Mine was back in 2008, the weekend before Labor Day. I drove up north to St. Ignace, MI (in the Mackinac Island area, for those familiar with Michigan). I arrived on Friday; it was raining off and on but it didn't stop me. However, as the day wore on it became a steady downpour, and the rain didn't let up until Saturday around late morning. So I head out up towards Lake Superior, after the sun came out, where my car breaks down! :-)

I thought maybe the ignition coil pack might have been wet, but no. Everything under the hood appeared to be dry. I cranked it over once more, and realized that it sounded like it was cranking much faster than normal. Uh oh. Timing belt. SO I get it towed out of the boonies to a dealership in Newberry, MI (close to $300, since I had the basic AAA coverage, NOT the extended plan! What a dumbass!)) where I had to wait until Monday to get into the shop. There's nothing to do in Newberry! Monday arrives, and the car got fixed (It was the timing belt, as I suspected) for only $277, and the mechanic was working on the car for three hours (I sat there in the lobby and watched; I never thought replacing that would be such a major pITA) All in all a good price, IMO. But there was the issue of the hotel in St. Ignace, where my luggage was! They were kind enough to hold the room, and didn't charge me extra for Sunday and Monday, since I wasn't there! That was really cool of them. So, I went back to work Monday more stressed than I was before I left!


So, can you top that? LOL!
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Nope...never had a week on vacation that was worse than a week at work. :-)
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I agree with Tom -- any vacation time is better than working. However, for me visiting family is not a vacation -- it is time off (and is still better than working), but it kills me when people tell me that they are going on vacation to visit their family (parents, grandparents, siblings, in-laws, etc.)...

A vacation is getting away from everything including your family (except for your spouse and maybe your kids -- they are usually required on a vacation :-))
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I can't say that I've had a bad vacation, but I have had a bad experience on vacation.

When I was in Vegas once, the waitress brings a tray full of drinks to the table next to mine. About 5 drinks, most were these big frozen daiquiri types. She spilled the entire tray on me. Then she proceeds to apologize to the table who the drinks belonged to and walked away. I'm sitting there drenched and didn't even get an apology from the waitress.
My wife had some words with the restaurant manager and basically had to explain to him that the least he could do was let me pick some clothes from their gift shop since I was soaking wet.
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Lisa and I went to the Keys this winter and it was right around 12 degrees the whole time we were there. Despite the cold, we had an absolute blast. Wouldn't give it back for anything. :-)
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Spending an entire week on a Holland America cruise ship with my brothers and father, in a room with a toilet that kept malfunctioning, that had no electrical power for over a day, and that didn't notify the passengers until the last minute that for the scheduled stop in the Bahamas, all the shops and stores would be closed, due to Bahamian Labor Day...did I mention they cut the food line off on us twice because they ran it by the clock and if you were waiting in line when the clock hit the time, oh, well...talk about a week in hell...:-)
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Ain't no such thing as a bad vacation.

:-)
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Even bad vacations give make interesting stories...
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I was on this Oceanic flight that broke apart in the sky. We luckily made it to land, but we were quite literally lost.
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My worst vacations were the ones I didn't take. I wish I took more time with my family even if it's to sit at home or take the boat out on the lake for the day.
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I don't take any vacation unless it's successful. So far in the last 40 years I have never had a bad one. Some are better than others but never had a bad one.
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Let's just say that you couldn't pay me enough to go to Disney World.
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Ditto on that.

I have had a bad vacation. Do not go to Acapulco, Mexico. It is such a sh**hole. The city has about 4x more people in it than it should which equates to a 24hr traffic jam to go anywhere. Our car got stopped by the police bc they saw it was a nice car and we had to bribe them to let us go. We ate at "El Zorrito"- the fox..and got the most epic food poisoning of our lives. My sister was the first to get sick and I still have the image (hilarious image) of her holding her hand up to her mouth and then barfing through the gaps between her fingers.

Through the rest of the day we dropped like flies until there were about 6 out of 8 of us sick and all the bathrooms were full. People were hurling over railings, in showers, in and around the toilet. I found a home for the next 5 hours on the floor of the shower in my room where I moaned and sprayed out of both ends for the entire night with the shower running (vivid imagery).

