As many of you know, a lot of us on here travel away from home frequently. Sometimes traveling somewhere goes smoothly, sometimes it's an adventure of its own and there are memorable moments where it can be a complete nightmare. What are some of the strangest, heart-stopping travel experiences you have had? Weird person? Some delay at an airport? Screaming kid that wouldn't shut up? I'll go ahead and post one first. I work for the airline and one of the perks of course is flying with them for virtually no charge at all. However one of the downgrades is that I fly on standby. Standby basically means that I can only get on the flight if there is a seat available. If it's full, then I'm out of luck. Placement in the list of standbys is determined by your tier, which is assigned if you're a company employee, a retiree, family of employee, or guests. Since I'm an employee, I get the second highest tier. So I found out the hard way here in America that the month of March is most likely the absolute WORST time to travel that way, as spring break from both grade school and college see a huge jump in traveling, (especially to the warmer areas) plus the amount of standbys is a game of musical chairs of sorts. It can be something like 15 people trying to get on a flight that has only 4 seats available. It's madness. Last March, I went back to where I grew up of Kansas City to visit friends and made a connection flight through Dallas. Going there was no hassle, but on the way of coming back, my dad had tickets to a Sacramento Kings game that was being played the night I was scheduled to fly back home. Game started at 7: 30pm and my flight was scheduled to come in at 7:10. Inevitably I'd miss some of it. The other option was to take a later flight that left at 9pm, but it would get to Sac at almost midnight. So I'd make it home and all, but miss the game I paid a good $115 ticket. Turns out that there were only 10 or so seats available on the flight I had reserved and the amount of standbys trying to get on was something like 25. Everything was flagging me as if I had no chance. I was number 12 in line. Come an hour later when the flight begins to board, I'm glancing up at the list. The number of standbys has increased to 42. As they're boarding, it goes up to 58. I jumped from 12 to 25 and began to figure that there was no way I was going to get a seat. Then they begin to call standbys to board. Not just the 10 people who were basically guaranteed the open seats, but people that were like 16 and 17 on the board. I figured to myself I might just have a chance. They kept calling people up, but it became less frequent as they came closer to my number and I figured that I might not make it after all. I'd miss the game. Then the unexpected happens. My name is called and I practically jump in front of the kiosk and grab my ticket. I was the LAST person on that flight to board Sometimes there's a full flight, but not everyone shows up and such, so it is possible to get aboard a flight that seems relatively full on standby with less than optimal odds. I think I got extremely lucky with that one. Flight landed back home in Sac Town and I managed to get my car and head to the game. Only 5 minutes in the first quarter had elapsed, so I didn't miss that much. That's one of the numerous crazy travel stories I have to say. What are some of yours?
LONG STORY ALERT: Alright so for my thirteenth birthday, my mom was taking me on a trip to Florida and I was so excited, I popped a game in my DS and prepared for a fourteen hour drive to the beach. So about five hours in, my mom had my dog Bella on her lap (she is a small dog weighs six pounds not very hard to travel with) and we heard rumbling from her car. My mom started panicking because smoke was rising from her car, and the car was slowing down, so she pulled to the side of the road and turned off the car quickly. Turns out her transmission blew, and the entire car would not work. So me being thirteen, I started to panic because I thought the trip was over and to get her transmission replaced would cost around seven thousand dollars and she did not have that kind of money or time. So my mom called AAA and they towed her car away and gave her a ride to the nearest car rental place, my mom's face was so determined to get us to Florida, but at the same time she was very upset she lost her only car. So here we were, with a small Yorkie all of our bags, standing in front of a car rental shop. So my mom went in, talked with the man at the desk and turns out they had no cars available, my mom was about to cry, because we had no ride anywhere else and we were stranded with no car. So a big bulky man that saw us sitting outside trying to figure out what to do, decided to help us because he felt so bad about our situation. He let us hop into his car and he took us to another car rental place, this time we crossed our fingers hoping they had something available. So my mom's phone was about to die, and when we walked in there the man said: "Oh I am sorry, if you are looking to rent a car with your dog we cannot lend you one, because we have a no pet policy." That was when my mom broke, she looked at him with a broken smile and said sadly. "Okay, then may I please borrow your charger so I can call some other place to get my child home?" My heart dropped, knowing my birthday was ruined, and we had no car. So I sat in the corner with my dying DS and proceeded to play Pokémon because that was my only sense of joy. But then the man felt so bad as my mom frantically called around, that he waved the no pet policy and had only one car available. I was so excited! Perhaps my birthday was not ruined after all! Then when the car pulled in, my mom and I just looked at each other and said: "Are you kidding me?" The car was a 2013 Smart Fortwo the smallest car I have ever seen. It had no trunk, hardly any room, and we had like five bags we needed to fit into it. It was our only choice so we took it, my mom didn't take me home but actually took me to Florida because she did not want to ruin my birthday... But when we hit the Florida mark, we started to get really hot, so we turned on the air, guess what didn't work? Finally we reached our rented house where we would stay, and once we walked in everything was broken and there were no sheets on the bed. Oh well, guess life throws some curve balls at you every now and then huh? Oh yeah and the ocean water was cold and there was seaweed everywhere... Yay..
