Class Trip

shh...

Kevin: All riiight, field trip!... Where we goin'?
Daria: The field.

Kevin: Cool!

—Daria

Any series that takes place in a school, be it elementary, middle, high, or even kindergarten, will have at least one episode that takes place during a class trip. The destination can vary, but for day trips, it's usually educational and painfully boring (like a museum, a local historical landmark, or a cardboard box factory).

A whole episode Class Trip is a great change of scenery, and gives both an interesting place to cook up wacky hijinks and a watershed moment in romantic relationships between students. It's technically Not a Date, but it gives couples a chance to sneak off and go sightseeing by themselves. The travel itself can be a bit of an adventure, and once the class gets there, there are endless opportunities for Zany Schemes, illicit romance or mistaken assumptions that zany schemes and illicit romance are happening. It's an excellent time for a First Kiss to happen. Or for a lost Monster of the Week to attack.

Anime really likes this one: Japanese schools generally send students on at least one Class Trip per school year. Tokyo Tower is a frequent destination for day outings, but many schools annually send their graduating classes on a trip involving overnight travel.

Synonymous with Field Trip.

Examples of Class Trip include:

Anime and Manga

• Sailor Moon: The Cherry Blossoms watching episode
• Marmalade Boy: The one to Hokkaido, where Ginta and Arimi start their Operation: Jealousy plan.
• Ranma ½: Class trips organized by Principal Kunō tends to be a lot nuttier than any other examples. The "Little Hawaii" fiasco comes to mind....
• Cardcaptor Sakura had a lot more than one class trip a year. However, to offset this luxury, the card of the week would show up right there.
• Tenshi na Konamaiki^[context?]
• A class trip to Kyoto is the backdrop for a three-episode Arc in Mahou Sensei Negima and a three-volume long one in the manga, which marked the start of the series change toward the seriously epic.
• One episode of Azumanga Daioh revolves around the third-year class trip to Okinawa.
• In Digimon Adventure 02, Miyako goes on a school trip to Kyoto. She doesn't catch a break from fighting Digimon however.
  • Also present in Digimon Tamers, where Takato and Jenrya's classes go on a school trip together.
• Magic Knight Rayearth starts on a day when three different schools have class trips to Tokyo Tower.
• Lovely Complex actually uses this quite effectively, as the school trip to Hokkaido is when Otani rejects Risa.
• In one episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Asuka is upset that she can't go on the school trip because she needs to pilot her Eva.
• In an episode of Lucky Star, the girls take a class trip to Kyoto and included a stop at the show's own animation studio.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei^[context?]
• Uta Kata^[context?]
• Hidamari Sketch, where the art students visit a zoo to sketch.
• The class trip in Lamune is also used quite effectively, being preceeded by Hiromi Sakura confessing her love to Kenji, then revealing that she is about to move soon. Kenji is then asked to help give Sakura some good memories to leave with; however, this puts some stress on childhood friend Nanami as she does not know what is going on, until Kenji explains what happened to her later.
  • Ironically the viewer can obviously see Nanami jealous and it basically jumpstarts the romance into 5th gear
• Cromartie High School surprisingly has two, both unwillingly taking advantage of Yutaka Takenouchi's motion sickness. One is on a bus to Nikko and the other is on a bullet train to Kyoto.
• In School Rumble, during an unspecified field trip, Harima attempts to sit next to Tenma on the class bus but accidentally gets on the wrong bus during a bathroom break.
• D.N.Angel has a point in the series where Daisuke's class goes on a school trip to the beach and all sorts of zany things happen. Daisuke manages to steal another art piece (and gain a new ally, Towa), Satoshi attempts to capture Dark, both Risa and Riku get lost... it spans at least a volume in the manga and several episodes of the anime. Most notably, this arc in the manga is the first time that Dark's rival, Krad, appears. (The anime had him appear in an earlier episode first.)
• Full Metal Panic!! did this. Unsurprisingly, the plane got hijacked by terrorists.
  • The school tried to make it up to the students by having a second class trip for them on a cruise ship at Christmas. The cruise ship was hijacked by Mithril.
• In the Fruits Basket manga, after the anime ends, the class goes to Kyoto (during which Tohru, Hanajima, and Arisa's teacher worries about their not trying to sneak into the boys' dorm room).
• Seto no Hanayome has a Class Trip to Kyoto. Naturally, things become weird due to the presence of the mermaids on the trip.
• MPD Psycho, true to its Mind Screw nature, has a class of junior-high students taking a class trip to the Philippines.
• Spriggan^[context?]
• Yu-Gi-Oh GX has a school trip in the second season, where everyone goes to Domino City to see the various dueling sights. Oh, and duels happen.
• THE iDOLM@STER - Haruka notes that the hotel they are staying in the Beach Episode has this feel.
• Smile Pretty Cure has one to Kyoto and Osaka in Episode 13 and 14 respectively.

