We all have travel horror stories, mine is not as bad as some that I’ve heard because it only involves vomiting and me not having a change of clothes for the next 4 hours on the plane. I am sure you can all top that!! And we want to hear them! Traveling with kids is just tough. Enter your 
worst travel horror story in comments for a chance to win the best airplane travel companion EVER – the CARES airline seatbelt system. For me, the worst part of getting on a plane with kids is having to lug my giant Britax car seat. I bought wheels for it but hello, it does not fit through the aisle so it is impossible for me to travel alone because I am not actually as strong as Wonder Woman, even though I think I am. Say goodbye to your car seat at check in, this 1 lbs seatbelt has a 5 point harness and is just as safe (if not safer, if you are unable to install the car seat properly) as your very heavy and bulky car seat. This prize is worth $74.95. Enter your stories in comments by March 28th at 11:59pm EST. Only one entry per person and you MUST enter a travel horror story to qualify. We will select one winner at random.
Thank you to CARES for sponsoring the prize.
moving from washington to utah about 6 years ago and listened to my six children scream and fight all the way. If it weren’t for being in the middle of the winter i would have rather walked. it was a nightmare
great shower gift.
What a great idea. Need to do anything to make our kids safe.
We had taken my stepdaughter, my niece, nephew to see the circus. My niece got a really big ice cream to eat on the way home. We had just pulled onto the freeway and it was bumper to bumper traffic when she says “I dont feel so good” and about that time upcame the ice cream along with everything else we have eaten at the circus. My husband is trying to drive I’m trying to get her cleaned up when my nephew says ” What that smell?” (he had a very sensitive tummy could smell his own poop and get sick while on the potty) and then he starts to throw up from the smell. So then I try to get him cleaned up. Now I have 2 naked kids in my vehicle got kinda settle down, traffic beginning to move, just sorta stop and go when my stepdaughter says ” I think I’m going to be car sick” and she begins to throw up. So we rode home (1hr 30 minutes) with 3 naked kids, 1 crazy uncle driver and 1 very nervous, ill, bite your head off aunt.
my travel horror story isnt so bad.. my son had to pee and there was no where to stop safely and he had to pee in a jar. it was a travel horror story!…
Getting stuck in a terminal for 18 hours due to bad weather.
We went to Florida for Disney and the airline lost our car seat. We had go wait forever, rent a seat and as of five years later, we are still waiting for the sirline to reimburse us.
We went to Orlando with our daughter, son in law and granddaughter a year ago. My son went as well. We were so excited and put so much planning into going to Disney (as well as money) and thought this would be a wonderful experience as a family.
I was sick with the flu the entire time!
My son passed out and had to be hospitalized and threw up at the airport!
Luckily though, my little granddaughter Alexis had a great time, as well as her parents, albeit all the “shleping” of the car seat, stroller, and all the other equipment needed!
The Cares Airline Seat Belt would definitely be welcome for the next time we go to Disney!
LIVES SAVED
My worst flying trip was when we took our family to Disneyland and were flying from Denver to LA. The flight was so rough it scared our 4 year so bad he was throwing up and we didn’t have a barf bag! I rushed off the flight hoping to get to a bathroom, but we were at the wrong end of a terminal… it was a long sprint to get him cleaned up.
We’d love this
On a recent flight with my six week old baby (now 10 weeks), I was seated between my husband and a teenage boy who was on a school trip with his friends and parents. My baby was crying from hunger, but she wouldn’t nurse with any type of cover, so I was hoping the teenager would go to sleep soon, to avoid exposing my breasts to more people than necessary. Instead, he started reading a book, and his parents passed him earplugs to quiet the noise from our crying infant. To make matters worse, I was trying all different methods of nursing, including throwing a blanket over my entire body, head included. She still wouldn’t nurse – I think she sensed my discomfort. Finally, after the whole plane was kept awake for about an hour (it was a red-eye), my usually sweet husband said “just forget the blanket, dammit, and feed her!” So I did, exposing myself to the teenager for a good twenty minutes, and the rest of the flight was reasonably uneventful. Though we did fly first class the next time.
My trip on the airlines were so bad once( mind you one of them was only 2 and he was kicking and screaming with out a break so bad)that one of our lovely passenger neighbors TRIED to bribe him with money to shut up!
