Gaming World Forums
General Category => General Talk => Topic started by: ATARI on March 05, 2012, 05:49:49 pm
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have any of you guys done long bus trips? A few friends and myself are considering popping up a greyhound trip to the great north this summer (specifically Chicago to Edmonton) and I was wondering what people's experiences were like going greyhound (if you don't know what this is, greyhound is a north-american bus travel company).
The benefits : Well, booking a trip like this on bus roundtrip rather than airplane is about 330 dollars cheaper per person compared to the cheapest possible round-flight ticket (not including booking fees, taxes, checked bags, etc.)
The cons :(and boy what a con). This trip has a 3 and a half day travel time for both traveling to, and arriving back. (plus like 4 or 5 bus transfers for each journey)
apparently the buses have like wifi and shit on them, and if I travel with friends i'm sure interesting times could be had and what not.
have any of you yucks done any sort of long distance/long time bus travel, and what are your opinions/experiences. Are we crazy for considering spending an entire week on a bus? (the in between time would be about 9-10 days)
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greyhound is the worst company and you'll probably have to go through a ton of ridiculous shit before getting anywhere, especially if you have a lot of transfers. make sure they're direct routes so you don't have to wander through every american nowheretown. when i went to nyc a few years ago we did just that and it took 21 hours instead of 10 hours. if you don't care about that and wanna feel miserable then it's fine, just read a book or something if there aren't crying babies. honestly you might not even have to go through this kinda stuff unless you're in a major city, i'm not sure how good greyhound is in smaller places. have you considered taking a train? in Canada especially, we have a decent rail system that'll probably around the same price/comfier than a bus.
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try megabus / boltbus
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My father and I had a plan to GREYHOUND IT ACROSS THE US, but like I think it was a pipe dream. Our new plan is TOUR THE HOLY LANDS, but again we've made no progress on that either.
The UK has a great coach system. Like fair, it takes ages to get anywhere, but the longest trip you're looking at is like eleven hours, and that's from the very north to the very south. Trains here are really fucking expensive, but I prefer them infinitely. However, last time I caught a coach it worked out pretty well. Like two and a half hours to cover 100 miles, not TERRIBLE really.
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megabus is united states only i'm pretty sure. they didn't have anything in alberta from what I browsed on their website. will check out boltbus
somebody tell me more about the canadian railway system. I'm a few hours from windsor though, so I'd rather not have to make someone drive me like 4-5 hours to get there, and would rather just leave from where I'm at right now.
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no boltbus in chicago
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there's a megabus but only to toronto maybe
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just backpack there. like in europe. just backpack around
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i do enjoy not getting murdered?
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I remember travelling from São Paulo to Belém by bus in the early 90's. It took like 3 days and asphalt basically didn't exist back then. Last year I went to Rio de Janeiro from Campinas by bus. Ugh. Took 8 hours or so. I don't know how buses are in the better countries but the ones I've been in were cramped and made me nauseated. I've traveled from Belém to Mocajuba (which is in a forgotten part of Pará) by boat and it was quite nice because I could actually breath in normal air rather than filthy conditioned air. Don't you have trains?
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rent an RV https://www.cruiseamerica.com/
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I remember travelling from São Paulo to Belém by bus in the early 90's. It took like 3 days and asphalt basically didn't exist back then. Last year I went to Rio de Janeiro from Campinas by bus. Ugh. Took 8 hours or so. I don't know how buses are in the better countries but the ones I've been in were cramped and made me nauseated. I've traveled from Belém to Mocajuba (which is in a forgotten part of Pará) by boat and it was quite nice because I could actually breath in normal air rather than filthy conditioned air. Don't you have trains?
as far as i Know, there are no trains that run from and to our destination. North America never really got on the train business out west much.
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rent an RV https://www.cruiseamerica.com/
yeah... the whole point of this thing is to save money...
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Hike hitches
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feels like this is a question other people really wouldn't be able to answer for you, as it really depends on your boredom tolerance and how much you really want to save money. from what i know about these sorts of trips, you pretty much know what you're getting into beforehand: sitting on a damn bus all damn day. i know personally that i don't have a terribly high tolerance for inordinately long car/bus trips, so this isn't something i'd consider for a trip that long.
feels like most people who would pick a bus for a long-distance trip would logically be doing so in order to make stops in the middle for sight-seeing/vacationing/whatever. if you're not doing it for that, and you can afford to just take a plane, then you're probably just being cheap, which may kinda ruin the vacation, or at least make the experience a lot more tiresome and boring. i almost always go the cheap route when i go on vacations and i almost always have a crappy time, so i am inclined to think that there is a correlation here(or i just don't like coming to the sudden realization that it's profoundly shitty everywhere, not just where i live). also, i don't know about you but there are approximately 3.5 people in this world that i currently know that i could honestly tolerate for seven days in a car or a bus in some short timeframe. you probably want to be sure that the people you're traveling with are on your version of that list, because close proximity can make you hate people real quick.
so yeah, which do you value more: your time(and potentially your sanity) or $330?
