When families go on vacation, they often post the highlight reel: angelic kids, joyful candids, gorgeous scenery.
But this California couple decided to do the opposite.
Reality TV producer Devin McGovern and his story editor wife Marlene Martinez took a family trip to Hawaii and created an Instagram reel that showed what it looks like when parents stop being polite and start getting real.
There was screaming, crying, angst, despair — and yes, even a middle-of-the-night slap heard ’round the island.
“10+ years producing reality TV and nothing prepared me for the drama of traveling with kids,” McGovern captioned the reel. It has earned almost 400,000 likes since Oct. 1. “Our Hawaii trip had tantrums, triumphs, and tropical sunsets — and yes, we need a vacation from this vacation.”
Finally home and (almost) fully recovered, McGovern and Martinez, who worked together on “Bar Rescue,” joke on a video call with TODAY.com about one thing took the edge off the trip. “The Mai Tais helped,” Martinez says.
At the end of September, McGovern, Martinez and their two kids (Veronica, 6, and Genevieve, 3) traveled from Los Angeles to a Maui timeshare owned by Martinez’s father, Marciano Martinez. It’s a trip the family has taken multiple times — even in May 2025 — but the events have never been quite this dramatic.
“Children are predictably unpredictable. So lo and behold, we had this kind of comedy of errors,” Martinez says. “We took grandpa so that he can enjoy a peaceful Hawaiian vacation in his timeshare. He did not regret it and loved it, although he was very hesitant in perhaps joining us again.”
McGovern, who is a dad content creator, went into the trip intending to capture family footage … and did he ever. He edited the footage to pair perfectly with the tense instrumental music playing underneath the action. He created a “sizzle reel,” or the highlight video production companies use to “sell” a show to networks.
“And I jumped in with my ‘network notes,'” says Martinez, who urged her husband to include the shot of Marciano trudging through the sand while lugging a stroller.
In a quick 70 seconds, viewers see sugar highs, sleepless nights, thunderstorms, ruined ice cream, screaming induced by hair braiding, crying caused by a bloody lip, several states of maternal disassociation … and one episode of (extremely minor) physical violence, which is often a trope in reality shows.
When the family left Los Angeles, it took the kids a few days to adjust to the time change, and they were awake and raring to go at 5:30am Hawaii time, which didn’t bode well for their exhausted parents trying to sleep in the same room. As McGovern complained, his wife turned on the camera light and started recording. Overtired from the trip and frustrated by her parents, Genevieve reached out and slapped her father on the cheek.
“She’s like, ‘Hello, personal space!’ That’s kind of her way of being like, ‘You were too close. I didn’t like what you were saying,'” McGovern explains.
You can tell by the comments that parents were thrilled that McGovern and Martinez shared what really happens on family trips … and non-parents were thankful for the cautionary tale:
- “THANK YOU for making all of us feel normal!!!! 🤣”
- “That is so relatable, I cannot even. You can plan for every contingency, but kids are the ultimate unscripted reality TV.”
- “Is this a contraception ad?”
- “My tubes just tied themselves.”
“The intention of doing it was showing you’re not alone. We’re figuring it out every single day with big emotion, high spirited children,” McGovern says. “This is what it looks like sometimes. It’s not going to be ‘seen and not heard.’ Sorry, boomers!”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
