Vacation!

From Disney disasters to beach flops, your most memorable (i.e., hilarious!) family travel snafus.

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Seeing America

When I was a child—one of five—our parents left nothing to chance when preparing for our summer vacation. Lists were made and trunks packed weeks in advance. On the morning of the trip, a final check was made. When everything was deemed ready, we piled into the station wagon and began the six-hour drive. Then, sometime into the trip,our mother realized that something was missing: one of my sisters. We drove back home, where my father found her sitting on the toilet.

GEORGE DOSCHER, Hillsborough, New Jersey

After my husband and I were married, my in-laws offered to pay for our honeymoon. Visions of Hawaii or Mexico came to mind. Not quite. They told us we were heading to Disney World. Not only that, but since they’d always wanted to go, they were coming along. Turns out, my mother-in-law’s two best friends also always wanted to go to Disney World, as did their three kids, not to mention my sister in-law and her husband. I can’t say a lot of honeymooning went on.

CRISTINA BEITZ, El Cajon, California

Throughout our tour of an early American bathhouse in Hot Springs, Arkansas, I explained to my four-year-old grandson what people once did there. When we came upon a mannequin at a desk, I told him, “She was probably writing a letter home to her friends telling them about her vacation to Hot Springs.” My grandson asked, “And then she died and they stuffed her?”

CYNTHIA FRANKLIN, Grenada, Mississippi