We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the strangest things that happened while on their family vacations, and as usual, they did not disappoint!
1. "Our room was infested with cockroaches, so Mom caught a bunch in a glass, walked to the front desk, and placed the cup full of roaches on the front desk for all those checking in to see."
2. "My brother got bitten in the balls by a crab and it latched onto him."
3. "Our hotel burned completely to the ground in the middle of the night. We got out OK but were left with only the pajamas we were wearing and my mom’s purse. I’m 47 now and still terrified of fires."
4. "We were going on a family trip and at my cousins’ house the night before leaving. They got out some spicy Mexican candy. I was 6 at the time and ate it. Then, the next morning, I woke up with horrible diarrhea. My parents ended up putting a diaper on me (I was already potty-trained) and we left. An hour and a half into the trip, I had to poop, so I went in the diaper and continued to do so for the rest of the trip."
5. "We were sitting at a stoplight, and the people in the car next to us were giving my dad funny looks, so he turned around to moon them. Once his butt cheeks touched the window, it cracked — leaving a butt-shaped crack across the entire windshield!"
6. "My family had an Airbnb in Hawaii and we broke the toilet. My brother and I clogged the toilet back-to-back, so bad that it wouldn't unclog for the last few days of our vacation."
7. "On our way to North Carolina, my mom got pulled over for speeding and was given a ticket. On the way home, she was pulled over on the same stretch of highway for speeding by the same officer. Instead of giving him her registration, she accidentally gave him the first ticket he gave her."
8. "We stayed at the wrong hotel for a weeklong trip. When we checked in, they found our reservation and even scanned my mom's ID. We spent a week in this luxurious hotel, and when we went to check out, the bill was MUCH higher than expected. It turns out the REAL hotel we had reserved had a very similar name and someone with a similar last name had a reservation at the place we stayed, so they assumed we were that family. My mom argued about the mistake so we wouldn't have to pay their rate."
9. "One time, my little brother had such bad abdominal pain while on vacation that we had to cut the trip short and take him to the emergency room. We were there for several hours, and everyone thought he had appendicitis. We found out he just had extremely bad gas/constipation, so they gave him an enema. He told us it was the greatest poop he's ever taken."
10. "During our visit to the Netherlands, I got sick with fever and a cold. The next day, my brother got sick. Then my mom got sick. It was always freezing cold outside, and we ended up spending our entire vacation inside our hotel room. My father was almost in tears because we wasted our time and money coming to Amsterdam."
11. "We went horseback riding and my mom's horse would not stop farting. But not just little toots. Huge farts. Loud, trumpeting, murderous-smelling farts. For 5 miles. Finally, her horse let out one last earth-shaking bomb that scared my brother's horse so much, it bucked him off."
12. "My grandparents took me on a road trip to Montana where I got the flu and was bitten by huge spiders. On our way back, the transmission in their car went out and we had to ride four hours in a two-seater tow truck."
13. "My sister — who has very fair Irish skin — forgot to put sunscreen on and burned to a horrible, blistering tomato red. She's allergic to aloe vera, so we spent the rest of our cruise carefully laying cucumber slices on her back."
14. "We were on a four-week vacation, and so much went wrong. Someone in my family got locked in the bathroom, so we had to remove the door from the hinges to get them out; we accidentally left someone at a rest stop in the Bavarian alps; our tire popped on a highway outside of Rome; and our entire family came down with norovirus, which took us all out for about two weeks. A vacation we’ll never forget!"
15. "My ex and I shared a house rental with another couple for a relaxing few days at the beach. My ex was upstairs in the only bathroom, apparently going number two, while the rest of us were downstairs hanging out in the kitchen. Suddenly we heard water flowing through the plumbing, followed by him yelling, 'Oh my god, oh my god!' Water started pouring through the recessed lights in the kitchen ceiling, as well as through the cabinet above the stove and out onto the counters."
16. "On a camping trip, my uncle set up the tent wrong and it rained the first night we were there, and all of our belongings got soaked."
17. "One year, my family was driving to my aunt’s house a few hours away for Christmas. We had all of our presents in a rooftop carrier, which opened on the highway. The presents spilled across the lanes and we had to pull over and carefully retrieve them."
18. "A stomach virus went around to all nine of us on a family trip to visit friends in Scotland. Oh, and on the same trip, my brother hocked a loogie against the wind and it splattered full force onto my face two seconds later."
19. My dad, brother, and I went camping, and my brother went missing. He was always super adventurous and would frequently take off. We looked everywhere. We asked every single other campsite, and many other people, including the park rangers, were helping us look. We had to call my mom, and she was two hours into the four-hour drive to meet us when my dad decided to get in the truck to search farther away and found my little brother in the backseat. He had been there the entire time."
Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.