My Worst Travel Experience, and Why I Should Have Used Charter Bus Service

Let me tell you the story of the worst bus trip I've ever taken.

It was nearly ten years ago now. As a teenager fresh out of High School, I was spending my summer as a camp counselor for kids in New York City. The way the camp worked, every day we would meet together at a location in the city, then gather all the kids onto a large bus and take them to a different daily location.

One day it was Jones Beach. Another day we took them to a Yankee game. And another day we took them to Hunter Mountain for zip-lining. Stuff like that, meant to get the kids out of the city, or at the very least, their usual neighborhoods, in an effort to expose these young kids to something new.

And one day we took them to Hershey Park.

One thing I forgot to make clear: the camp didn't use charter bus service. They had their own old, hot, smelly bus that may have, at one point or another, been owned by one of the major bus charter companies. But by this point it was on its last legs (wheels?) and was badly in need of being replaced.

The trip up to Hershey went fine besides the general hot, sticky environment the bus was. But by this point in the summer, myself and my fellow counselors had already gotten use to that, and our days of begging upper-management to shell out the dough for charter bus service were long behind us.

During our time at the park, the staff spoke nervously amongst themselves that all the chocolate consumed by the campers during the day would lead to a ride home containing 50+ sugar-high kids. What actually happened was the exact opposite, actually, as the sugar high was over by the time the kids boarded the bus to go home, and the majority of them fell asleep before we left the parking lot.

The problem with this? Some of the campers were young. VERY young. Like, bed-wetting young. And the parents had decided not to inform us of this, because, hey it's a DAY camp, and it's not like they're going to be spending any time in bed, right?

So we had a hot, sticky bus, filled with exhausted, bed-wetting children who'd spent the majority of their day sucking down chocolate milk-shakes and weren't smart enough to use the bathroom before they left.

So about fifteen minutes into the drive, we're dealing with three campers with soaked shorts. The bus reeks of urine, a vile stench that only became stronger as A) the bus got hotter, and B) more kids wet themselves.

As we neared the end of the trip, and finally got all the kids cleaned up, I sat in my seat, shirt over my nose, praying I would never have to take a bus that wasn't run by a charter bus service ever again, when I feel a slight drip on the top of my head.

One of the campers had bought a six-pound chocolate Hershey kiss. And he had stored it in the overhead compartment right above my head. Oh, and in case you don't see where this is going, it had melted.

And you know who ended up cleaning it up? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't the campers.