Have you ever accidentally booked the wrong holiday? Or similar?

[CrockyBetter]

The thread about booking the nudist campsite made me wonder of you have ever booked the wronh hotel, flight,.theatre tickets, anything really and what happened?

I booked hotel for 12 months time and didnt notice until we had arrived at our destination after a 9 hour flight and 3 hour taxi journey. Our hotel was fully booked. Thankfully it was a chain hotel and we were able to go to anothee hotel nearby and they refunded the original booking. Cost about £200 more at the new hotel tho

[DrDavidBanner]

We once booked a lovely week away in Newquay Cornwall, but it turned out the B&B we'd booked was in New Quay Wales

[spiderlight]

Booked a train ticket to get to a job interview in the middle of nowhere, having been sent out-of-date directions by the charity the job was for. It was an all-day thing and I was travelling up the day before, arriving late afternoon and staying on site. Not only did British Rail (as was - this was 25 years ago) happily sell me a ticket to a station that had closed five years previously, but when I changed at Paddington and checked with a guard at the station, he merrily put me on a train to a station with a similar name, in completely the opposite direction. I got off where I thought I was supposed to, in a snowstorm, and found myself in a tiny rural station with none of the landmarks I'd been told to look out for. I asked someone else who'd got off for directions and she realised I was in the wrong part of the country entirely: she thankfully took pity on me (and wasn't an axe murderer), took me home for a cup of tea, rang British Rail, found the train that would get me closest to my destination and put me on the next train back to Paddington. It was pitch dark by the time I got there. I was escorted through a load of tunnels by a kindly tramp (also not an axe murderer), and at the other end I told my tale of woe to a taxi driver who took me to the place where I was staying for all the cash I had. I had to bang on the door to wake up the other interviewee, who had given up on me and gone to bed, it being about 1am by now. The following day I arrived for my interview to be informed that my mum had rung them about a dozen times to see if I'd arrived yet

I was still offered the job though!

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

I once travelled round Central America with a woman who'd booked her flight home out of the wrong Antigua. So she had a flight from the Caribbean but she was in Guatemala.

Oops.

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

On work trips I've got too many stories. Flights booked to Madrid when My meeting was in Barcelona. Flights to Basel but a hotel in Zurich.
Arrived in Dusseldorf late at night to no booking. Same in Edinburgh.

It's way easier when it's not your money though. 😉

[eurochick]

Not us, but we were sat in our seats at the theatre waiting for the show to start when a couple came and told us we were in their seats. They got quite stroppy with us and went to get the usher. When they came back after more stroppiness we worked out that we did all have the same seats but they had turned up 24 hours early. I think the theatre staff found them a spot somewhere, but thankfully not on our laps.

[Cruddles]

@eurochick had something similar many years ago at the Sydney Olympics. Had tickets to a football semi final, sold out. We get there sit in our seats, game starts, having a right old time. During the first half we get a father and son shuffle to our seats, they were running late and we were in their seats. Impossible, it's a sell out, we know where we are. We check tickets, we were in row AA, we actually had tickets for row A, which were even better seats. So we shuffled there as it was even better.

[Cruddles]

I said better one too many times there

[Dinosauratemydaffodils]

I realised on a late afternoon flight to Nassau that our hotel was on an entirely different island to the one we were about to land on.

We managed to squeeze (literally) onto a connecting flight. First and only time so far, they've held an airplane on the runway for me.

[bubblebubblebubbletrouble]

I'm another one who's managed to book a flight out of Heathrow and back into Gatwick

I still maintain that the BA website shouldn't give you an option for Gatwick flights if you type LHR into the search field.

[FlamingoAndJohn]

Do you want the train going to "London Waterloo", or "Waterloo"? They're not the same!

I always think that Liverpool Street and Liverpool Lime Street is very confusing to a tourist.

[MrsAvocet]

My husband's PA has made quite a few errors in booking travel arrangements for him, including booking a hotel and parking at Edinburgh airport the night before an early flight from Manchester, and flights into the wrong airport in Sweden so he ended up hundreds of miles from where he needed to be, in the middle of winter. He tends to make his own travel arrangements whenever possible now, though he's got form for getting stuff wrong too.
Not travel related, but my Aunt used someone else's cheque book for weeks once, back in the day when cash or cheques were the only common ways of paying for things. To be fair, it wasn't her fault - the bank gave her the wrong one and how was she to know they had 2 Mrs J Bloggs with accounts at the same branch. It was only when she got her statement in the post and discovered she had a lot more money left than usual at the end of the month that she got suspicious. The other Mrs Bloggs must have been richer as apparently she hadn't noticed anything was amiss until the bank contacted her, and she hadn't been sent my Aunt's cheques, they were both spending from the same account!

[UncleShady]

I also know someone whose brother had moved to the Home Counties, and said if he got a train to the nearest station he'd collect him. Friend got a train to this station, waited for ages and eventually phoned his brother to say where are you, brother said in the car park, friend said which one, brother said the exit by platform X, friend went there - no brother - this went on and on with them both describing what they could see but not getting why they couldn't see each other until they realised one of them was at Woking station and the other was at Wokingham station.

