I’m taking Greyhound for the first time tonight. My ticket says I should be there an hour before departure, seats are first-come-first-served, and if there isn’t a seat for me, they’ll put me on the next bus (which is tomorrow). I had heard anecdotally that arriving 15 minutes before departure is fine, but now I’m paranoid that I won’t get on. I’ll get there early if I have to, but I can think of more pleasant ways to spend 45 minutes than in a Greyhound station.
So my question is, do they routinely overbook the bus? Is it like airlines where they oversell by a few seats to account for no-shows? Do they just sell as many tickets as they can with no regard for how many seats are actually available?
I rode a Greyhound twice, several years ago. Seating was no problem. None at all. As much as I thought it would be an uncomfortable event, it was surprisingly comfortable. Unless you’re boarding an already full bus, or a very popular route, I’d guess you’ll have no problem at all arriving 15 minutes early.
Close to major travel holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas Greyhound runs extra buses. Here in Boston they have extra buses on hand and will continue filling buses until they’re out of passengers or out of buses. Note that this is most likely NOT the case in smaller cities and at mid points in the route. It also only really applies on the super-busiest days closest to the holiday. This weekend might be one of those times they haul out extra buses.
I’d plan to arrive an hour early, if only so you can be nearer the front of the line and have a choice of seats when you board.
It’s been a long time since I took Greyhound, but I believe they just sell as many tickets as they can and try to put on additional buses to accommodate the additional passengers. (Of course, it’s a lot easier to put on an extra bus than an extra plane.) However, googling “Greyhound overbooking” will yield a lot of cases where they’ve screwed up and left passengers stranded for some time.
If there’s only one bus per day from your location, it sounds like a pretty small town, so it might be difficult for them to schedule another bus. Given that we’re so close to the holidays, if it were me I would try to arrive early just in case.
To answer the OP more specifically, yes they will sell tickets as long as someone wants to buy them. You book a specific “bus” so they have an idea of how many people to expect on a given run, but they don’t limit the number of tickets sold to the number of seats.
It has been years since I have travelled on a Greyhound bus, but when I did your ticket didn’t specify which bus you were taking. I could buy a ticket and use it on any day.
Occasionally the busses would be full, and sometimes you had to wait a good amount of time for the next one, sometimes not. Once Greyhound put me in a cab to go to the next stop (about an hour away) because that is where the next transfer happened.
The only advice I can give you is arrive early during the holidays, the busses will be full. 15 minutes is not early enough.
Can’t you just call the local Greyhound station and ask them? They would surely know how many tickets they’ve sold, and I can’t think of any reason they wouldn’t share this information with you.
Thanks, all. I’m leaving out of San Francisco heading down toward Santa Barbara so not exactly a podunk route. It’s just that I’m scheduled on the last bus of the day. The busy travel day is what made me nervous, so I will take your advice, arrive early and enjoy the ambiance of the station.
From San Francisco they’ll probably be able to put on as many buses as required, but an extra half hour in the station is probably worth avoiding possible hassle in case they don’t and also getting a better seat selection.
In my experience, they just sold tickets that were good any time. Maybe things have changed. The last time I took a Greyhound, after they bought Voyageur a very nice bus company that I always used to go to Ottawa (since the train left you at a depot several miles out of town), the bus was an old broken-down rattletrap, made a number of stops, and took nearly a half hour longer. Since then I drive.