Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (known internationally as Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation) is a 2018 American 3D computer-animated comedy film produced by Sony Pictures Animation and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The third installment in the Hotel Transylvania franchise, it is directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and written by Tartakovsky and Michael McCullers, and features Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, David Spade, Steve Buscemi, Keegan-Michael Key, Molly Shannon, Fran Drescher, and Mel Brooks reprising their roles, as well as new additions to the cast, including Kathryn Hahn and Jim Gaffigan.
Back in 1897, Dracula and his friends travel in disguise on a train to Budapest. However, Dracula’s arch-nemesis Professor Abraham Van Helsing boards the train and unveils the monsters; the monsters escape by climbing through the roof, and Dracula pushes his friends off the train for their safety. Van Helsing becomes obsessed with destroying Dracula, but is constantly outsmarted by him.
In the present-day following a few weeks after the second film, Dracula is running his hotel business smoothly with his daughter Mavis and son-in-law Johnny. Drac is depressed that he has remained single since his wife Martha’s death despite his attempts to meet someone. Misinterpreting this as stress from overwork, Mavis books a cruise so they can all take a break and spend more time together as a family. Dracula, Johnny, Mavis, their son Dennisovitch, Dracula’s father Vlad, and the hotel guests board a cruise ship called Legacy. Dracula sees the ship’s human captain, Ericka, and immediately falls in love with her at first sight, something that he thought was impossible as he had already “zinged” before.
Ericka afther goes to a private and secret room on the lower decks where she meets Abraham Van Helsing, secretly her great-grandfather. Van Helsing has almost entirely mechanized his body to avoid death, and has a plan to eliminate all the monsters: on the cruise’s arrival at the lost city of Atlantis, he will use an Instrument of Destruction in Atlantis’ ruins. Van Helsing makes Ericka promise to not assassinate Dracula beforehand, but she makes repeated unsuccessful attempts to do so anyway. Dracula’s friends hear Ericka complain about her inability to get him and misinterpret this as a sign of affection. Dracula nervously asks Ericka out on a date, and she accepts since she sees this as another opportunity to kill him. As they dine on a deserted island, Ericka unexpectedly begins to fall in love with Drac, after they learn about each other’s pasts about losing their loved ones – for Dracula, it was his beloved wife Martha and for Ericka, it was her parents.