[StCharlotte]

@frankie001

I once booked a sea lion boat tour while in Newquay. When I double checked and rang them to find the dock, I realised I’d booked Newquay in Wales. They said it kept happening, but it really wasn’t clear on the website!

We used to run a B&B in a place with the same name as a major tourist attraction. About five hours' drive away.

I had a radar for these mis-bookings and would get in touch. They were very grateful!

Although there was a major incident at the tourist attraction and we had to field calls from half the national press!

[UnaCorda]

@CrockyBetter

Erm... my sister is not 70. My grandma was at the time though...

I was about to ask, if your sister was 70, how old was your rollercoaster-loving grandma?

[BikeRunSki]

I once got the train to Bristol Parkway. My lift was at Bristol Temple Meads. Their mistake.

[whichteaareyou]

My husband booked us an air bnb in Canada for June instead of July. They were then fully booked for when we needed to go and we ended up finding the best place ever. our trip wouldn't of been the same without staying there!

[Francienolan]

I used to work in the theatre and people showing up for the wrong day is extremely common. Once we had people show up from another continent for a show an ENTIRE YEAR EARLY. Obviously the show wasn't on yet so it wasn't a case of just finding them a seat as you can when it's the right show but wrong time or something, as long as it's not sold out.

And I've been on the other end of it too, although it was actually the theatre's fault as I had made the booking over the telephone. This was for a Broadway show that had been due to close 1 July that year, so I booked for 28 June on the phone. Unbeknownst to me and the public, the show had actually been extended with a new celebrity cast for the rest of the summer so it was showing up in the box office software for the person taking my booking. She booked me into 28 July. However I didn't notice this, nor did the box office when I got my tickets (it was a system where you swipe your card and it prints the ticket), and it was only when someone came late for my seat. The usher gave me her seat and advised me the ticket would work again on 28 July, which it did. I wouldn't have been so cheeky without the usher advising me to, I will add!

[Parkandride]

Booked a hotel near the airport for what I thought was the night before an early flight home- was the wrong date so we were already back. Not too bad though.

I've had work trips were I've been patiently waiting for colleagues in hotel receptions but PAs have booked them into another hotel from the same chain a few miles away.

Also one where a colleague was complaining about the long layover on the way home, seemed surprised when my tickets were direct and he was being sent via Ireland for 8 hours (it was only something like Germany to London, normally direct!) The flights weren't full, the person booking it was just away with the fairies

[Strawberrycreamsundae]

A friend was labelling the luggage and discovered should have flown the previous day, error no. 1. Rebook flights.
They turned up an airport with her family to discover DD’s recent birthday put her above the age limit for being on your mother’s passport, error no. 2. Rebook holiday, cancel first accommodation.
Her DH had to trek to the passport office for a new passport, holiday rebooked.
Family go to totally different destination, it pours with rain all week, come home with d&v.
It simply wasn’t meant to be.

[MoonriseKingdom]

We went camping in France with my SIL and family. Me and DH had to go home but they were staying on another week. My SIL recommended an amazing sounding campsite not too far from where we would get an early morning ferry. She spoke excellent French and phoned up and booked it.
I speak much less excellent French. We turned up saying we had a reservation and the man looked a bit confused but showed us to our pitch. We walked around looking for the promised amazing views of the coast but couldn’t find them. There was a dawning realisation we were at the wrong campsite and this one was somewhat less impressive. It was quite late by that stage so we were stuck with it.

[gabsdot45]

DH and I turned up to a concert a year early once. Deacon Blue in Dublin a couple of years ago. We thought the crowd looked a bit young as we queued up.
We went to the cinema that night instead and went to see Deacon Blue the following year. It was a great show.

I used to book travel in a job I had once and a manager asked me to book personal flights for her for a holiday. I swear I booked the dates she told me but when the confirmation came she said she told me a different return date. Her trip ended up only being 2 days instead of 4. She was not happy.

[LoopyGremlin]

I once had a holiday booked to the Caribbean flying out from Gatwick. This was booked by the travel agent but I decided to book return flights from Edinburgh to Gatwick myself. Got there fine and flew out. Then realised I had booked the return to Edinburgh for 14 days later when we were actually staying 14 nights. 🙈 Had to phone BA at enormous expense from hotel phone to rearrange for the following day. This was many years ago so before mobiles.

[SallyOMalley]

@Poppyismyfavourite

Ooh although I did almost book the wrong flight once - was booking manchester (UK) to philadelphia (US). I had no idea there was a manchester in the US, so was almost sucked in by the cheap price of that flight!

My sister did exactly the same thing when she was making plans to go to NYC! Thankfully, her then-boyfriend looked over her shoulder and realised her mistake before she hit 'book'.

[BlueSwathesChoose]

I booked a cruise for Halloween. It was the first time I had managed to persuade DH to go away in 6 years. So i booked and paid. This was in 2015. The cruise I paid for was in 2016.

Thankfully i realised before we tried to embark. (The lead passenegr Mrs Blue Swathes Choose age on embarkation being 1 year in front of my age gave iut away).

So we went to Centerparcs that Halloween and enjjoyed the cruise the year after.

[DianaT1969]

There are two train stations with exactly the same name in Germany, about 5 hours apart. I booked to the wrong one online. Fortunately I realised something was 'off' as I was boarding it.