User Reviews

Steve stops at a travel agency, run by Mayberry's choir director, John Masters (or at least, Olan Soule, who played that character), who hears the name Douglas and flips through a stack of about five papers lying on his desk to read off an itinerary for someone going to Europe.

Steve tells him he's going to Hawaii, and the man then figures out he was reading the itinerary for someone who's first name is Douglas. He then reads through Steve's itinerary, using all the same phrases, even finishing with a French word as he did before.

When Steve gets home, he learns Chip is sick, but should be fine in a couple of days. He immediately cancels his vacation, even though Charley and the boys will be there. So the next scene has Chip and Ernie playing (Chip did get well quickly) while Steve is now spending his entire two week vacation sitting in the backyard, reading.

The boys decide it's not too much fun to sit and do nothing, so they decide to organize a Hawaiian luau in their backyard for their Dad. Charley agrees to cook the luau, altering it to a ham and pork chops in lieu of getting a whole hog, and Mike borrows three fake palm trees from the drama department at college. All three boys ask one teacher to come, merely because Charley had quipped that if Dad had taken the flight to San Francisco and the boat to Hawaii as planned, he'd probably be enjoying the pool on the ship and the company of some school teachers he met.

When asked why he specifies a teacher, Charley says, "They travel more than Marco Polo." All three teachers come, with the boys not knowing all three had the same idea there, each expecting only the teacher they invited. While everyone is dancing in the yard, a sudden shower comes, but everyone had a good time anyhow. That's basically it, other than Steve telling everyone he had a great time.

My description is accurate. The plot summary on IMDB is quite inaccurate here. It says the "family" plans a vacation to Hawaii, when it was only Steve. It then says that Charley decides to bring Hawaii to the Douglas' when it was clearly the three sons. They do most of the planning, not Charley, as it states.

The big thing that bugged me is why would Steve, who spends so much time traveling for work, away from his family, want to take a vacation all by himself instead of having the family along? And in the mid-1960s, why would he want to spend most of his vacation time sailing on a boat when he could easily fly there and have the whole time in Hawaii? You'd think he'd rather lounge on the beach than next to a ship's swimming pool. According to websites I checked, a typical vacation voyage today will see you arrive in Hawaii on the 6th day of your trip. So by the time he gets to Hawaii, it's almost time to sail back home. Hope you enjoy your two days in Hawaii, Steve.

The biggest problem is why he needed to cancel just because Chipper was a bit ill. As promised by the doctor, he was well within two days from his unspecified illness. Let's see, the boy is now in his teens, he has Uncle Charley and two grown-up sons there to handle any emergency...there was no reason to cancel the trip. Or how about, two days later, when Chip is well, going to Hawaii then-perhaps by plane. He'd then arrive in Hawaii three days ahead of when the ship would have landed.

Only someone with far more time to spend would take a boat to Hawaii in the airplane age.

I thought the boys were silly to invite their teachers over, as though they didn't understand that Charley was simply saying their Dad would probably be spending time with a nice woman. There was no reason to think it would have to be a teacher, and two of the ones invited were not close to Steve's age.

But the writers who sloppily wrote this contrived story were the ones who made the biggest mistakes. Not much to watch here-a four.