so quickly bought a rooftop bike carrier to shift some weight off the rear and carried on. When we got home we discovered the suspension spring was just balancing in place and we had been very lucky not to collapse into a heap.

Falcondale Life

I took my son on our first foreign holiday to Finnish Lapland. I hadn’t flown since I was a child and this trip involved six flights, three there and three back. I managed to miss one by getting the times muddled up, and ended up stuck in Finland for 24 hours while we waited for another connection to Amsterdam. My son was brilliant and stayed awake the entire time, with no ill effects! The following day was his birthday, which was very quiet after all the adventure.

The Parent Game

When we went on a family holiday to Turkey a few years ago, it was pouring down with rain in England as we boarded the plan.

We got stuck on the plane on the tarmac for a few hours before we could take off.

When we got to Turkey our cases were completely soaked through, all of our clothes were wet. It seems they had been left outside in the rain while we were on the plane!

The English Family

I went as part of a singing party on a cruise, and were booked from Mexico to Barbados. We had 2 flight changes, at Amsterdam and Mexico City to get to Acapulco. Well, the first flight was delayed, we ran through Amsterdam airport and only just made the connection. However, our luggage didn’t. The cruise director told us to get some clothes in Acapulco, and we had to run through the shops before the ship sailed. We barely had a thing! And then we waited for 8 days for our luggage to arrive! Needless to say, as our stage wear was in the cases, we didn’t perform until then!

A Rose Tinted World

We took our ten month son to Lanzarote. It would have been fine but he got ill the second day we were there. We spent most of the time in and out of doctors surgeries and had pretty much zero sleep. It was a massive fail!

Me and B Make Tea

Well, when I was a teenager I went on a ski trip to France. It was a great time until I got separated from the group, wound up on an advance slope alone and a white out hit. I was sat on my bum, shuffling down a mountain, unable to see, with only one ski for hours… I’m lucky I made it back alive to be honest.

The Busy Papa

Discovered I had a severe shellfish allergy in a fancy seafood restaurant in Boston, USA, which is the city my husband is from. It was his favourite restaurant too! My reaction was so severe I was hospitalised for three days and I didn’t even get to enjoy the five star hotel he’d booked us!

Welsh Mum

And if you fancy reading a couple of great holiday disaster blog posts, you can check out the family camping trip story by Midwife and Life, and the breakfast bar poop incident by Father-Hood.

Do you have any holiday disaster stories to tell? I would love to hear!

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