I just had the same problem with my Immortal Dynasty file. It really does seem like a pretty overwhelming bug, but I was able to get through it, so I thought I'd share in case anyone else ends up in the same situation.
My third generation Sim and her husband were at their vacation home in France and on the last day they received the 'This phase of your adventure is over' message, stood around for awhile, and then continued on with doing things in their vacation home as if nothing had happened. I tried sending them home a few times by phone with no luck, and then tried sending them home individually, which didn't work either. I exited the game without saving, reloaded, and immediately tried to send them home again. I ended up getting the load screen that said they were traveling home, but when it finished, all that loaded was their French vacation house.
I exited without saving again, and after consulting a couple of topics on the forum, ended up following the directions for recovering a backup file from a previous save:
http://www.carls-sims-3-forum.com/index.php/topic,6.0.htmlWorked like a charm! The previous save that loaded still had my couple in their vacation house, but I was able to send them back home with their phones right away, and all of the work I'd done on their Dynasty lot was restored. Thank goodness!
If you get stranded on vacation, don't panic and delete everything. At least consider trying to fix your file this way - I'm really glad I looked it up, and hope this helps someone else that's (literally) stuck!