Oh please enter me and let me win! We’re flying to Florida in 4 mos and my youngest really could use this!
When our oldest child was 2 years old and living in Chicago, I used to travel alone with him to visit my parents in Maine. Since there are not that many people travelling that route, I would have to take four different planes and they were always small, older ones whose air pressure system was not as advanced as the planes today. Even the stewardesses had trouble with ear aches from the cabin pressure changes.
One particularly painful trip found my child screaming for over 30 minutes straight. Nothing I tried seemed to help. I was ready and willing to jump out of the plane at this point. He was out of his seat and became tightly wedged under my seat when he finally fell asleep. Ah, silence!
Three tiny minutes later, the loudspeaker announced we were preparing to land and the stewardess said I had to get him back into his seat and seatbelt.
Honestly, he would have been safer the way he was wedged in. We got a lot of dirty looks from passengers as we left the plane.
Maine never looked better to me and to finally be off of planes for the day.
Traveling for the first time with my then 11month old daughter to Clear Water Florida..all was well until the middle of the flight she just starts screaming bloody murder and there’s no calming her down. So of course of mortified by now because I can heare the other passangers start to shy and make comments and the flight attendant kept coming over to tell me I need to calm her down..I was like Really, I just do this for fun. So by this she’s just screaming so hard that she PUKES or should I say propells vomit all over me, this actually makes the screamming stop. But of course I’m all prepared for her trip on the flight but do I have a change of cloth for NOOO! So I still have another hour and half of flight left and I’m sitting with baby vomit all over..
i think my grandkids could use this
As a parent, I want to do anything and everything to keep my kids sage.
we havent tackled the traveling via plane w/our lil guy yet (he’s 4 mos) BUT we’ve got plans in the works to travel to fla at the end of the year to visit his grandfather…. (and disney is near). i did bring him into daddy’s work (in the city) before my maternity leave ended and wound up forgetting his bottle and didnt have enough diapers… all fun & games
We adopted our daughter in China, and had to spend 29 hours straight in transit to get home. (3 planes, 1 train, 3 car rides). She was 10 months old and screamed for 14 out of the 29 hours.
I had to fly with my first child when she was only 1 week old! Besides the fact that she was my first and I didn’t know what I was doing, she screamed the entire way and would not suck on anything while taking off and landing so I thought her eardrums were going to explode! She was fine and I recovered soon after!
Last easter, we flew from San Jose to Orange County, but the flight got canceled. Our daughter was 20 months at the time. We had the carseat with us and spent four hours in the airport before they told us we were going to LAX and then busing us to Orange County (That’s an hour drive in the car!). It was horrible.
I was on a flight from Chicago to LA. The whole time there was a couple with six kids crying and screaming the whole way.
No real travel horror stories here – other than recently when my 2 year old and I missed the plane to Disneyland as we spent too long eating pizza outside security. But we have this harness and it is FANTASTIC! So easy to carry and keeps her safe and still.
What a great idea! I would love to try this out.
Last August I drove 12 hours by myself to take the kids to visit their grandparents. About half-way into the drive I started to smell something odd and thought my son might have had a stinky diaper. The smell pretty much went away shortly after. About an hour later I had to pull over at a gas station so my daughter could go potty. When I went to get my son out of his seat, I found that he did indeed have a stinky diaper and it had gone EVERYWHERE, up his back, all over the car seat. It was gross, but the nightmare didn’t stop there. I had to cover his stroller with a blanket so I could get him into the bathroom to get him cleaned up the best I could and to change him. He was a wiggle worm and knocked the nasty diaper off the changing table. I had to clean that up and I prayed no one came in before I could get finished and out of there. Unfortunately, someone did come in; luckily I had a chance to clean the diaper off the floor and was just about finished and getting my son ready to go back to our car. I’m sure I had turned a million different shades of red from embarrassment. The smell was horrible. I stopped on the way out and got the kids drinks so I would have a bag to put his nasty clothes and stuff in. I had to get another blanket to stick in his seat until we got to my mother-in-laws house. First things on my “to do list” when I got to our destination was to give my son a bath and do a load of laundry! Despite our horrible experience on the way there, we had a great visit with the family!
