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Did you go over the Fernpass Souperkit? We often took that route precisely to save the toll on the Brenner.

Must be the time we decided to go camping in Italy with my husband and 3 children. My husband had a bright idea to drive over the Alps in Austria save 20 euros paying to go through the Bremen Pass. He said there were quite a few roads over not too high according to his map. How could we it was worse than we could ever have imagined. Up and up we went until we seemed to be clinging on nearly vertically. It was too dangerous to turn so that was not an option. Eventually we reached the part where it levelled out near the top of one of the Alps. Nightmare.

Holiday disaster. Hmmm. Not too many of them; generally we were happy to make the best of whatever came along. There was the year of Hurricane Andrew, though - we were in Florida with the kids, and had been ignoring the news. We cruised down the keys, thinking how very lucky we were that there were so many empty rooms in the middle of the tourist season; found a brilliant room right on the tip of the island; and turned on the TV to an evacuation warning. But not for our island, the road out was flooded...

When I went to a Greek Island with a friend - we were delayed by 33 hours, which in itself was a disaster as we were only going for a week. When we got to the hotel our room was about the size of a broom cupboard at the very end of a tiny, dark & dingy corridor - with not even a window in it. The food was set meals in the hotel - no option if you didn't like what was on the menu that day. Good job my friend and I shared a sense of humour - laughter was the only thing that got us through that trip!

My boyfriend and I joined a queue outside the Duomo in Florence assuming it was to enter the cathedral. On being let in we started climbing staircases and realised we were going to the top of the Dome with no way back. Once we reached the open balcony around the upper Dome his virtigo hit in big time and he had to be coaxed right round the Dome to the exit. We checked queues more carefully after that!

Why I will never do a cruise again.
Some years ago I decided that a cruise would be the ideal solution as a way of taking my mum on holiday abroad, flights being a bit stressful for her. The cruise left from our local port so seemed ideal.Then:
The first night out my mum got up to go to the loo, the ship rocked and she fell to the floor. She was bruised but fortunately not badly hurt, but was now very nervous about walking anywhere. After much complaining I managed to get a wheelchair for her (The cruise people seemed to think we had misrepresented her mobility to get on board and first threatened us with being disembarked at the next port) Anyway I willingly pushed her around. The place mum really wanted to see was Lisbon, but the day we were due to get there the weather changed and we were stuck out in the ocean with a force nine gale. The next three days are a bit of a blur due to sea sicknesss medication. One night I do remember we woke to find all the things on the dressing table shooting off onto the floor and things falling out the wardrobe. Eventually we reached the comparative calm of the North Sea. Half way across it the ship stopped its engines, the swimming pool was covered with a net, and an Air-Sea rescue helicopter appeared in the sky. One poor passenger had had a heart attack and had to be air lifted off. My mum commented, "This is a dreadful holiday, but that's taking it a bit far, we've only got another day."
When we were in the Taxi home the driver asked us if we'd enjoyed our cruise, he must have been shocked by the vehement "No" and "Never again" that answered him.

We were living and working abroad in Jamaica as young parents. We had heard that in Haiti the locals were producing beautiful art which was good to buy.
What a shocking place it was in 1979 in the days before the shocking earthquake. Such dire poverty and only a stone's throw from the rest of the Caribbean where the poverty is bad, but nothing like on Haiti.

The hotel was in a beautiful old French colonial style with metal balconies and verandas. We had asked for a cot for our beautiful blond baby,who was 9 months old. However, they had an American cot ....a put you up bed .......but no baby"crib". So we did a make shift job. Two single beds with a mattress on the floor wedged between the beds....perfect.

It worked well.. So one afternoon we left him for a nap with the door firmly locked and went downstairs for a cup of tea. When we came back the room was still locked, as were the widows, but no beautiful, blond,baby boy. We searched frantically for a good 5 minutes, going round and round the same bits of the room.

Finally we heard a little snore. He was under my bed. He had rolled to the edge of the mattress, kept on rolling under my bed and his mattress had popped up , sealing him under my bed. He eventually woke up non the wiser ready to play!!! Close shave!!!

Went to Egypt and had an allergic reaction to the sun!

When I was eighteen I went to cornwall with a friend.I drank far too much of the local cider and ended up in bed for three days,my friend was not very pleased.On the fourth day we went to a club and my friend slipped on the dance floor and broke her wrist.

