Because of the cheapness and because travel time is not an issue for me, I have begun to contemplate taking some pretty long trips (i.e. 24- to 72-hour) by Greyhound. My main concerns are, can you actually get a good night’s sleep on the bus? What kind of people am I going to be riding with? How well do they keep to the published schedules?
Sleep sucks. Keep things close by or they will be ripped off. Delays are common. Sometimes you are traveling with savvy, outgoing folks that are pretty cool. They are in the minority, but they’re there. Shit always happens, buses are almost always late. I had one bus get delayed 2 hours because some guy took another guy’s clothes, changed into them in the bathroom, then the whole thing devolved into a fight in a restaurant parking lot. The thief ripped all his clothes off and ran around the parking lot naked; we were stuck there until the driver and others dealt with the police. The next time I took went through that area, the restaurant wasn’t allowing any bus passengers to dine there, limiting us to eating gas station food on a hour long layover. Bad reputations follow Greyhound buses.
The stations are almost always unclean and in a bad area; at the LA station I was hit up for money no less than 4 times, and asked if I wanted to buy various drugs two or three times. People smoke/drink/do drugs in the bathroom; on a few occasions it was out in the open (the smokers were kicked off). One time the passengers pressured the driver into kicking a lady off because she was messing around with tarot cards. Such is the bus.
It’s cheap, sure, but you get what you pay for. Plus, it takes 19 hours to do what would take 12 hours in the car for me. I’ll take it if I have to (I went to CO a few years ago on the bus because my grandfather was ill, and it was an immediate thing), but I’d much rather avoid it, myself.
I took an overnight Greyhound once. Emphasis on the once. I find it nearly impossible to sleep sitting up(and doubly so in a loud moving vehicle), so YMMV.
A friend of mine works for Greyhound, and the one bit of wisdom she has, is to sit further back than the 7th row. Apparently in most bus crashes, the first 7 get taken out pretty consistently.
Otherwise… I’ve ridden in Greyhound-style buses a couple of times, and I never could fall asleep on them. It’s about like being in an airliner as far as the seats are concerned, although I guess it’s slightly quieter.
I’ve taken Greyhound many times, and I’ve found that the experience varies by region. The ones I’ve taken in New England and Canada were decent – the busses were on time, decently clean, and the people riding them were innocuous enough – everybody pretty much minded their own business. It’s hard to sleep on a bus (I took a looong bus ride from Toronto to Harrisburg once), but then it can be hard to sleep in any kind of transportation.
The Greyhounds I’ve taken in the mid-Atlantic and South were terrible. The last Greyhound I took (to DC) was filthy. There were empty beer cans rolling around on the floor, graffiti on the walls, and the seat cushions felt and smelt dirty – I hardly wanted to sit in them. (That experience has put me off Greyhounds for a while.) The people are no great shakes either. Once, when I was a young teenager, I was on an overcrowded night bus to Baltimore and was stuck next to this obese guy who “accidentally” showed me nude pictures of his boyfriend, and basically tried to proposition me. Bad times – luckily he had to get off a couple stops before me. Yet another time, in Pennsylvania, my bus was almost an hour late getting in because our driver was stopped for speeding, and wouldn’t stop arguing with the cop!
The stations are, as Queen Bruin says, almost always in bad areas, but once again, more so in the Mid-Atlantic and South than New England. The Baltimore station feels positively dangerous. The Boston station, from what I remember, isn’t so bad.
So that’s my experience, FWIW.
I used to take the greyhound frequently. I can sleep through anything so I found the overnight trips to be no big deal.
Tips for a stress free trip.
If you have to be at your arrival destination at a specific time, take a bus earlier than you think you should. Things happen and I have been close to missing flights and important meetings because of a broken down bus.
If you have the coveted widow seat with no one next to you pretend to be sleeping at every stop. People will be less likely sit with someone that they can’t make eye contact with first.
Don’t sit at the back of the bus, that is where the washroom is. Enough said.
Bring lots of stuff to entertain you. The scenery gets old fast.
Bring your own headphones, sometimes there are movies played, and the headphones that they sell are not worth the couple of bucks they charge for them.
Arrive early, getting the right seat is the key to a good trip.
Long trips wear on my sanity. I took Greyhound from Portland, Oregon, to Dallas, Texas over a span of about a day and a half. It was impossible to get more than a few hours of broken sleep in one shot. During the first leg, I lucked out and had great neighbors; we chattered for several hours to pass the time. The other legs of that particular trip were pretty uneventful. Most people kept to themselves.
I find most Greyhound riders polite if nothing else. It’s been a great way for me to meet some interesting characters (the wannabe-cowboy who pronounced the state’s name “Mawntawnuh”, for example) and have some great conversations.
As far as staying on their scheduled times, they’ve stuck to schedule when I’ve been a passenger. The drivers tend to cut breaks short if they get behind. I have been on only one ride when we fell far behind schedule (blizzard conditions and icy roads), but it was the last leg of my trip so it didn’t affect me as it did others.