My son hates cars, elevators, and trains. Cries and screams the whole (and I mean every second) time. I keep telling myself he is ok, but I end up in tears every time we try and go somewhere. To make matter worse, he won’t take a bottle or pacifier for soothing purposes. We have a big trips across the U.S. and across the Atlantic planned this summer so my son can finally meet some of his family. This harness would come in handy. Fingers crossed!
A six hour car trip with a very sick 12 month old who was puking over himself and me. We had changes of clothes for him, but nothing accessible for me. Had never been so excited to finally arrive home. Excitement quickly dwindled, however, when we saw that our house, which was on the market, was being shown to a potential buyer. Had to circle the block for an additional half hour until we could FINALLY enter our home and change into clean clothes. Ugh!
Carrying huge carseat with a 2 yr old is a terrible travel experience.
If you think lugging them onto the plane is bad, try lugging on two cars seats and pushing around a tandem stroller. Lugging around things around the airport is probably the worse-case scenario for us; but when we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany, they never brought the stroller up to the door like they’re supposed to. So, with baby in hand, carry-on bags, and carseat, we had to go through customs, go to baggage claim, then to security since the stroller never showed up at baggage claim. The stroller, for some reason, was left by security.
My husband and I took a flight from Salt Lake to Atlanta and there was a single mom of 3 young girls seated right behind us. One screamed and cried the entire flight because her mom took her toy away, one was a baby so she cried as babies do and the third was so cute in her princess dress but even that did not stop us from being annoyed by the constant jumping on the chair and kicking the back of my chair for the whole flight. I felt bad for the mom becasue she just could not keep up with all 3 of them.
Traveling with 5 kids–that’s a horror story right there, isn’t it?
biggest nightmare was last summer trying to make a connecting flight. I was running through an airport carrying the baby and pushing the toddler in the stroller and carrying the diaper bag and my purse while my husband carried two car seats and his backpack. We were completely out of breath with major back spasms by the time we made it to our connecting flight on the complete opposite side of the Detroit airport. I vowed then that I would find a better way to fly than lugging car seats everywhere before our trip this summer.
taking an 18 month old on an amtrak trip from new orleans to ohio when my dad had a heart attack and bypass surgery
I have not traveled by plane with my kids yet. (I only flew for the first time last May, and will fly for the second time in April.) But I know how stressful car trips can be. A friend of mine just flew from NM to OR with her 5 kids: 4 of them under 6! These would have been a great addition!
My story is not nearly as bad as most of these…..We were flying back from Kentucky to NYC, my son (3 and 1/2 mo old), was a bit fussy, crying on and off, not wanting to nurse. I think more than anything, he could sense some tension, as we had just spent a week away from his home w/my family, some of whom are a bit overbearing…so I can’t blame my little guy for being exhausted/fussy! Something tells me I’ll have worse travel stories in the future….;)
Were going on are firt trip this summer with our 1 year old this could realy make it easier!
We traveled back from Korea and DH said he would change any and all diapers while we were on the plane as the changing table was narrow and he was most experienced in the airline bathroom. We hit turbulence and well with a boy- DH was a target. We had no new clothes for him and he had to meet the family with our new son in the chicago airport- poor dh was not smelling so good!
This would be much too long of an entry if I told the whole story! LOL!
Put it this way…
2 Women, a potty training 2 1/2 yr old, and 2 Puppies in a compact car travelling from Northernmost Ohio, to Southern Florida…
Need I say more?!
We should have FLOOOOOOOOOOWN!
I just returned from Tahoe this past week and what an eventful flight it was! When I returned from the lavatory, I found my older daughter throwing up all over herself. While I was trying to help her, my younger daughter bit off the end of my earbud headphones and almost swallowed it. Thank goodness the lady sitting across the aisle saw what was happening and took it away from her. How does my daughter pay her back? She throws her french toast stick at her head. Boy, she sure has a great aim!
Did I mention that I’m a flight attendant and thought my kids were above all this nonsense? LOL!
Flying alone with my baby. Crying and fussy. Stealing the nuts off the woman’s tray next to us. Instead of finding my darling daughter amusing and cute, she was obviously annoyed. Yeah, good times.
