I've told this before on MN but I'll tell it again. 
We lived a long way from PILS and DH's DB and SIL, who lived in the same town. They usually all came to stay with us, three or four times a year, and alsways at Christmas, so I was often putting all four of them up at the same time, cooking huge meals etc. Anyway, one year we had a big family party at the PILS, and they had other relatives from abroad staying at their house, so couldn't put us up. We naturally assumed we'd stay at BILs and SILs, but the aprty approached and arrangements were being finalised, BIL got on the phone (prompted by SIL I suspect) to say he hoped we'd understand but they couldn't possibly put us up either, as their house was too small and we'd have to book a hotel.
They had a three bed house. All immaculate and fully furnished with spare beds etc, and room on the floor for a travel cot and a couple of little people's sleeping bags. No problem - or so I thought. But no, to them it was just not possible.
They had no children, only two of them in this three bed house. 
(SIL is a real stress-head, one of those people who cannot cope with anything outside of her usual routine, and who hates having other people in her house if she can possibly help it.)
But they said that the day after the party at PILs they would love it if we would go round for a cup of tea in the morning, before we went back to PILs together for lunch. There was an ulterior motive - they wanted to show off their newly landscaped garden. 
So, we duly booked into a hotel (right around the corner from BILs) , then in the morning after breakfast, we checked out, it was 10am and we had three small children in tow. We rang BIL to say we were on our way, and he said 'Oh no, you can't come yet. SIL is still out at church and then she always stops for a cup of tea with her mum on the way back. She won't be here until after 11. Come about 11.30'
So we said 'that's ok, we'll just come now and chat to you on your own while we wait for her - and besides, we've checked out of the hotel and it's Sunday morning, it's cold and there's nowhere to go.'
He said 'No. I'm sorry, you'll have to wait until 11.30. She'll be terribly upset if I let you in before she is here. She wanted to be here when you saw our new garden for the first time.' 
So we wandered around a garden centre trying to kill time in the freezing cold, we couldn't even go and get anything to eat as we'd all had a huge hotel breakfast and then we just gave up and went straight to PILs, arriving early for lunch. (at least they let us in!) When BIL and SIL turned up for lunch they were acting all disappointed that we didn't turn up. We explained that the DCs were cold and bored and they wouldn't let us in the bastards we had nowhere to go, so we went straight to PILs. So they insisted that as soon as lunch was over, we must all go back to their house to look at the flipping garden, which I really did not give a stuff about by this point. 