My holiday disaster happened on the first day of a cruise.Whilst opening a heavy external door from the deck in sandals,the ship listed, and the door swung back unexpectedly onto my foot. The impact took off most of one toe nail,which needed daily dressing changes and the only footwear I could walk in was tight trainers. I hobbled around all week, not ideal when you have young children who want to explore and swim.

holiday disaster was the start of our holiday in Italian lakes. Flying into Milan with 3 DC we were unprepared for 12 hour close of the motorways and spent all night trying to navigate to Lake Garda when all road were closed. The rest of the hols was lovely but will never fly to Malpensa Milan again

We left home in the uk to catch the ferry to France for a camping holiday. On the way my husband rooted around in the dark in the car for something and our passports had slipped out onto the driveway. We drove 5 hours with kids and cat. Sat waiting to board for 5 hours. When they called us forward no passports could be found. We drove back 5 hours in silence except for 2 sobbing boys and a very unhappy cat!

Many years ago my family travelled to North Wales. The first flat was filthy and Mum refused to stay. The second was full of bedbugs, so again rejected. Eventually we arrived at a holiday park home and I thought it was ok, my parents spent the whole time moaning about dog hairs!!
Not great memories of Llandudno circa 1972

i went on my first ever holiday without kids/grandkids and it rained the whole week but back in the uk they had a heatwave!

We were holidaying in Malta when the boys were small. Within our first 24 hours, hubby had walked straight into the patio glass door when rushing to look at the view from the hotel room, eldest son fell into a hole in the road and shortly after youngest was floating on bis lilo when he drifted into a buoy which had a dangerous spike which popped it. He panicked and began floundering but hubs swam to his rescue... it got better after that, but at first we thought the holiday was jinxed!

Was traveling with my mum and brother many years ago to get to Singapore where my dad was working. There was a fuel strike with aeroflot (Russian airline) and we stopped via the far east at loads of different airports, it took 48 hours to get there. Arrived absolutely shattered to collect my case which had been emptied except for a belt and a pyjama top!!!! I was devastated after an awful journey!!!

Oh, I had a "significant" birthday and my husband and I were joined by friends for a long weekend city break. Unfortunately, one couple failed to tell us they were at the tail end of Noru virus. The rest of the party saw nothing of the city or its sights having caught the bug from them! That said, I probably improved my language skills from lying on the sofa watching local daytime TV and news!

Skiing in Val Thorens, France. My partners first time skiing & I was desperate for him to enjoy it. Well, first day he had a lesson on the beginners slope, fell badly and hurt his thumb and wrist. Trip to the doctors -he didn't ski again for the rest of the week! Second day I left my skis outside a cafe while we had a drink. Went to find them & they'd gone. I had to go back to the rental shop & pay to hire another pair. They never turned up! We both had to put a claim in on our insurance when we got home-not the best holiday we"ve had & we haven't been skiing since!

Just a couple of months ago, we'd booked the holiday of a lifetime to Zambia and South Africa.
Lots of flights, the first of which was from a regional airport to Heathrow with BA, we were just about to set off for the airport when we got a text to say the flight was cancelled.
Advice? 'Contact your airline' It was a bank holiday, and neither BA nor SAA (who our Africa flights were with) had anyone we could speak to! We had no choice but to book a car park near Heathrow (thank goodness we could do that!) and drive the length of the country on a Bank Holiday to try to make our main flight to SA. Every time another motorway stantion had a sign saying "queue ahead" my heart sank! What a nightmare.
We made it! Caught the flight, and the holiday was brilliant, although I aged approx 10 years on that mad dash across the UK!

my sister and I took all of the children to london for a long weekend. It rained so hard that my makeup ran, and my underwear was wet. Several years later, the children all remember the holiday but none of them remember the weather

My holiday disaster was going on a camping trip to Devon, we chose a 'family friendly park' Firstly it took over two hours to put up our tent in monsoon rain which was so bad we couldn't see more than about 2 feet in front of us. Finally having settled down to sleep the nightly entertainments finished around 2am, at which point all the drunken revelers had an impromptu party outside our tent for the next hour.... needless to say we packed up the next day!!!

Compared with some of the posts my tale is more of a hiccough than a disaster. We were holidaying independently in Crete and were moving to a hotel on the south of the island by bus. We arrived in good time at the bus stop but there was almost no one in sight, but assumed this was all part of the casual Cretan timekeeping we had encountered elsewhere. We waited over an hour until people started arriving, followed eventually by our bus. We then discovered that the clocks had changed and we had arrived over an you early for the bus

Many years ago whilst in New York we managed to lose my younger brother on the subway - he jumped off at a stop but the rest of us realised it was the wrong one. Unfortunately we weren't quick enough to tell him and the train pulled away without him.
We found him eventually but it involved several backwards and forwards trips between stations!

we were returning from a self catering holiday in cornwall.we had cleared the food out of the kitchen.i stupidly gave my daughter some tomatoes to eat before the journey home.you can probably imagined what happened,we had only been travelling for about half an hour when the lot came back,i never did that again!

My holiday disaster was last year. Me and hubby got really bad food poisoning. Luckily our friends were arriving a few days later and were able to bring more Imodium !!! Phew