Like most, I've taken a lot of different methods of public transportation: planes, city buses, taxis, Amtrak trains, railroad trains, etc. Once, on a sporadic trip from Chicago to Milwaukee, my boyfriend and I planned on buying Amtrak tickets at Union Station to our destination. The roundtrip price of the tickets was almost as much as paying for an airline ticket, and so we thought maybe we were out of luck. We did find another way though; a man at the Amtrak booth told us to give the Mega Bus a try.
Neither of us had ever heard of Mega Bus and were a little wary of hopping on. There was no booth anywhere to buy tickets or to ask service questions. Tickets had to be bought online (luckily we both had phones with internet) and the only way to get on the bus was to line up outside on a designated street corner.
The tickets were also extremely cheap; it had to be too good to be true. I think we paid about $15 each roundtrip. Sometimes price just doesn’t equate quality, though, because those tickets were really an incredible deal. As it turned out, we had nothing to be wary of at all.
The bus was a double-decker, and really clean. It sat on the street corner long enough that there was plenty of time to catch it. The passengers were quiet, the driver was friendly and there was plenty of seat room. What really amazed me (I’m weird, I know) was how shiny the outside of the bus was; clean blue and yellow with the Mega Bus cartoon logo image of a pink-faced bus boy.
None of my friends in New York had ever heard of the Mega Bus when I told them about it, so I thought maybe it was only a Midwest thing. Most of my friends (who travel up and down the coast of the Northeast) usually ride the Greyhound or the Chinatown buses.
Recently, however, I was planning a trip from New York to Boston and couldn’t find any good deals on trains. I thought of taking the Chinatown bus, but I really didn’t want to have to take the subway all the way down there and then get on a bus. That’s when I looked on the Mega Bus website and realized that the company offers service all over the Northeast and Midwest. In a couple of days I will be riding with the pink-faced cartoon on the comfortable Mega Bus from New York to Boston for only $30 roundtrip. I’m just hoping this experience on the bus will be like the last I had… or else I’ll have to go back and delete this post.
Comments (10)
i'd never heard of this, but it's something i'm looking into now. what a neat way to travel...
haha I take the Vamoose bus from DC to New York, it's really cheap and super easy. I love it
yessssssss! best deal ever!!
Oh my goodness. I have to look into this.
Nope.
first time hearing about it , sounds like it is worth a try , but I have had bad experiences with bus travels before .
I saw the bus on the street one day. Here it picks you up at a park and ride. I do want to go to New York at some point again, so I'm not sure if I'll try the bus or not.
i rode on megabus on a trip from chicago to milwaukee too! It was amazing. They even provide free wireless internet access on the bus!!!
For the NYC/Boston trip, nothing so far has beaten my experience with Bolt Bus, it's run by the same people at Greyhound, has outlets, roomy leather seats, WiFi! I got so much work done on my way down from visiting my girlfriend! It even had seatbelts, sure it took an hour longer than the Chinatown bus, but while I was doing my work on my way home, and able to browse the web and such, who cares!
If you like Megabus, you should check out BusJunction. It's a search engine for discount bus tickets and includes Megabus and Bolt Bus and Vamoose in the search results. Very cool.