After the night from hell I lost 8 pounds and slept for 17 hours..... Amazing.
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This is a pretty good, er bad one.

Here is my planes, trains, and automobiles story...

I was going to college in Springfield, MO and got a ride with my roomate back home (Detroit) for Christmas vacation. It is about a 12-13 hour drive normally. I was going to get a ride back with him after New Year's but he decided to drop out and not return. So, I bought an Amtrack ticket for $75. This was going to get me from Detroit to Chicago and from Chicago to St. Louis where my other roomate (who stayed in Springfield) was going to pick me up. This was no small feat for those who know St Louis is about a 3 hour drive from Sprinfield, then he was going to be nice enough to turn around and drive me 3 hours back. Good guy.

Anyway, I was scheduled to leave Detroit on 1/3/1999. For anyone in Michigan or Illinois that day, you'll probably remember it. Detroit got 20 inches of snow and Chicago got 22 inches, overnight. My parents had to push through snow banks over the hood of our car to get onto and off the freeway. See the interstate was plowed (still huge amounts of snow on it), but the ramps were not. This was just to get me to the train station. Train showed up and left about 1 hour late. I had a great time on the train to Chicago chit-chatting with this smokin hot nanny. We grabbed a bite to eat in the diner car and relaxed. Her and the family she was with got off in Joliet. I made it to Union Station (i think that's the name) about 1-2 hours later than planned. No big deal as my connector train was running late.

My connector train was delayed again and again for 7-8 hours before they cancelled it. The station made announcements that the track switches were frozen and they couldn't direct train traffic so they were getting us charter buses. At this point I called my roomate who was supposed to pick me up and offered to pay for a hotel room if he would wait in St. Louis for me. He declined the room and said he would stay until 3:00 AM and then had to head back to Springfield. I don't remember what, but he had some obligation. I had two huge bags of luggage, each about the size of a black lawn/leaf garbage bag, jammed to the brink. The train station in Chicago had big lockers and I was able to store them while waiting and eat dinner. Charter buses show up. There was supposed to be 4, each one making a different length trip with the 4th one going all the way (no stops) to St Louis. My bus, the 4th one didn't show up. So, they jammed us onto the 3rd bus cheek to cheek. This also meant frequent stops that turned a 5 hour drive into a 10-11 hour fiasco. I am 6' 6" and I do not fit into bus seats very well. This was a long uncomfortable ride.

Of course I get to St Louis about 2 hours after my roomate had to leave. It's about 5 AM, I'm in St Louis, 3 hours from my destination and I have no ride. With no other apparent option I have to get a cab from the train station to the Greyhound station. I buy a ticket, but the bus doesn't leave until 10:00 AM or so. There are actually 3 buses travelling together for whatever reason. If you've ever been to the Greyhound station in downtown St. Louis, it's not exactly the Ritz. I am forced to sit there for 4-5 hours watching my luggage so it doesn't grow legs and take off. We finally board the bus and get on our way. The bus was only 1/3 full or so and I was hoping to stretch out my legs on the way. No such luck.

We stopped only a few minutes away at the airport and picked up a bunch of Army soldiers. They were cool and we get moving again. Not one hour later we stopped again. This time the driver says there is something wrong with one of the three buses. She said go into the truck stop and grab some snacks when you get back we'll be on our way. So, we all head inside. When we come out the sides of the buses are open and people with dogs are going through our bags. It is the DEA! We are then questioned at length about who we are, where we're going, where we were born, and our carry on bags in the bus are searched one at a time with us present.

2-3 hours later we're allowed to continue on our trip. Fortunately this was the last speed bump along the way. I arrived in Springfield Missouri over 36 hours after I left Detroit. No sleep, little food, stinking, and wearing the same clothes as when I left. I was so suprised to get there. I thought for sure a meteor was going to fall from the sky and finish me off. LOL

P.S. sorry for the long story
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Took the family to Disney several years back...45-50 degrees the whole time and rained the whole time...still a good vacation...also almost got in a fist fight with a guy on the underground in Madrid Spain (1st day)...I shoved him and told him what a piece of crap he was and he ran.
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Why yes that is epically bad.

