Why It’s Very Hard to Survive an Entire Year Without Getting Dragged on Family Vacations

So, you just got out of school for a break where you can enjoy whatever game you’re playing at the moment, but then, unexpectedly, your parents bust in and tell you that the family is going on a European vacation or to Disney World – something you never asked for. You end up visibly agitated and pump your fist up. A perfect candidate for a YKWBS episode.

This is an annoying thing done by parents to waste your time and energy, all under the guise of being educational or paying visits to family members you don’t care about or even hate. Every year, you end up getting dragged to some glorified prison camp disguised as a tropical paradise that somehow becomes the exact opposite of what you want to enjoy when you’re out of school. The whole point of being on vacation is to not work or relax, or maybe sit down and play your favorite game without your parents asking you to clean the gutters, but a family vacation ends up becoming a mandatory assignment from your parents.

The first problem is the road trip. It doesn’t matter if it takes three hours or days. It always devolves into the exact same sequence of hellish events. Either you or your annoying sibling may ask if they’re there yet. That question can end up being asked the minute you back out of the driveway. Then your father decides it would be the perfect time to listen to eight hours of a single CD album you don’t want to listen to. Suddenly, you can’t feel your legs because you’re sharing the back seat with an overflowing cooler of warm sandwiches and your sibling’s collection of Pokémon cards.

And I’m not even done with this section. It gets worse – the rest stops. Why does every highway rest area (or service area) smell like a mixture of stale coffee, industrial floor cleaner, and the collective regret of a thousand truck drivers!? You stop for ten minutes, and somehow your father spends 45 minutes trying to fix a faulty wiper with a rubber band and a paperclip!

That’s only one entire section, but I have yet to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Other times you end up having to fly if your destination is far away. It was simple having to drive in a car, but the whole airport thing can be an absolute nightmare. First of all, you have to get to the check-in counter, where you have to drop off your gigantic bricks of suitcases that are too large to fit on carry-on. What happens if you drop your suitcase in the wrong belt? That will be way too much to explain.

The next part is going through security, and this is where things can get complicated and fussy. First of all, you have to take your shoes off, then separate all your electronics from your bags because the TSA agent won’t let you scan them at the same time. Randomly, you may end up with secondary screening if something crops up. After all that is over, waiting to board the actual flight. Most flights seem to be on time, but somehow it ends up being delayed by two hours because of a faulty door, computer glitch, or some crap.

Once you get in the aircraft, you’ll be crammed into a small space where your movement is limited, and you have to put up with two or three babies, toddlers, or preschoolers throwing tantrums the entire flight. You can’t even use the internet because your devices have to be in airplane mode so they don’t interfere with the aircraft’s operations. Nobody wants to use any of the in-flight entertainment; there are like ten programs or games and they all suck. I could dedicate an entire episode to the challenges relating to air travel.

So, you get to the destination and guess what? It’s not about doing what you want but instead doing a pre-planned, parent-approved itinerary. As an example, your day starts at 9AM with a breakfast buffet, then a mandatory photoshoot at 10:30AM, which you don’t want to be in. Then at noon, a tour at a local historical wax museum of people you don’t care about. Then at 2PM, a family activity. They end up spending over $400 on T-shirts. Sometimes, these activities are never fun and end up becoming a grueling, sweat-soaked battle where your parents take things too seriously and cause your day to be eaten up by a statue. Sometimes, these hours can last more than your planned day, with your day ending at midnight instead of 10PM, causing you to be fatigued.

The next part – the photos. The worst kind of souvenir is a forced memory. You can’t just enjoy the moment; you have to stage it. They want you to smile, look like you are having fun, and put your arm around your parent or sibling. You’re trying to look at something, and your parent is demanding you freeze in the exact same pose for like the sixteenth time. Once you get home, you spend the next month looking at a thousand blurry pictures of your parents’ heads and seven identical shots of the hotel breakfast buffet. You don’t want yourself or your friends to see it.

Don’t even get me started on the hotels. They’re already BS, and it’s been talked about in three episodes already. But it can be even worse when families have to stay in one room. Before you go to bed and in the morning, your mother or father wants to listen to the TV and you don’t want to hear it. If you were around a lot of people, there’s a good chance that you or someone else will get sick with a cold and one of your parents will be coughing all night, preventing you from sleeping. It’s even worse if you have an older or younger brother or sister. Most hotels only have two beds and you’ll be forced to sleep with the family member you hate. They always hog up most of the bed for the entire night, making you cold.

Most of these happen to last a week or more. You end up spending millions of hours in a car or plane, wasting $4,000, and all you end up with is sunburns, a terrible T-shirt, and a deeper appreciation for your own couch. After that is all over and you get home, you spent the whole time arguing, your break from school is ruined, you are in financial debt, and your parents look at you with a satisfied delusional grin and say it was great and do it again the following year.

Family vacations aren’t vacations – they’re a stressful, expensive, parent-mandated ritual designed to generate six and a half good photos and zero good memories. The only vacations you need are the ones where you can stay home and play your favorite games, or attend conventions without being bound by your parents. That can be a paradise. I’d rather take a trip to the moon with a pogo stick, and at least your parents can’t force you to go. They can be relentless BS.