Let’s forget about the beginning of this story that has a three hour flight to Mexico with the ten month old cutting four teeth; let’s also forget about the three hour drive that immediately followed the flight (my husband conveniently forgot to tell me that this was part of our travel plan). Finally, we arrive at the beach house. My husband thought it would be funny to throw this huge prehistoric looking grasshopper at us; we were then informed it was a highly poisonous bug and to stay away from further encounters. Oh, but this isn’t the highlight. No, no. After a long day of traveling, and handling an exhausted, out of his element baby (who hated the beach, of course), the three of us were more than ready to go to bed. We all settle into our respective bed or pack-n-play for a good night’s sleep. FYI, the windows in our rooms only had screens, not glass. So, we rest, and then I begin to hear a shrieking, piercing noise– BATS. I wake up my husband, “There’s a bat in our room!” We stumble around turning on lights– no visible bat, but we still hear the call. This is repeated over and over (I guess with the call bouncing off the walls of our room, it made it sound like the bat was with us, the dear little thing). Shrieking, shrieking, all through the night. We couldn’t leave our room, either, because what if the bat attacked? Finally, day comes, and the calls stop. I looked out the window, and there was the bat, still hanging right there. We made a run for the living area, and told the gardener about the bat. He said it was sick (with rabies?!?!), went upstairs, swatted at the bat with a broom, and it fell to the ground…DEAD.
Hmmm, I have the usual kicking of seats, spilling or throwing up stories…. But my horror story was during our trip to LA last year. We flew in fine (at least, that I can remember!) and spent the first day at Disneyland. Driving to a friends house for dinner in Culver City the next night though, we totally got lost in the ‘wrong part of town’. I still couldn’t tell you where we were or how we got there, but trying to avoid the freeways was a BIG mistake. Needless to say, I was sweating bullets and while we tried to look inconspicuous and find our way back on route, we had a screaming baby in the back seat. I tried everything to make her happy. Seemed like the longest time of my life! It was not just handling the tot during a total meltdown, it was my fear for her. Needless to say, we have a garmin gps system now that is portable and we take on trips with us. We LOVE it!!
A few months ago I travelled alone with my toddler from ny to europe so the flight was extremely long. He was exhausted and couldn’t get comfortable to sleep. He finally slept on my lap when the stewardess started screaming at me to put his seat belt on. The kid was screaching for two hours I am not waking him up to mive him in his seat. I am holding him. It was horrible. This seat belt would of saved me a miserable 10 hr flight.
We will be traveling three times this year across the country and I have had my eye on the CARES system. I would be thrilled to win it.
We were flying from Seattle to Paris, France. We had a lay over because of heavy snow in the mid states. They decided we could fly and we all got in the plane. We were in the plane for 8 hours waiting to take off. They had to De-Ice the plane 5 times. We weren’t allowed to have water or food, etc… We weren’t even allowed to use the toilet in case we took off. Then we got to Paris a day late, which totally messed up our plans.
After a flight delay of 5 hours on the tarmac in Phoenix, we finally arrived home in Dallas 7 hours later with our 2 month old baby. At baggage claim in Dallas, she had a tremendous up-the-back blowout diaper. My husband had gone to get the car, so I changed her in the airport restroom. As I opened my bag to get a diaper, and realized that we were totally out. She was already on her last change of clothes, so I cleaned her up, put her naked in the sling and hoped for the best. I grabbed all the luggage, met my husband at the car, and we wrapped her up in his undershirt as a diaper for the ride home! I felt like the worst mom ever, but we made it safely and she’s probably not too scarred for life. Now that she’s two, we could make great use of the CARES harness!
I don’t have any horrible travel stories with my daughter and to be honest my horrors aren’t even that bad in the grand scheme of things but here goes! The only time I have ever used curb side check in we were flying from LAX to Phoenix (1 hr flight). We went to get our luggage and it was not there. It turns out my bag went to Hawaii (at least some part of me has been there now) and my husbands went to Chicago. That was bad enough but when we got to the car the battery was dead because of the heat of the summer. Fine. We get the battery jumped and get home only to realize he had packed the house keys in the luggage he checked! We managed to get into the apartment thanks to the leasing office but we had to call the after hours line since it was almost 1:00 a.m. and they were a bit annoyed at us! They delivered my bag the next day and his 2 days later. They were a little worse for the wear but we got everything back and have not checked a bag curb side or otherwise since!