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quick post before i dissapear again...
SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE: I caught greyhound buses all across America a few months ago and the majority of them didn't actually have WIFI.
A few did but yeah it's a long and boring drive. I'm sure it would be better with friends though. If you can train obviously do that instead because it's a lot nicer and more comfortable, I actually think it's worth the extra price if you can afford it.
Also I just left Edmonton for Vancouver after two months there and it's an absolute shithole. It is literally the worst city I have ever visited. The people are generally quite stupid/small town mindset, there's nothing to do, the native people have huge/sad problems in their community and the weather sucks. If I was you I would go somewhere else definitely. And downtown is deserted because it's usually too cold to go outside, all their shops are just in this big mall. There's one cool street called Whyte Ave but it's honestly nothing you can't get anywhere else. If you're in contact with Senior Behemoth ask him, he used to live there.
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Reiterating what Hundley said, make sure you are fine with long trips in confined quarters. I've done 10-16 hour bus trips & 12-28 hour train trips, and apart from having to pee for five hours and fears of falling into nothingness, they were perfectly fine. My vacations were not negatively impacted--although I lost a couple days here and there, I didn't miss much. I wouldn't characterize it as fun, necessarily, but when it's 20$ for a bus vs. 200$ for a plane, I'd prefer the bus. Some of the views are amazing, like coming down a mountain range as the sun's rising through misty palm trees. It does smell like farts. Transfers can be awful, so map out routes between bus shelters in advance (or I guess have access to a smart phone).
Make sure some of the legs aren't cheaper by air. Also, why can't you just drive it? Too many people? Too few? Camping is pretty cheap and it's a lot more fun than drifting in and out of consciousness surrounded by strangers, connected to very intermittent WiFi for 3 days. Google Maps has the trip as 1 day 6 hours, and even if that's underestimating by 6-12 hours you save a few days. Look up car rentals if you don't have an appropriate vehicle. You don't need an RV. Based on the distance, average van MPG, and average gas prices around Chicago/Alberta, gas is at the very unlikeliest most 400$ each way. I can't get exact van prices, but they range from 100-250$.
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Yeah, I'm definitely considering the driving aspect as well. It's going to be either driving or bus for sure. None of us have anything more than regular sedan cars, but if we pack pretty light we'll be fine (have some friends up there we can stay with etc). I'm personally pretty good with long distance driving, drove from northern Indiana down to the Florida keys 2 summers ago, which is about 1600 miles and it was pretty fun with 2 other friends.
Afura: it's in august so hopefully it's not too cold then. Good to know about the WIFI situation though. On their website it would have you believe every bus of theirs has wifi, super big seats etc. Obviously that's the kind of thing you have to take with a grain of salt anyways. I honestly know nothing about Canadian cities and what not (only ever been to windsor) but we're thinking that this trip might coincide with the edmonton folk fest. is edmonton a bigger shit hole than toronto?
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Not sure about Toronto, but I always hear that Alberta is the worst state in Canada. Google "Edmonton is a shit hole" and you'll get a ton of hits.
It's just a place with motorways and large factories pumping out pollution. Oil is big there so all the labourers move out there. Go to BC that's a nice place.
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toronto is cool im here
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alberta most definitely is the worst state in canada
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so's texas
I banged a chick named alberta once, she was pretty big and pretty borin'
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fun times.
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anyone else done a long bus trip? tell me all about it
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all i know is that if you decide to drive it with friends make sure you identify which of your friends is THAT GUY and do everything within your power to block this person from ever touching the steering wheel. approximately 1 in 4 people are THAT GUY where if you actually just watch the way they operate an automobile you quickly come to the realization that you could die at literally any moment. do not allow this to happen on long car trips. i can speak from personal experience that it is not a ton of fun waking up in the backseat of an automobile to the realization that you are the only person awake in the car and you are in the middle of busy maryland traffic. this probably could have been avoided if i had identified THAT GUY sooner and locked him in the trunk for the last half of that trip.
well ok actually that is kinda fun if you have some sort of death wish, but idk most people do not seem to have such a easygoing relationship with quick and sudden decapitation.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tr8KRqyGJk