Greyhound Bus Lines

The depot is way too small for such a large city, and there’s usually only one ticket agent available, which means you need to get there really early because the customer line is so long. Plus, a bunch of drug dealers and homeless people make their way in there, and security does squat about it. Oh, and the drivers are rude, the buses never leave on time, and the interior of these tin cans are dirty and smelly.

Way back when, when my wife and I were first going out, this is how we got to see each other the most. At the time I was still living in central Iowa, and she was born and raised here in Springfield, Missouri. Neither one of our cars were the best road trip cars at the time, so beings there was a that went from Ames, Iowa to Springfield, Missouri and back twice a day, we went this route. 85 bucks for a round trip ticket wasn’t really all that bad, though I was never a fan of the 5 hour lay over in Joplin, Missouri on the way down at midnight. For the most part the rides weren’t that bad minus the human freak shows that seemed to be on every bus on every trip. The rides back up to Ames always seemed to be the quickest except for one time in particular. Second to last time I was down here visiting went without a hitch. The morning I was leaving for Ames came, and I got to Joplin just fine. Usually a 45 minute wait between buses to Joplin and up to Kansas City. This time though the driver was gonna be a bit late (only 15 minutes, so not a big deal). When he pulled in finally, we all boarded. He knew he was late, but decided to make an unscheduled stop in Nevada, Missouri because he said the bathroom was broke on the bus (bulls**t, he just wanted an extended smoke break). 20 minutes later we finally leave and are on our way to Kansas City. We get there to find our connector to Des Moines had already left. No apologies, no explanation, just we had to get another ticket for 7 that night to Des Moines. Needless to say we were all ticked off at the fat S.O.B for making us miss our next bus by a whole 5 minutes. To add insult to injury, we had to buy our next ticket, but would be sent a voucher in the mail according to the ticket lady. This was bad enough. Then we start seeing drunks, druggies, and homeless guys coming in and panhandling us all. Repeated complaints didn’t seem to do much. They had no place to eat inside, nor did they offer us any kind of coupon to eat at their little café for our troubles. We finally boarded around 7ish and got to Ames around 1ish. I had to work the next morning, so was in a bad mood. This was the worst trip ever, and the terminal in KC did nothing to be obliging or accommodating to us. I did see the fat driver one time after that on my last trip down to Springfield before I moved down here. I did receive a voucher a month later, and I’m sure my very strongly worded complaint had something to do with the amount it was. The Ames, Des Moines, Joplin, and Springfield terminals were all fine, but the KC one will always be a thorn in my side. I really hope that driver was fired, he would have deserved it.

