To ask for your worst holiday ever?

[5amisthenew7am]

We’ve just got back from what I think was our worst holiday ever.

It rained heavily for 6 days out of 7
The kids fought all day, every day
I had to keep logging on for work because of a crisis situation
We went with my parents who made every excuse not to spend time with us and basically just took themselves off for lovely day trips without us. They didn’t lift a finger to help
Me and one DC both got D&V
The pool at the villa was absolutely freezing with giant bugs in it so nobody wanted to do any swimming
Our flights were delayed there and back

We actually went somewhere really beautiful and I’d been looking forward to it for months. The trip cost so much money and I honestly have never been so happy to get home.

I would love to hear others stories to make me feel better!

Went to Spain when the kids were little and it was an all inclusive we booked on ceefax (young folk, look it up 😂)
Turned out to be like a massive rough housing estate by the beach, where most families left their kids to run free range while they got pissed in the bars all day.
DS got food poisoning so was really poorly most of the week, dd threw up all over a table in a cafe, and getting to the pool every day was like running the gauntlet in case you got pelted in the head with a stray apple/stone/football thrown by errant kids.
We even got a bollocking from the holiday rep (as a group) because of the bad behaviour of the drunk parent/child hooligan contingent.

1. the family holiday where my menopausal mother was a nightmare to be around and stormed out of a restaurant
2. the family holiday where the car broke down and we had to all share a hotel room in the middle of an industrial estate with no car for 3 days (2 adults 2 teenagers)
3. the holiday I had as a late teen when my then boyfriend told me he thought he was gay (and when I got home I discovered he’d given me an STI)
4. Morocco, where I got dysentery

@Paintbench this is a light-hearted thread and all you’ve done is criticise. Do you enjoy picking on people?

My husband (then my boyfriend) and I went to a hotel complex in Alicudia and we were literally the only couple amongst hundreds of families. It was all you can eat and the hotel was full of round red sweating dads in fake football shirts by the pool eating burgers and pints for breakfast one was sick in the pool at 10am

The food daily was identical and very much of the fried variety. They only did one dessert which was angel delight with soggy coco pops sprinkled on top!

The worst part was that our room overlooked the kids entertainment stage and every hour on the hour, they sang the Rolf Harris song The Court of King Caractacus!!!! The holiday was in 2002 so no idea why they were tormenting children with a 1960 song!!
Even with a pillow on each ear you could still hear it!!

The final straw was the dodgy water park opposite that we paid loads to get into and we went on one ride that felt so unsafe as the water was so fast and I stepped on some glass so we left after one ride!

This wasn't my holiday but my sister's and BIL. A cheap Tenerife package deal. As they arrived at the hotel there was a man on a sunbed giving oral to a woman. And it all went downhill from there 😬🤣 it appears to have been some kind of sex hotel and my sister was propositioned multiple times

Imagine this 10 times a day for 14 days!!!

Honeymoon - Bali - 2 weeks of puking and shits. Had to go to Balinese hospital. Never been so ill in my life!!

@UtterlyUnimaginativeUsername That must have been so disappointing for all of you. Had your DD experienced panic attacks before or was it out of the blue?
Either way, would it be worthwhile looking into a 'fear of flying' course?
We don't fly much any more, not so much due to the flight itself as the fact that most airports seem to be in the 9th circle of hell. The travel to airport, queue, check-in, queue again and then queue some more is horrendous and exhausting unless you shell out ££££ for business class.
A few years ago, pre-pandemic, DH and I decided to have a city break in Geneva at the end of his annual skiing trip so I would meet him there, flying from Stansted.
(The airport was jammed with no spare seating at all in the departure lounge.)

The flight left around 2pm and should taken about two hours. After which I realised we had not even started the descent. The pilot announced we could not land at Geneva yet, it was very busy. On a Sunday afternoon in ski season, no shit Sherlock. So we circled around for a bit then he announced we would have to land at Lyon to refuel. Then a bit later he said sorry, the flight would terminate at Lyon but not to worry, there would be coaches waiting to take us on to Geneva.
So we disembarked at Lyon, unscheduled arrival, airport basically closed. No food, drink or coaches. No airline rep either. One turned up after an hour or so but dommage, it was Sunday afternoon and no coaches were available. Sorry. She was as much use as a wet kleenex.
Passengers could either get a train into Lyon and return to the airport tomorrow to wait for a flight, or get a taxi to Geneva. All to be sorted out by ourselves, of course. It was dark by then and raining heavily. Big queue for taxis, obviously. I eventually shared a nine seater minibus cab with eight other people and we set off for Geneva along the motorway, at breakneck speed, in heavy rain, with a chain-smoking driver who was also glued to his phone the entire time. We were too scared to ask him to slow down in case he turfed us out on the side of the motorway.
Arrived in Geneva over five hours later than we should have - and the taxi fare was over €90 a head for a 1-1/2 hour journey.
Seven years on I am still furious that Easyjet just abandoned a plane load of passengers to our own devices in a country other than our destination with no support at all, and took no responsibility for any of it.
The rest of the break was thankfully uneventful. The Patek Philippe watch museum was good.

😂😂😂 glad it perked up your holiday.

i’ve remembered another one that wasnt the ”worst ever” but …

In my late 20’s, a friend offered me a place on a super cheap hol to a friend of a friends dads uncles cousins apartment in Spain.

4 young single females, arrived and dumped bags and went down to the on site supermarket to pick up supplies and after a few mins one of girls whispers “no one is wearing clothes”…

It was a nudist resort brimful of retirees letting it all hang loose. Miles from anywhere. We spent the week subathing on a tiny roof terrace. We were confronted twice by resident pervs who said we were not behaving “in the spirit of the resort”.