Greyhound is certainly an experience. I recommend you take a shorter “practice trip” before jumping in to the long trips.
On preview, one more thing: do NOT try for any of the last four or so rows of seats when on a full bus. Full bus + full bladders + sitting directly next to a full potty = a bad, bad thing.
I’ve taken a few Greyhound trips. They tend to take longer than regular car rides, but you don’t have to worry about driving or the wear and tear on your car.
I’ve seen a few bus stations and they haven’t been too bad. Then again, I wasn’t really inspecting any one place for cleanliness or the lack thereof.
To sum it up: it’s certainly an experience. I met a few pretty interesting people on these trips. You won’t forge any long-lasting bonds, but they can be fun, disposable ones. You’re almost guaranteed to have a story and you’ll see some “interesting” parts of town.
If you can sleep in a car, you can sleep on a bus. When we were kids mom used to take us on road trips all the time and got used to sleeping that way. Even now as an adult, if I’m not driving, I start getting sleepy in moving vehicles. It’s generally pretty quiet. Every once in awhile you get a talkative bus driver who likes to point out trivia along the way, but they’re always quiet at night.
Sleeping will be hard. The seats can be packed in pretty tightly, so it’s not like you can stretch out. Also, the bus is always stopping. People are moving on and off. If you’re traveling real far, then you will have to get off. It’s really not conducive for sleeping, but besides reading and staring out of the window, it’s really all that you can do.
You will probably have to get off so that the bus can gas up, or so that you can catch a connection. This sucks horribly. For one thing, it’s hella confusing sometimes, and if you aren’t paying attention to which line to stand in, you can miss your bus. Also, if you’re taking a popular route, it’s possible to stand in line and then be kept from boarding because there are no more seats, even with ticket in hand. And it will be 3:00 AM in the morning, and all the people in line with you will be just as tired and worn-out as you are. And the bus driver will just shake his head and tell you to wait for the next bus. Which is due to arrive a whopping three hours later. There will be much cussing and gnashing of teeth. So my advice: always make sure you’re at the front of any and every line. And don’t get out of line for any reason.
The clientele are varied and not as scary as you might think. I took a bus last year from Miami to Atlanta and just about everyone was on my bus. European college students. Grandmothers with little babies (that were surprisingly well-behaved). Young couples, some with children. Singletons, like me. When I was heading back to Miami, we stopped at a small town in Georgia and picked up some guys who were recently liberated from the state lock-up (they were carrying their possessions in brown paper bags and they were wearing the same t-shirt and khaki pants uniform). There was one incident where the bus driver had to kick an obviously intoxicated woman off the bus, but it was more funny than scary.
(About the crowded bus thing: you will come to stops that are packed with people, and it will be tortuous to see their sad faces when the bus driver announces there are no more seats. If you can, try to board the bus as close to the departing station as possible. That way you’re guaranteed a seat.)
Like Queen Bruin said, you get what you pay for. That’s not say it’s a horrible experience, but it’s definitely more adventurous than, say, taking a plane trip.
During a few summers of my childhood, my mother would put me and my sister on a Greyhound and ship us from Atlanta to Chicago to visit family. We had a blast during those trips, making friends with the passengers and the bus drivers, and filling up on vending machine food at the bus stops. Fast forward fifteen years, when I was contemplating taking a trip by Greyhound… My mother told me it wasn’t a good idea. Why? Because the criminals would get me. Apparently being a child traveling without parents afforded me some protection from bus-riding criminals.
The worst Greyhound experience I’ve ever had didn’t actually involve Greyhound itself, but a charter bus line Greyhound was apparently contracting for the route from Detroit to Chicago. I got on this charter bus in Kalamazoo, but it was packed to the point where there were about 15 people standing in the aisle. I didn’t know they were allowed to do that, and neither did any of the passengers, but the bus took off for Chicago anyway (the standing passengers were given the “option” of catching the next bus, which was coming 3 hours later). Needless to say, none of the standing passengers were amused, and this coupled with a driver who apparently had some sort of mental problem - he pulled the bus over three times to tell us to turn down the “music” that apparently one of us was playing - led to a near mutiny. Passengers called the state police and we were pulled over somewhere in western Michigan. They made us wait until a new bus came to carry everyone safely to Chicago, but I missed my connection as a result.
I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep on that trip, as I spent most of the time praying.
One point about overnight buses: even if you can get to sleep, be prepared to be woken up every couple of hours as the bus stops at rest stops or scheduled stops. The lights come on, people are moving all around you – it makes it hard to get consistent sleep.