In order to present ourselves on time for a doctor’s appointment in Chicago my husband, self and adult daughter took Megabus there from the Kansas City metro area.
Everything worked out perfectly. (At least the transport part on the way there)
The return trip was quite another story.
Megabus was just simply… OFFLINE all day. So… we snapped up tickets for Greyhound on the return.
When we first boarded all was well. Then a young girl began to tell her story. (the tattoo kept distracting me, though it shouldn’t).It just told me that something kinky was afoot. She was making tracks to get away from a VERY BAD DUDE and A VERY LOW CLASS OF PEOPLE.(I believed her)
The BAD DUDE was also a VINDICTIVE BAD DUDE… and this meant that he liked having this girl around and took it personally that she was leaving his world. «You know» she told me «he threatened to call the DEA and tell them I am travelling with drugs in my suitcase!» «He wouldn’t.» I said. «Oh, yes. he would».BAD DUDE”. Uhoh.
I thought.” Nah… the guy is all show and no go.” I returned to my seat for a snooze and a peaceful return. Was I wrong!
Meanwhile the driver, the soul of patience and discretion (I swear the man is one of those angels walking around on the planet in disguise) was struggling with the ENORMOUS HI-​TECH WHEELCHAIR belonging to a woman who weighed 500 pounds on the hoof easily and probably about 700 pounds with her chair. Her daughter it seems was waving bye-​bye to her at this stop and shoveling giant cardboard boxes tied with string into the bus cargo hold and running alongside the bus after loading her and her chair. She kept trotting, jumping up and down and waving.
A lift brought up woman and chair and when she settled the bus listed to the right.
«It’s Jabba the Hut» whispered my ever hilarious eldest child.
Every time we stopped the lift had to be used for the chair and the woman went tooling around one parking lot or another. Which I guess is a break but she was riding
did however take a large dent in our travel time frame.
But what did we care? It wasn’t like we had to fulfill anyone’s schedule or become stranded. I was wrong again.
Approximately two hours later in this jam-​packed Greyhound sardine can the driver got a message to break at this apartment complex. He did. When I looked up the bus was surrounded with… who do ya think? DEA guys. And man, did they look sharp! They had cool looking drug sniffing dogs, body armor, ever so sexy sunglasses, camo pants and the requisitve DEA windbreakers. And they meant business! Within minutes they emptied the bus. They then proceeded to toss all the luggage around and thoroughly inspect everything. I looked at tattoo girl.
«He said he’d do it, and he did» she said. «I am so sorry.» What can you say to that?
They do ask the only youngish black man on the bus if he is holding. «Are you crazy???» he asks them. Then he calls his girlfriend on his cell and tells her the story and she tells him what’s on for dinner.
Now…we are about two hours off schedule, and packed to the rafters. So… we pull into our bus changeover in St. Louis. And our luggage is gone. After being tossed it got put on a different bus and will not arrive at our destination any time soon… or at all… maybe. So… we try to find THE PERSON IN CHARGE. well. it is about two in the morning now and although some folks get off our other bus the new one is totally packed and so is the St. Louis Greyhound office and no one will listen.
Finally we find a man the size of a tree in uniform and explain. He manages to get our luggage moved to our bus but then the woman driver is totally pissed that her time frame has been screwed up and she is mad at all of us passengers.
But we don’t find this out until we are captives on her bus! This is the last bus of the night bound for St. Louis and if we missed it no more busses.
Everyone settles in. After we are on the road and rolling smoothly the driver tells us that there will be NO reststops at all since we riffraff cost her so much time, and we are bad bad travelers. The Asian next to me takes off his headphones and asks what was said since he missed it and suddenly, I lose it! I am now laughing so hard I think I am going to wet my pants; my husband has that deer in the headlights look, and my daughter is dragging me forward toward the bathroom. On the way there I can still hear the woman who boarded this bus sleeping in the very last seat in the back, stretched out and snoring her butt off! She is so loud we think she has apnea and is going to strangle herself at any moment. But nobody has the guts to wake her up and see if she is ok.
In this vein we continue on through the night, actually get our luggage, and listen to our daughter’s litany from St. Louis to Kansas City. She is back there mumbling
” I am never EVER EVER going to ride a stinkin’ bus again… and kill me if I decide to use Greyhound. or travel with you two.”

This greyhound station was not very spacious. There are always a select number interesting characters at greyhound stations so I was glad a security guard was on duty. They had food here, which was convenient. Compared to other greyhound stations, this one was well lit and the security guard was in full view of everything in the waiting area.

Hey, giving 3 stars to Greyhound is pretty dang impressive!
I had to make a less than 24 hour whirlwind trip to Wichita from Kansas City, and needed to bus it there so i could ride with my sis back to KC. Well, I needed to bus it because flying was prohibitively expensive and the train would have dropped me off an hour outside of Wichita at 4 AM. These were not good options. Greyhound it was.
I arrived at the station just ass early, and as I expected, it was filled with a menagerie of characters, most of which with whom I didn’t want to make eye contact. The station was pretty dirty, and really just a place of sadness. I don’t think I ever want to go back there again.
But then I got on the bus, and everything was A-​OK! I was actually shocked at how nice it was, with spacious seats, a comfy temperature and… get this! They had free wifi AND places to plug in your laptop! I was able to work from the bus the entire trip, and didn’t have to worry about losing juice. That’s worth it’s price in gold, boys and girls.
So yeah, I will never say «hey honey, let’s take a trip on Greyhound!» but if I need to do it again, I won’t be as scared or preemptively skeeved out. And that is definitely worth 3 stars.

I would much rather rob a bank to buy a place ticket to get where I am going. and then do the prison/​jail time… than to ride greyhound. I absolutely hate this company with a passion! they are soooo ridiculous! waste of time, money, energy and LIFE!