I spent an entire night in the airport waiting for the plane to land.
The worst travel experience I ever had was when my son (who was 2 at the time), my mom in law, and I drove halfway across the country to see my grandma, who was ill.
Being the genius that I am, I saw what looked like a shortcut on the map, so we took it. Boy, was I wrong! We ended up on a terribly curvy road that took us through the middle of nowhere. The car moving back and forth caused my son to throw up all over the place. We cleaned up, but moments later, he threw up again.
Mom in law had to pee in the worst way, but there was nowhere to stop! There were houses along the road, but no stores or gas stations. She was about to pull over and go in the bushes, but thankfully a little gas station came into view.
When she came back out, her eyes were as wide as saucers. She said she went inside and then had to go out back (making her way through the knee high grass) to get to the restrooms. From how she described it, it sounded more like an outhouse to me. lol! She said the place and people reminded her of Deliverance.
I don’t offer shortcut suggestions anymore. 🙂
What a great travel idea.
We flew to Illinois from California with a 2 year old and 4 year old, both of whom were flying for the first time. We had a nonstop redeye flight, figuring the kids would sleep and it would be a much shorter flight. Instead, the kids didn’t understand that it was bedtime (there was so much to see!) and I spent the whole flight trying to keep them at least reasonably quiet (although TRYING is the key word here). After we landed it took us an hour to get to the rental car (and of course the airline lost our carseat and we had to rent a nasty one) and then it took us 3 hours for the 40 min drive to where we were staying. By the time we got there, I hadn’t slept in 36 hours or so and the kids were hysterical from lack of sleep!
I just had to respond to this one. We were traveling 1st class to Florida which was a special treat. I was pregnant and feeling pretty crummy and my son was 5 at the time. We were served some pretty awful OJ on the way home. I thought perhaps it was just morning sickness. Well the whole flight, I was trying not to get sick. When we landed, my son said he thought he was going to be sick. We went to go into the ladies room and he threw up on some lady as she turned the corner.
Not sure if this was our worst trip or hers, but it was bad.
we were traveling to michigan to visit the in laws when the airline lost some of our luggage. luckily, we had the baby’s necessities on hand, but i was without my breast pump for a few days. and that in itself is a horror.
We adopted our daughter in China (age 10 mos) and had a 15 hour flight home. There were at least 15 other adopted babies on our flight – all in varying degrees of sickness (it was February – cold & flu season). My daughter had diarrhea which leaked out of the diaper about 30 minutes into the flight – thank goodness I had brought a change of clothes, but I had to throw out an adorable outfit! My husband, my son & I were all sick as well. It turns out my daughter (like me!) cant sleep on planes. She napped for no more than 30 minutes THE ENTIRE FLIGHT! We took turns walking the aisles with her, all the while listening to other babies screaming. At hour 11, I was ready to jump out the window! Somehow we made it through…but the landing was rough and my son ended up vomiting! Now we had been up for 24 hours with no sleep – and arrived in the terminal only to find that our welcome party was stuck in bad NY traffic – we had to wait another 2 hours in the airport, and it took another hours to get home to CT (MORE traffic!!) with my daughter crying most of the way because she hated the car seat!
The only positive part of this travel nightmare was that my daughter adjusted to US time the first night – she was EXHAUSTED!!
Still, looking back it was all worth it. We have a beautiful, wonderful daughter and feel that our family is complete.
And I alway say that the flight was STILL better than being in labor with my son!