This is one I wrote about about a little over 3 years ago about getting stranded in a similar snow storm.

Its a little long but also a memorable miserable experience.....I am copying and pasting this from an old facebook note I wrote

OK SO I am by no means writing this out in order to garner any sympathy or anything along those lines, this is simply steven venting and sharing after a horrific two days it took blair chase and i to get from Eagle/Vail Colorado to Tampa.

We get up at 7am on Sunday morning and drive 30 minutes to Eagle/Vail. We arrive on time and in fact rather early for our flight. We then wait and wait and wait and our plane apparently had mechanical failure and they had to switch it out which caused the plane to be about an hour late. At this point, thats fine our layover in Denver is an hour and a half anyways, itll just be a little close.

We then board the plane and then sit on the runway for another 40 minutes bc Eagle/Vail wouldnt put us at the front of the line for departure....the wait was the straw the broke the camels back here. We get to Denver and watch from our plane, the plane to Tampa taxing down the runway without us...

I then get off the plane and run as fast as i can through the terminal to the United customer service desk in order to get in front of the line of screwed passengers..I end up being 20th or so in line and have to stand there for 2 hours before I get to the desk...the line behind me had about 40 more people in it. The United desk then proceeds to tell me that all the flights on EVERY AIRLINE to tampa are full for the rest of the day and the best they can do was the next night which would've put me into Tampa after midnight and therefore Tuesday. So the clerk asks me what are some good cities to connect to to get to tampa (inside my head my jaw dropped, i was thinking, isnt it YOUR JOB to know that?) so i start just dropping cites ive used before that have worked, Dallas, Chicago, Cincinnati, Miami, Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston.....the list got to be about 15 cities long and with the help of blairs dad on the phone (not the clerk) we were able to get seats on an American Airlines flight that left monday morning from denver to st. louis and then st louis to tampa.

So our way home got worked out. The airline then tried to get us a hotel for the night which we just said nuts to that and peaced out. Blairs parents got us a hotel close to the airport. Apparently they were trying to put people in some ramada downtown. If you know anything about denver you know that the airport is literally in the middle of nowhere waaaaaaay outside the city and with an early morning flight taking their crap was not an option.

Next step. Getting our bags for the night so we could change clothes etc. Requesting the bags takes 2 hours for them to be sorted and then retrieved. After lunch and roaming around we get 2 out of 3 bags....mine and blairs. Blairs bag is fine however mine has a rip in the side of it and one of the shoulder straps was ripped out. I then file my claim and chase tries to round up his bag....and the attempts of takes another hour. The end result was chases bag making the full 430 flight that day to tampa.

We then take a taxi to the hotel and pass out/watch basketball. We the did have a nice dinner at a Japanese steakhouse in Denver. The rest of the night was uneventful other than I finally went to bed at about 2am

We then woke up at 6 am to catch our 930 flight to st. louis. We arrive at the airport and then attempt to check in at American and the clerk who was giving us some attitude for no reason tells us that we were confirmed for the st louis to tampa but not the denver to st louis....they send us back to United, but blair calls her dad who turns out had reserved 3 seats on it just in case.....We then go back to American and get other clerk (thank god) who just starts plugging away at her computer and we had our boarding passes and checked our bags within 5 minutes. There were various freakouts among our party's members, thats all ill say

All 3 of us were selected for the special search for chemicals etc at the security checkpoint which added time and inconvenience but thats it. We get to st. louis (we flew over the gateway to the west which was neat) had lunch etc, it was a 2 hour layover. We then get on our plane and as its backing out we hear a huge crash and the plane stopped dead in its tracks. Turns out the pin to the tractor ripped off the plane and it bent a panel on the plane back....it took another hour of sitting on the tarmac before we got to moving.

I arrived home in tampa at 7pm....chase found his bag and that was that. But yeah thats my story of being one of the 100,000 people stranded in different areas of the country due to snow storms in the NE combined with spring break and other general failures. In conclusion dont fly united.
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These are great. I feel better knowing I'm not the only one who has suffered.

:-)
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I will pay you one million American dollars to go to Disney World.
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Ill take less if I have to. Im only 2hrs away from disney
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That'll buy a couple slices of pizza and a family photo.
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