Holidaymakers take to Reddit to reveal their biggest travel blunders, from packing a passport in hold luggage to reserving a hotel on the wrong side of the Grand Canyon

It only takes one little mistake to turn a dream vacation into a nightmare.

As travelers revealed on an online forum.

The pitfalls abound, from packing blunders to airport mix-ups and booking the wrong dates.

These examples and more were served in a Reddit forum after user ‘Medium-Decision6899’ asked, ‘What’s the dumbest travel mistake you’ve made?’

The answers came thick and fast.

‘JustGenericName’ added to the debate with their painful hotel accident, writing, ‘Ouch! I booked a hotel on the wrong side of the Grand Canyon.

“Fun fact, “10 miles” is a five-hour drive from the trailhead.”

In a similar vein, “Bruce_e” chimed in, “I once booked an Airbnb for the wrong month for a month.”

‘Cubsfanjohn’ added to the thread with this tale of woe: ‘I forgot to write down where I was staying and had to make a transatlantic phone call from a payphone in Berlin to my mother to have her check my e-mail. The worst part was that she was walking the dog and didn’t answer.’

And “jtonkinson” – he booked a hotel for Portland, Oregon, instead of Portland, Maine.

Messing up the basics of booking was a common theme.

‘MaddBadger’ said, ‘I booked a train from Venice. When the train didn’t arrive I found out I had booked a bus. We missed it.’

In response to this comment, ‘Medium-Decision6899’ wrote: ‘I did something similar. Showed up to the train station to catch my bus, obviously missed. Bought train ticket, read arrival time as departure time and missed that too. Good times.’

‘Horkbajirbandit’ kept the theme of the missed train going with this comment, ‘At least you didn’t miss your train because you were too busy filming the arrival. The doors closed in front of me and I had to wait three hours to get to the next one (I had also booked the ticket for that two months in advance). That was the day I stopped filming social media story roles.”

Not all ticket accidents were related to trains. One user remembered standing in line for the tour of the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam before realizing his ticket was ‘for the following year’.

Several travelers made crucial mistakes when packing for their vacation.

‘ShinjukuAce’ said: ‘I booked a trip to Istanbul in December, assumed it would be warm as it was on the Mediterranean and Middle East.

“I didn’t check the weather forecast, didn’t pack warm clothes and it was snowing when I arrived.”

Hugobosslovescandles said, Went on a week-long hiking trip to the Grand Canyon in college and I forgot to pack a single pair of underwear.

“I had to go to the doctor when I got home because I had such a bad rash on my scrotum.”

‘JennItalia269’ shared a similar experience after forgetting to pack underwear during a three-week trip to South America.

“I don’t mean to offend the Brazilians here, but let’s just say their men’s underwear wasn’t my idea of ​​comfortable,” they said.

Airports turned out to be another vacation hazard in the Reddit thread.

One user said, “Went to the wrong airport in Berlin and missed my flight.”

Fellow Redditor ‘cheesetrain’ shared a similar story during their visit to Belfast, Northern Ireland.

“When I get to the bus station, I ask for a “to the airport” ticket. I take my ticket and get on the bus,” they wrote.

“Thirty minutes into the journey, where we should be getting close to the airport, I look at my Google maps and see we’re going the wrong way.

‘I’ll ask someone if the bus goes to Belfast airport. He looks shocked and tells me it’s going to Dublin airport. I missed my flight, had to take a new, much more expensive flight from Dublin airport.’

While ‘Trekker_Cynthia’ shared their husband’s passport blunder, which made him completely miss out on their vacation.

“The night before our first trip to Barcelona, ​​he noticed his passport had expired,” they wrote.

“Hotels were non-refundable at the time, so I waved goodbye and did the trip on my own.”

In another passport accident, “brainonvacation78” recounted how they grabbed their son’s passport instead of their own “before driving three hours to Chicago for a flight to Cuba early the next day.”

They continued, “Fortunately I have a wonderful friend who went to get mine from my house and met me halfway. I got back to Chicago at 2am and made my 6:30am flight. I gave my friend $100 for saving my ass.”

‘Riceingonthecake’ also shared a passport error – ‘putting a passport in the check-in bag’.

Another user, ‘KjunFries’, shared how they booked a rental car – for the wrong day.

“The rental company was completely inflexible, so I ended up paying over $500 twice for a four-day rental,” they wrote.

‘Then I discovered a taxi to and from my destination – where I didn’t need a car anyway. Would have only cost $150.”