I think I may have told you about this, but we've been to Atlanta Airport before and almost missed our planes, both times we've been there. Absolutely awful....
I once got a fourteen hour layover on a flight and got stuck in New York. So all the hotels were filled, because it was summer. So I ended up sleeping in the airport. Rating: 7.8 out of 10. Too much water. Rating: 6 out of ten. Seats are very hard to sleep on, but the guards are lazy and don't mind if you change the channels on TV. Plus, they have excellent Wifi in some places and the food is decent. However, the bathrooms are AWFUL. Would not recommend. #MissingNo
Once a year I go to visit family and my mom's grave. My mom was buried on a mountain (Family plot, its also where we have family reunion), and the way up there is pretty scary. No guard rails, huge 10-15+ feet drops near the top, and add on wild animals, erosion, and storm damage..it is nerve-wracking to go up there. Almost every trip we end up bringing others along due to their cars not handling the mountain roads. I've never been in accident there, but there are stories of such occurring in the past. Not my story, but my dad once went to Mexico (second trip with his ex-wife). On the way there he lost connection to all his apps, his phone pretty much shut down. He had informed our phone company of this trip and was told he would still have service. But apparently they didn't and dad ended up waking me up around 11 or 12 and had me help him contact a friend and get directions. Now, although this was his second trip, it was his first time driving down there. Somehow, with poor directions from his friends, dad got to his destination a few hours later. He was up ALL night driving, and shortly after arriving, it started to pour rain. Where he was, it was uncommon for it to rain like that, especially during the day, which it did for 4 days straight. If that wasn't bad enough, one of the nights there ended with the ex-wife absolutely wasted at a bar (it's believed someone put something in her drink, as she only had 2 drinks that night), and another day they were nearly stopped by a armored government car (mounted turrets and every thing, according to dad and the ex). I would be terrified of going back at that trip, but dad still voices a desire to go back there. :/
The most I had was something when I was...I think I was 13. I don't remember it all that well because it happened so long ago. My family was coming back home after a 12-hour flight, and when we went to go pick up our luggage, it had apparently been put on a different flight. We had to spend 2 hours at the airport trying to figure out where it was and why - and even after that, I forgot if we left with all of it, or had to have asked it to be mailed directly to our house. Of course, since I was 13 back then, I did not do well staying up past 10.30PM at all. It was, to say the least, a rather unpleasant experience, to have to wait around for a foolish mistake. ...I know, that's pretty tame compared to other stories. I don't really travel anymore (by choice), so I don't anticipate any more stories.
I remember going to Europe with my brother. Our biggest and most daunting challenge of the trip was figuring out the subway systems. I was a nervous wreck the whole way through, trying to get on the right tram at the right time. Yeesh...
I have two stories, both very short. The first is about when I went to Ireland with my mom in March. We had a lot of fun, toured around Dublin, saw a lot of cool historical stuff. I was sort of the photographer - I kept both the camera and my phone, and I would sort of split pictures between them. So when we had got back from Ireland, we were unpacking and my mom noticed that the camera wasn't in my carry-on bag where I had put it. We looked all over, but we could not find that camera. The scary part? My mom's reaction when she realized I lost it. I've also lost a water bottle in my carry-on. The consequences weren't quite as terrifying: just a stern voice. The second is from a few years ago when I was flying to Cali to visit my grandparents. We were standing in line to check our luggage and watching the board that was announcing flights. The flight list has three signals: a green light means we've got time, a yellow means get to the terminal, and red means you need to be on the plane. Well, our flight was green all the way, and we'd just gotten into the huge security line when it switched to red. No warning yellow: just green to red. Well, we all panicked because we were totally going to miss our flight. Somehow the people got us into the first-class security line and we had to run through the terminal to get to our plane. We only just made it: they were about to close the doors.
Note to self....don't go through the NYC airport system during a nor'easter. Not unless you like sitting in the terminal for six hours and waiting for the first morning flight to depart...all depending on whether or not the traffic will be slowed or canceled.
When I was returning home from Jamaica, we couldn't find one of our suitcases, which had clothes and food we had brought back. My mom started freaking out and went into Caribbean mode, while I'm just sitting there awkwardly as I wait for her to figure things out. We first thought someone stole the suitcase, but thankfully that wasn't the case- it was just pulled away on the other side.