Film

• Battle Royale takes place during an extended class trip on an island... where the students literally have to kill each other.
• Learning Curve likewise has a group of incredibly badly-behaved kids duped into thinking they're going on special dream internships for the summer... actually they're drugged, kidnapped, and imprisoned by a fed-up substitute teacher who tortures them into model students.
• Picnic at Hanging Rock.^[context?]

Literature

• Every book in The Magic School Bus series (as well as every episode of the animated series) revolves around a class trip. And with Miss Frizzle and the titular school bus, these trips are educational, but far from boring, taking the kids to prehistoric times, to the depths of space or into a classmate's body.
• The Percy Jackson series starts off with one of these. The trip is somewhat cut short when Percy's math teacher turns into a horrible monster, tries to kill him, is vaporised, and seems to disappear from everyone's memories.
• Time Scout takes these up to eleven, where a field trip involves going to Victorian London or Ancient Rome. When something goes wrong on those field trips, it's very wrong.

Live Action TV

• The Grand Finale of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide.
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Incan Mummy Girl" opens with a class trip to a museum.
  • "The Pack", too, opens with a class trip—this time to the zoo.
• An episode of Flash Forward shows the class on a trip to a national forest of some sort, with Tucker and Miles sneaking away.
• Subverted in The Adventures of Pete and Pete as one of the whole episodes was involved with the characters dealing with others hidden sides while ON the school bus to the destination.
• An early episode of The Steve Harvey Show subverts this somewhat as Steve's class is at the airport waiting to board a plane to Cleveland to visit The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The flight is delayed because of snow. Hilarity Ensues with Bullethead making prank announcements on the courtesy phone among other things. They even meet Jerry Springer.
• Season 2 of The Inbetweeners opens with one to Swanage. Hilarity Ensues.
• Episodes 33-34 of Kamen Rider Fourze.

Video Games

• Sadly Averted in Bully. That mission would've been sick.
• The Persona series:
  • Persona 3 features a four-day, three-night trip to Kyoto in the middle of November with both the junior and senior classes. The most notable part of this trip is the Hot Springs Episode Mini Game, where you and the guys are "accidentally" caught in the spring when it changes over from guys-only to girls-only and have to avoid being caught and "Executed" by Mitsuru. It's stated that the trip was originally intended to be overseas, but the largely unpopular Classic Lit teacher demanded that the trip be in Japan. Also notable is that, despite how easily the game could have used it for an interesting location to fight a boss (simply have the trip scheduled for a full moon), it was avoided.
  • Continued in Persona 4. With a trip to Port Island. Which, like the trip above, is also used as a Breather Episode with no fights or conflict, just fun. Notably, KING'S GAAAAAAAME! *hic*
• Little Busters! has one as a very prominent plot point. To elaborate, the whole game is set in a virtual world created when the said trip Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Mahou Sensei Negima features one to Kyoto. Naturally, it is packed with the usual stuff...right?

