We’ve all been the victim of a travel nightmare, or at least heard the story of a someone who has been. Some of the travel stories are just that – really bad situations that happen during travel. Fortunately, there are others that end up having a happy ending.

We’re not just talking about having screaming babies on board, or a chatty passenger sitting beside you that won’t leave you alone. We’re talking about the kind of travel nightmares that leave you stranded on the side of the road, or in an airport for hours on end.

When Allison Preiss headed to the Washington Dulles International Airport planning to fly to Austin, Texas, for a friend’s bachelorette party, she had no idea she was about to be the victim of a travel nightmare.

Priess was the lowest fare passenger on the flight and because the airplane had a broken seat and the flight was booked full, someone was going to have to give up their seat. That someone was Priess.

Angry at United Airlines for overbooking the flight, Priess took to Twitter to express her frustration. The trip had been planned for months and now she was being told that she couldn’t board the flight. To top it all off, they wouldn’t give her a cash refund for the flight that she wasn’t going to be able to go on.

Instead, the airline offered her a $10,000 travel voucher. While that might not seem so bad to many of us, Priess says that was proof of how badly United Airlines didn’t want to give her cash. They also gave her two $10 meal vouchers, which she said she planned to use at Pizza Hut.

Apparently things turned out okay for Priess, because she later posted on Twitter that it was the best airline delay she’d ever had. Maybe her travel nightmare wasn’t such a nightmare after all.