Last October we went to Europe with our 6 mos. old to visit my husband’s family in Budapest with a stop in Paris on both legs of the trip. Getting there was okay (baby slept on my husband the entire way-he wasn’t thrilled, but was great for me!)BUT, on the way back through Paris, we hit a snag. We had decided to spend a night in Paris to break up the trip and in the morning when we told the taxi driver which airline to drop us at, he made a comment that he didn’t think there were any flights going out for Air France because of the air-crew strike. We thought he must be mistaken because we had recently checked our e-mail and there was nothing from Air France saying our flight was delayed. WELL, we get inside the terminal in Charles De Galle and it is swarmed with people just standing around. It was literally chaos and we had no idea where to go – mind you we had our 6 mos. old and no hotel booked to get back to! We stood in line for about three hours with my son who was screaming off and on. Finally, there was a nice French man from the airline that put us to the front of the line in the handicapped window. (Turns out the French are crazy about babies and give you special treatment if you have one, we experienced this on the first leg of the trip quite a bit) Just as I thought maybe we would get helped, we went up to the desk and the lady said that she would not help us because she had been there for 8 hours straight with no food and had had enough. I begged her, but she was rude and angry and left. SO, now with no person to attend to us at the window, we had little choice but to go back to the end of the line that we had already spent three hours in and were halfway through before the man had put us to the front of the line. At this point, I was practically in tears and my husband had pretty much decided that we would just rent a car and drive to Amsterdam or Germany and get a flight there. Then we faintly heard a man yelling for any Americans to follow him. About thirty of us came to the man, he was from the airline and he said that the crew had showed up for a flight to Atlanta. We were actually going to Houston, but didn’t care as long as we got to America somehow. We ended up catching this flight, but what was really horrible was that they made us check in the large stroller that the infant carrier snapped onto. Usually you can just wheel it up to the gate and they will stow it under the plane for you. BUT NO. not this time. So, we had to get through security and travel the length of CDG trading off carrying the infant carrier – how horrible is that!? We made it to Atlanta, the flight was excellent, barely anyone on this huge plane and all the wine we wanted and the baby slept most of the time in his carrier. THEN we get to Atlanta. We were to stay overnight and then go to Houston in the morning. If any of you have ever entered that airport from an International flight, you know what I am about to say. First you go through passport check, fine. Then you get your luggage, not fine because they for some reason did not put our stroller on the plane and it was still in PARIS. Okay, I was angry about lugging the carrier out of the airport, but at least we had the car seat right? Then we had to go through customs with the luggage, fine. BUT since we had waited forever for our stroller that we finally found out was not coming, we were at the end of the line to recheck our baggage to transfer it to the baggage claim area of the airport. BECAUSE the international terminal is nowhere near the baggage claim and you would have to lug all your luggage on the tram that links the terminals with no cart or anything. So, at this point we were looking at waiting in line again for another 2 hours and I was out of water to make formula for the baby. So, we decided that my husband would check in the luggage while I went out for water and to book a hotel. So, I lugged the carrier to the tram and to the baggage claim and fed him ect. Then it was time to book the hotel and I realized that I had left my wallet with my husband and had no credit card to reserve a room with! I had just taken cash to get some water! So I called and begged someone at the Hilton to let me reserve the room for just two hours and if my husband had not made it out by that time, I would call back a reserve it again for another two hours. Mind you I did all of this with a screaming child that didn’t want me to hold him and was tired of being in his carrier. Finally a few hours later, my husband arrives in the baggage claim and I can call the hotel back and reserve with a card. but then we have to wait for our luggage to reach the baggage claim which took another hour. We finally got to the hotel at 2 am Atlanta time, total time of miserable trip being 20 hours at this point since we had left the hotel in Paris that morning. We were so hungry that we bought most of the food in the hotel’s guest pantry near the front desk. They probably thought we were half crazed. We made it to Houston the next day with no problems and got our stroller within the week, delivered to our house. The airline also promptly reimbursed us for the hotel in Atlanta.
And guess what? We go to Europe again this September and are taking a road trip to Austria. And this time my son will be 18 mos. old – more fun!
My ex-husband and I took our 3 month old baby to visit his parents in Oklahoma. On the flight home we were stuck next to a very stuffy, snooty man. Of course our baby decided to be upset for the entire flight, to which he kept rolling his eyes at us and sighing very loudly.
Near the end of the flight when it was time to put the trays up I went to hand the baby over to my ex and bumped my tray, spilling orange juice all down the cranky guys pant leg.
I really didn’t feel that bad! LOL
I’ve had several horrible flights with my son, mainly because hubby wasn’t with me to help (he’s only flown with us once). Most of the misery happens going through the security line. It’s so hard to heave all of our gear – stroller, carseat, diaper bag, etc. – onto the belt and hold onto a wiggly kid at the same time. On one occassion, a TSA agent threw away four of the six single-serve cans of formula we were traveling with. I was crying by the time we got through the line.
