Fun Without Funds? They May Find Out

What can put a crimp in the European tour you’ve been planning for the last year or two to celebrate your graduation from high school?

How about pulling into Wengen, Switzerland, with a week still to go, then having the tour-bus driver tell you that the rest of your prepaid hotel rooms, meals and transportation are canceled because your travel agent back home didn’t send the check?

That is what has apparently happened to seven Orange County teen-agers, most of them June graduates from Estancia High School in Costa Mesa, according to David E. Brees, an Estancia teacher who helped arrange the trip.

Brees said the youths are not stranded; their return airline tickets are good. But they cannot fly home before July 20 and in the meantime must make their own travel, meal and lodging arrangements with whatever pocket money they have left.

“We had recommend that each student plan on taking at least $25 spending money per day,” Brees said. “I think it’s more of an inconvenience than a catastrophe.”

The group has decided to try keeping to its original itinerary and traveling to Salzburg in Austria, then to Munich and Frankfurt in West Germany before flying home. They started economizing Saturday by sleeping five to a room, but even then the room was costing them $24 each, Brees said. “It shows what the dollar’s worth there,” he pointed out.

Brees said that chaperon Geraldine Lumian, another Estancia teacher, will use her own money to help if necessary.

He said each student had paid $2,300 to Unique Discoveries Inc. of Los Angeles to arrange the tour.

“I think it’s going to prove to be a truly unique experience for the students,” Brees cracked. “A bit more experience than we planned.”

Other Estancia students went on a similar trip in 1985 that also had been arranged by Unique Discoveries; Brees recalled that “there was no trouble at all.”

Efforts to contact Unique Discoveries’ officials to ask whether the students’ money actually was forwarded were unsuccessful Sunday. Telephone calls from The Times to the agency’s answering service were not returned Sunday.

“The tragedy is that most of these kids are not poor little rich kids treated by their parents to a trip,” Brees said. “Most of them have worked--one boy worked for two years--and it’s very disappointing for them.”

The five boys and two girls from Estancia High are part of a group of 38 teen-agers and chaperons. The others are from Seattle, San Jose, Claremont and Albia, Iowa, Brees said.

He identified the Costa Mesa teen-agers as Mike Amato, Maria Avila, Kayla Cornelison, Melinda Hunt and Robert Page, all of whom were graduated last June, plus Dwaine Hamilton, a 1985 graduate, and Russ Wilson, who will be a senior at Estancia in September.

Brees said that Page, who worked for two years to save for the trip, apparently is taking the setback philosophically. “He told his mother over the phone: ‘Up to this point, we have been tourists. Now we’re going to be European travelers,” Brees said.