So, on Friday, my husband and I took the Megabus from Minneapolis to Chicago. If you're not familiar with the Megabus, it's a budget express bus service that runs between major US cities. It operates mostly in the Midwest at this point, although it's slowly expanding to the West Coast. The hook for this company is that they sell tickets on a sliding scale based on when you buy them, with the first tickets for any trip selling for only $1. Only $1 to ride from Minneapolis to Chicago? No way! Of course, the prices go up after that, but they still level out at a max 1-way price of $25.Considering gas prices and the fact that you get to sleep, read, or even drink beer when you normally would be driving, that's a pretty sweet deal. My husband and I managed to score $20 tickets each way, for a total trip price of around $80 (there are taxes and very nominal reservation fees).
How did the trip go? The pick-up place in Minneapolis isn't the most convenient, so we had to ask my brother-in-law for a ride there. We were told to be there 15 minutes early, but the bus only barely showed up by 11, which is when we were scheduled to leave. This made us 20 minutes late getting out of town--not a big deal in the big scheme of things, but it ended up being a problem at the other end. The people we were visiting don't live in downtown Chicago, but in a suburb--one that is reachable by the Metra (the commuter train). If our bus had been on time, we would have been able to catch the Metra to their house, but because we were late, we missed it and would have had to wait an hour for the next one. So, they came to pick us up. If you live close to the pick-up spots or have reliable public transportation, Megabus works great, but we felt that we inconvenienced a lot of people on both ends of our trip.
The trip back was the biggest pain, and not really the fault of Megabus. Our bus left to return to Minneapolis Sunday at 2, which meant we should be at the pick-up place at 1:45. The Metra left at 1, which should have gotten us to downtown Chicago by 1:25. The Metra, usually so reliable, was 38 minutes late, meaning that if we had taken it, we would have missed the bus. By the time we realized this, it was too late to drive or take a cab, so we decided to not even try and just catch a later Megabus.
Here's where Megabus could have been slightly more accommodating. We called and tried to switch our reservations from the Sunday at 2 bus to a later one, and they said that no, we would have to buy new tickets. We also asked if the Megabus was running on time, thinking that if it was as late as it was in Minneapolis, we could make it no problem. However, we got brushed off with a "of course it's on time" which didn't really give us much information. The soonest replacement tickets we could get were for Tuesday afternoon, which in the end turned out to be fun, since we got to extend our trip by several days. But we had to pay twice for the return trip, which wasn't ideal.
Would I take the Megabus again? Probably, particularly if I did a little more research and found public transportation that we could take on either end that would be more reliable or give us other options if the first didn't work. It was nice to be able to sleep, even if not very comfortably, and I imagine it's a greener way to travel than driving yourself. Plus, it feels like an adventure :)
No comments:
Post a Comment