Can’t say that I’ve had too many HORRIBLE travel stories…the only thing I can think of was when I was traveling alone with my 5 month old and trying to get thru security with all your bags, stroller, and your baby. You gotta take the baby OUT of the stroller (mine was sleeping so soundly), take your shoes off, and all your metal,etc…It’s about as easy as swimming across the English Channel!
I could really use this during our upcoming trip!!
So far, we’ve taken our 2-year-old to St. Louis, The Florida Keys, Costa Rica, Washington D.C., Orlando, Boston, Grand Cayman, and San Francisco — that’s a LOT of flights and yes, there are many many horror stories!!! We ran out of diapers on the way home from Costa Rica so I held her in my lap and let her pee all over me for several hours. But that wasn’t the worst. I think for me, the worst was when the airline decided to ignore our confirmed seat assignments and split up my husband and I. There was a crabby jerk in the seat next to me who refused to trade with my husband so I was stuck with my toddler. She was in her car seat (good, right?) but she was tall enough so that her feet were at perfect seat kicking distance to the seat in front of her and the lady in front of her was not amused. I was frazzled and did everything I could short of tying her feet to the seat until half-way through the flight, we got to switch seats. My husband had been walking the aisles looking for three people who would agree to switch for us!
somehow the luggage I got when I got home got mixed up with a gentleman that collected vemonous snakes. He had hidden two in his bags from Texas to Arizona. When I got home I had quite a surprise for me.
luck was with me however and when I noticed that the bags weren’t mine I didn’t open them, but returned them to the airlines where they found the snakes.
I flew from Chicago to LA when I was two. My mom and I were on the plane for fourteen hours because of bad weather in Chicago and Los Angeles. The plane sat on the tar mat for two hours because of high winds in Chicago and was diverted from Long Baech to LAX because of storms in LA. I had a long nap and was the most energetic person geting off of the plain!
neat contest!
Got really seasick on a boat to Victoria and threw up…pretty bad..agghh.
Every travel story is a horror story for us. The worst for me was the time I lost my passport on the plane and the airline attendant called me ugly.
We were coming back to California with our two small children. My 4 year old had his own seat but my one year old was on my lap. We started to take off and then the plane unexpectedly braked and almost didn’t stop in time to stay on the runway. As we all kind of fell foward my 4 year old almost flew out as his seat. I sure would like to win one of these restraints for him now that his wife is pregnant.
wonderful product
My one year old had a giant poop just as we took off and fell asleep before we could change her. When we arrived at our very small airport it took the 2 of us to change her poop saturated clothing. And they took our checked luggage back behind the desk because we were not there to pick it up. And then they just left the desk unattended. We had to wait for 30 minutes to get our luggage back.
I’ve been waiting for something like this.
Flying back from Hawaii. Flight got delayed from Maui to Honolulu. Slept on the floor of the Honolulu airport. When we got back to Atlanta we were delayed 9 hours inthe airport. Finally got back to Chicago and missed our bus back to our city. They offered to put us up in hotel but husband had to be back at work next day. We talked them into paying $200 to have a taxi take us home-70 miles from the arport. An 8 hour trip took 22 hours.
Similar to the throwing up stories others had, my horror story involves a trip I took with my then 2 1/2 year old daughter. Our flight just began pre-boarding, for which we were eligible. As we are waiting in line, my daughter says, “Mommy, I have to pee. You have to take me.” I suggested she wait or use her pull-up (bad mommy). However, she insisted, so I ran to the closest bathroom with her. As I put her down, I realized she and I were both covered in foul smelling diarrhea! Stupidly, I had checked all of her clothes and only had one more pull-up with me. I cleaned the two of us as best as I possibly could, but we had to spend the flight in poop-covered clothes, with a rather unhappy gentleman sitting beside us. Ugh.
My travel horror story is being on an 18 hour flight and getting motion sickness.
this has been a long time need!!
When we adopted my son from Russia, the trip home was very stressful. He was scared of men and would not let my husband hold him. So I held him for almost 24 hours, and he wasn’t very happy.