Vacation, Dear Boy

We put a big map of the world on a wall, Douglas stuck a pin in everywhere he fancied going, I stuck a pin in where all the endangered animals were, and we made a journey out of every place that had two pins.

—Mark Carwardine, co-writer of Douglas Adams' Last Chance To See

Something's a hit, the production gets either more freedom or more money, and they decide for the next entry to make up an excuse to go to a vacation spot.

This is heavily subjective, but if an actor signs onto a production that was already being shot in a vacation spot, that's a different trope (so, Bruce Campbell signing up for Congo doesn't count, even though he admitted he did it just because they needed him for a few days, and the studio would pay for him to tour the rest of the time).

Also see Vacation Episode.

Please note cases where actors have openly stated it, and cases that are based on speculation.

---

Examples of Vacation, Dear Boy include:

Film

• Oceans Twelve: Everyone involved has admitted they just wanted to get paid to party at George Clooney's villa. Brad Pitt said he thought it was funny that Catherine Zeta-Jones "thought we were making a movie."
• Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie: Not admitted, but c'mon, they have a bigger budget, and suddenly decide to head on vacation.
• Arguably, the Disney Channel movie Jumping Ship qualifies. What other reason could there be for the sequel to a modern-day western to be about people getting shipwrecked?
• The Lizzie McGuire Movie took off for Rome. (Disney seems to do this a lot.)
• In the Beatles movie Help!, the lads felt like hanging out on the beach and going skiing, so these were written into the script.
• Ray Harryhausen set the film 20 Million Miles to Earth in Rome for this very reason.
• Michael Caine admits he did Jaws the Revenge because they were shooting it in the Caribbean. As it turns out, Caine couldn't leave the shoot to attend the Oscars, where he won Best Supporting Actor for Hannah and Her Sisters.
• One could speculate that this was a reason to film Jumper.
  • What makes this even funnier is an interview with the cast and crew talking on and on about flying all over the world to do scenes that might be a minute long.
• Possibly the reason Peter O'Toole agreed to do Club Paradise.
  • Heck, the entire movie for everyone in it, and that includes its star, Robin Williams.

Live Action TV

• Episodes of Columbo were filmed on location in London, in Mexico and on a cruise ship.
• Many of the guest stars did The Love Boat was so they could go on the cruise that was inevitably taken for location shots.
• In one episode of Top Gear, Clarkson is supposed to do a relatively cheap review of the BMW X6. Instead, he ends up flying to the Swiss Alps, Hong Kong, and Singapore, ostensibly to test various features. One imagines he did far more than the two minutes of filming that show up in the "review".
• In the early '70s, The Three Stooges filmed a pilot called Kooks' Tour. It was essentially a Travelogue Show, narrated by Moe, and intercut with skits of the Stooges' antics in that episode's setting. It was shelved prematurely due to Larry's declining health.

Other

• As seen in the page quote, Douglas Adams' Last Chance To See, a radio broadcast and book about endangered wildlife.
• There's a car ad where an exec proposes having a car commercial take place in various vacation spots such as Maui. Everyone else on the board quickly realizes that this is what he's trying for.