I’ve used Greyhound a lot, but always because of necessity. I wouldn’t recommend doing it unless you don’t have any better options, due to all the reasons people have mentioned above. It’s not bad for short trips, but the general dirtiness, sketchiness and crowded condtions start to get to me if its a long trip. Occasionally you’ll get an uncrowded bus or happen to sit next to some interesting people and you can strech out and have a nice trip, but in my experience (in the South anyways) thats the exception more then the rule.
You’ve probably already tried this, but if you look a month or so in advance, its suprising how many cheap airfares you can find. I’ve had a few cases where I was about to resign myself to a long bus trip but then found a airfair that got me to the same place with a fraction of the time and hassel for with only a few bucks extra.
I wouldn’t recommend the bus for long trips. For short ones, it can be okay. When my Mom was ill back in 2003, I tried to get up to see her every two weeks (suburbs of DC to Delaware). Now that wasn’t bad - it was $40 round trip, took about 1 1/2 hours, and usually there was just one stop (Baltimore) and no bus change. And this was with the driver stopping once or twice for rest stops.
The seats are not that comfortable, unfortunately; if the person in front of you reclines their seat, it feels like they’re almost laying in your lap! Heh. Also, I just can’t go to the bathroom in that little bathroom on buses! Too confined and ewwww… I don’t even want to think about it. Heh. So if things like that bother you, a long-distance ride probably wouldn’t work out.
There’s a new bus station in Baltimore! I don’t know when it opened, but when I rode the bus to Philly in December, they went to the new station, which is not in the downtown area at all; it’s off of 95, in some industrialized area (warehouses and such) but it was clean and well-lit.
I went from Baltimore to West Virginia by Grayhound. We had moved from WV to Balto and had 2 cars and a moving van, with only me and Mrs Geek to drive them. I drove the moving van then went back by Grayhound to get my car. This was in the early 90’s, before the new bus station in Balto. was built.
I left Balto sometime in the afternoon and had a long wait in DC for some reason. I left DC at something like 8 or 9 that night. The bus went through Pittsburgh then across to WV and down the river. It was a very long, uncomfortale ride on a crowded bus. I managed to doze off a bit, but slept very little that night. I vowed to never go Grayhound again after that trip.
The other passengers were almost all male and were typical lower class inner city type people. There were a few shady looking beggar type people in the bus station but I don’t recall any of them getting on the bus.
Both busses (Balto to DC and DC to WV) were dead on schedule at every stop.
Took Greyhound from DC to Philly to visit a friend here. Interesting cast of characters.
One young gentleman sitting in the back decided to reveal his personal philosophy to the entire bus. He wanted to impregnate as many girls as possible because he wanted to spread his seed and increase the black population. (That’s not a direct quote, but close enough.) Somewhere in Delaware, the odor of weed began wafting from the back of the bus.
Once we reached the scheduled stop in Wilmington (Delaware feels a lot larger than it is when you have a schmuck like this sitting behind you), the driver had enough and put the sperm bank off the bus.
I would estimate that if he succeeded in his goal, then most of his offspring are about 8 or 9 at this point, presumably scattered around the mid-Atlantic region.
Anyway, that was the last time I made a Greyhound trip. Now that I am beyond the poor student phase of my life, I can take Amtrak or drive.
I reluctantly took a bus trip with my sister from Oxford, Miss. to somewhere in Virginina, a couple of years ago. I had problems sleeping … just when i’d fall asleep some old Granpa in the back would start smacking his gums in his sleep. Ew.
It’s true that you will see some things and meet some people that you’d never dream of … I remember arriving in the Birmingham station around 3 am, waiting in line to change busses: one bus stops outside to discharge passensgers an in SWEEPS a huge … six foot 4 or 5 black gentleman, who weighed 300 +, in a gold lame’ muuu -muu … and house slippers …
Anyway, if I can afford it I don’t take the bus … I have issues with germy things and personal space. Short trips are ok. Long trips? I’m too old for that 
Pure torture.
Unsavory people. Uncomfortable seats. Frequent stops (in every dipshit little town on the map). It takes FOREVER to get anywhere.
Don’t do it.
If you want to sit alone, pick one of the first few seats and pretend to be sleeping. I’ve noticed that most people will go further back to look for an empty seat but will then sit down in the back if there aren’t any, rather than coming back up to the front and waking you up. This only works if the bus isn’t filled to capacity.
And, as for my experience, the last time I took the Greyhound I sat next to a real creepy guy for 6 hours. He had freshly stitched up verticle wrist slashings that went from wrist to elbow, he was drunk (or at least reeked of booze) at 10 AM and was spitting tobacco juice into a cup. That was the last time I’ll ever go greyhound, it’s car rental for me from now on.
I did it once. 24 hours with a toddler, no less. It can be lots of fun if you’re a people watcher. We had a drunk guy who sang Italian love songs for hours. We also had a woman who pretented to be blind so she could bring her dog on the bus. They got the boot when they got caught blowing a doobie in the bathroom.
It’s hard to do a long bus ride. Last resort only, thank you.