Not excursion-related as such: but I've always -- a bit shamefacedly -- enjoyed the section early in Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, where the three are setting off from London for their boating holiday on the Thames. They need to get to -- long since I read the book, I forget most of the details -- but I have a feeling that it may have been Staines: call it so, for sake of the story.
They proceed to Waterloo Station, and find there, a scene of utter cluelessness and chaos. No platform-indicator notices that make any sense; no station staff have the faintest idea of what train is departing from what platform, when, for what destination; locomotive crews, when talked with, have as little notion of to where and at what time, they are working their train. Our heroes finally solve the problem by heading for a particular train at random, and successfully bribing the driver and fireman to be -- let's say -- the 10.30 for Staines. The chapter is concluded: "And this is how we got to Staines by the London & South-Western Railway".
Obviously, totally crazy hyperbole -- and one wonders why Jerome particularly had it in for the LSWR; which I've never heard of in any other context, as being supposedly particularly incompetent and inefficient. However -- a "fun fantasy". (I gather that at approximately the same date, the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest in France was -- with rather more justification -- a byword for "being unable to find its arse, even with both hands".)