Web Original

• Survival of the Fittest, like Battle Royale, has the classes chosen for the latest SOTF season abducted from their school trips, almost always on June 19 . The exception to this is Bathurst in v2, where the two classes were taken from a sexual education seminar due to the terrorists' mole, Steven Wilson, having spent the year masquerading as the new principal, and then choosing that moment to pump the auditorium full of sleeping gas.
• Even lolcats like to go on field trips.

Western Animation

• As mentioned in the literature section, the entire premise of The Magic School Bus is going on some sort of field trip. The trips usually start out mundane, but Ms Frizzle and the Bus end up making them pretty crazy.
• Fillmore!! has an episode where Fillmore, Ingrid and O'Farrell go on a class trip with an assortment of other one-episode characters. They go to a museum and when a picture is defaced, Fillmore and Ingrid must find out who the perpetrator is before the ink dries.
• X-Men: Evolution had at least two field trip episodes during its run, both of which resulted in near-complete chaos.
• Daria goes on field trips thrice, first to the Mall of the Millennium for economics, though it's implied the teacher only wants to go because of the opportunity to find her Beanie Baby-esque collectibles, and in a later season, the students go to play paintball with Mr. DeMartino in order to "learn the effects of warfare on all aspects of society." Following that, the students went mountain climbing with disastrous results.
• In the Invader Zim episode "A Room with a Moose", Zim uses a fake class trip to send his classmates to their doom.
• The Simpsons had one episode in which Bart's class went on a trip to a box factory. On the way they pass these other school busses outside of better places (if I remember right, one was even outside a toy factory). There was another episode where the class went to the Post Office, which was less mundane for the characters.
  • They also had an episode where the school went to a chocolate factory, a trip Bart missed because he forgot his permission slip.
  • In another, Bart's class visits the Springfield Police station and creates a sonic boom by linking up loads of megaphones.
  • The Simpsons has had numerous class-trip episodes. "Homer's Odyssey" has one of the funniest moments of the entire series, on a trip to the nuclear power plant, where Sherri and Terri simultaneously kiss Bart. Then there's "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade" where Bart and Lisa are made "buddies" on a trip to Capital City, resulting in their missing the bus home because there's nobody to report either of them absent. And of course there's "Das Bus", where the kids get stranded on a remote island... I'm sure there are many more.
• Lloyd in Space featured one episode where Lloyd's class goes to "Wormhole National Park", the main attraction being a wormhole (duh!). Lloyd ends up sucked into it at one point and teleported into a garbage bin, but the others don't know that...
• Kim Possible: The class went on a field trip to Mexico or something. It got cancelled and ended up in Pirate Haven Mystery Cove Bay. Or something. And they fought pirates.
  • It was a Senior Trip, with the original destination supposed to be the beach for a weekend of fun in the sun. Instead, they wound up in a Colonial Reenactment town, and were forced to take part. And then they fought pirates. So much for that vacation.
• Recess did this a few times. One instance that sticks outis where the Class is headed to an Expy of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and the Bus breaks down. The rest of the Episode is spent with the teacher helping the bus driver grieve while the kids trick out the bus. If memory serves, the Class never actually made it to wherever they were going, as the episode ended on the road. With TJ riding a Recliner on the Roof of the bus.
• Danny Phantom has one class trip to the Axiom Lab at the beginning where we're treated to chaos from the Monster of the Week and a super computer that is relevant to the overall plot.
• In an episode of Hey Arnold!, Harold and Helga get left behind after a trip to a chocolate factory. They then spent the entire afternoon trying to get home.
• Code Lyoko episode "The Lake". XANA choosing this time to attack is sure to make a class trip less boring and a lot more dangerous.
  • Also, in the episode "Lyoko Minus One", Yumi's science class went on a class trip. Of course, XANA attacked, and Yumi ended up fighting off her entire class, but in the end, the class still got a chance to study plants.
• In a Home Movies episodes called, well, "Class Trip", the kids go on a field trip to...a hotel.
• During the Cow and Chicken episode "Field Trip to Folsom Prison", Chicken exchanges identity with an inmate. You can guess the rest.