Let me start by saying. I took a flight into Kansas City and took Greyhound (Bad Mistake) to Wichita Kanasa.
My trip was going great. had a great flight and everything. Until i got to the greyhound station.
This was a very nasty station. Employees were very mean, and could not provided any information on 2 hours late busses. When the bus finally got to the station the driver had an attitude and was taking a smoke break. When I finally boarded the bus… the bus was nasty and smelly. No plugs no nothing. Broken seats. I said to myself NEVER AGAIN. Through out the whole ride the bus driver stopped every hour for a smoke break. and the bus: broke down” on the freeway. I understand the snack breaks or whatever but i think people should come prepared with their own snacks, but Anyway to sum it up a 2−3hour drive to another city took… a total of ⁷¹⁄₂ hours. …
I had to leave Kansas to go back home and greyhound was my first stop for transportation then the flight.
My bus was suppose to leave at early in the morning around 3 or 4am .I got to the station early and it was closed. so I was sitting in a dark alley place for some time. until the station opened. I was looking for the bus to arrive to get me so I can be on my way. I had a flight at 11am.
Im waiting no bus. I asked the one employee that was there and he said that there was a delay. I asked «What kind of delay because I have a flight at 11am». I place ample time between the two. So im sitting in the station with dirty drunk and crazy people. Im tthe only female. It was quite uncomfortable. The bus did not show up until 8:00am. So I have been sitting in a bus station for about ⁴¹⁄₂ hours for a bus. The bus shows up with another snotty driver… and he says «He is not leaving yet, So go take a seat». I had an attitude like Im ready to GO… When I boarded the bus a very nice female bus was driving. By the way the bus was very very very crowded and some people smelled and did not want to give up the seat next to them
. But I did finally got to the airplane… ended with me running bare foot with my belt, shoes… and small backpack in my hand.

We arrived at 0230 on 03 June 2011, this bus station is worse then some 3^rd world countries bus stations I’ve travel to and one of the worse I’ve been in the U.S. First of all there is zero security with homeless people/​derelicts walking around all night brothering customers waiting for their morning bus, sleeping on the benches so everyone else had to sit on the floor, these so call people started disappearing around 6 or 6:30 when the employees started showing up, during the night there was a total of one employee in the building that we could see and he was serving a line of 10 plus people.
The bath rooms were disgusting, Mens restroom had no toilet paper and looked like it hadn’t been cleaned all night, the Womens restroom was worse EVERY single toilet was clogged and couldn’t be flushed and it appeared to have been last cleaned over Week ago, the entire station was filthy maybe new management should be in order.
The so called resturant had new hours posted stating they would be opened at 5AM however they did not open until 0530, and the staff is very unprofessional, the women behind the cashier was screaming and hollering the entire time, had a very nasty attitude, could not take a proper order, and charged more than the prices on the menu. Also why isn’t there a sign stating that only breakfast is served during morning hours, if I’ve been traveling for 12 hours I might want a hamburger at 0530 since I’ve been up for 18 plus hours, they had a VERY limited breakfast menu.
The greyhound bus was ok the only problem I had was that it stop several times to let some passengers take a smoke break, I couldn’t believe that Greyhound bus would encourage smoking.

It’s pretty sad in the twenty-​first century that Greyhound is most feasible form of ground transportion we have. OK OK… techinically Amtrak pwns Greyhound, but Amtrak limits your destinations and takes so damn long that greyhound often becomes necessary.
I’ve definitely seen worse bus stations, but this place has the ambiance of a men’s room complete with benches made of ceramic tile. The interior design firm used here probably has built a fair share of correctional facility mess halls.
The staff are admittedly cranky, but wouldn’t you be if you worked inside an oversized bathroom and sold tickets to dirtballs on their way to Tulsa? My favorite encounter was being told by one ticket agent she dropped out of KU because it was too racist. Hmmm… How am I supposed to reply to that?
The station is kept clean, but considering everything from the floor to ceiling can be mopped it’s not surprising. The station is also in a GREAT part of downtown near a lot of guys just needing to borrow a couple dollars.