One evening at a nearby bar we were recommended a great beach. We scraped together enough for a days car hire and experienced the longest hairiest cliff edge drive of our lives to get there. pre sat nav, thought we were going to die.

We got out of the car at the most amazing beach and declared it all worth it, until….the realisation that no one was wearing clothes and it was a nudist beach. We braved it out and when i went for a swim the waves threw me against rocks and i gashed my head badly as i was (inexplicably) more worried about protecting my boobs. Still got a small scar to remind me of that one.

The music on repeat anecdotes are reminding me of my parents' account of their honeymoon in Torremolinos in the early 1970s. It seemed that the hotel bar only had one record - "Delilah", by Tom Jones (great choice for a honeymoon 😆). On about day 3 the guests banded together and hid it.

Soooo many:

• Turkey where my exh didn't bring any money. Charged everything to our room,without my knowledge, and I had to borrow money from my friends to pay the hotel bill. We had a row when I found out what he was doing, he slept in the on-site gym every night for the rest of the holiday.

• Majorca where my exh got so drunk he left me at a bar without any money and I had to walk 7 miles back to the hotel. When I had the audacity to wake him when I got back, he threw his wedding ring off the balcony.

• Dorsey where my exh got a tattoo which meant he couldn't swim. At the outdoor pool I swam with 6 yo dd in the main pool and he was to watch 2 yo dd in the baby pool. He watched her walk to the deep end of the main pool and nearly fall in, she was stopped by the lifeguard.

• Disneyland Paris where my exh was so miserable. He insisted on being back at the hotel for dinner at the time he would have had dinner at home which meant we missed the fireworks. Until the penultimate night, when he accused me of spoiling his holiday because I asked him to cheer up. He then proceeded to tell me he wanted a divorce. On the final day my 2 dds and I spent the whole day in the park and stayed for the fireworks, it was amazing. I finally saw who he was.

• Cornwall where my friend refused to stop putting wet wipes down the toilet of the ancient cottage we were staying with. She refused to buy her kids drinks or dessert when we ate out and complained about how unfair it was that my children were getting them. She wore her coat on the beach, when she did come to the beach. And didn't want to pay for any activities. She still asks me when are we going away again.

The holiday to beautiful Kefalonia with my cousin

TBF she's always been a bit ditsy but a smile and a joke gets us through an awful lot, except that something seemed to have flipped and I spent most of the week apologising for her

A tour guide who mentioned her DH and DF waiting for her at home was told "Urrgghh, he LIVES with you? Won't it be better when he's dead?", a couple who were there for their DD's wedding (but were spending the second week on their own) were asked why they'd be "so stupid as to crash the honeymoon", the hotel manager was asked why, instead of employing family members, he "didn't give the jobs to people who really needed them", and on entering a church where a saint was preserved in a silver coffin she launched on a litany of "Ugh! Does it smell? That's disgusting, it shouldn't be allowed" to the point where she was asked to leave

Fortunately we got split up on the flight home, and believe me I needed that relaxing 3 hours

I had to be on standby for work! DH took the kids out on his own. Hope that clears it up

In my best Alan Partridge voice...."they must be sex people, Lynn.....sex people " 😂

The one where the holiday rep booked us into a hotel with a strip club / hostess bar next door, moved us to a new resort after I complained, found that was closed. Moved us again to the very top of the island, live plug hanging out of the wall. No open bars or swimming pool.

Anyone else like to go back to same trusted places? 🤣 we are planning to go back to same hotel and resort next year as the gamble to try somewhere new is always a worry (despite reviews) it will be our third time there but we love it

Yeah I think I might just go back to Disney World in Orlando. Safe & clean. 😂

@Aposterhasnonamejust read your post whilst sat at the pool in the DR. Almost disappointed our hotel hasn’t played the mutha fucka song!

On holiday right now.

So far my 4YO DS has kicked me in the nose, bursting it open with blood gushing out.

Then tonight he smacked the kiddies menu (laminated) right into my retina. I had a genuine 2 to 3 seconds of thinking I had lost an eye.

Overall it's still been great but we do have 4 days still to go. If I still have all my teeth by then I guess that's a win.

This makes me think of the film A Real Pain. Very funny - from a distance!

I’ve been lucky enough to have had some great holidays and there’s nothing to compare with these amazingly awful stories.

Just a little anecdote…

We had a cheap week in Goa 25 years ago which was fun other than getting the shits. I was managing ok but needed the loo badly at Palolam beach. It was a hut. I was squatting and squirting for Britain and doing my best not to breathe, when I realized I wasn’t alone. A pig was under the “seat” eating its dinner. How I didn’t puke I have no idea. 🤮🤮🤮

I’ve never had a terrible holiday (I’m ignoring the ones when I was a child with my abusive father) but we arrived in Praia da Luz, Portugal on the morning of 4 May 2007. It was our first family holiday with 9 month old DS but it was difficult to enjoy ourselves surrounded by police, media etc.

Not really a holiday as such but my cousin got married to his French wife exactly a week after Diana princess of wales died and it was the day of the funeral
We as the extended family all attended the wedding in a village about 70 miles from Paris the mood was very sombre and every tv channel was showing the funeral, the wedding itself was great though
The next day my uncle the grooms father decided to take a trip to Paris, I tagged along with him and my aunt and another of my cousins we did go to the tunnel where the accident happened.

Oh that must have been difficult.