Unsolicited Testimonial: LimoLiner
December 6, 2007
What It Is: LimoLiner is an executive-class bus service from New York to Boston (or vice versa) that gets you from the center of one city to the other in about 4 and a half hours, for less than a hundred bucks. If you count getting to the airport early and taking a cab, it ends up being about the same amount of time as flying, but you've got wifi and power and more room.
The Experience: I first heard about LimoLiner years ago, when I was spending most of my time on the West Coast. Since I've been back in NYC, I've used LimoLiner for every trip that I've made to Boston, and it's unquestionably the best way to make the trip.
Flying to Boston from New York really sucks. Aside from the rank incompetence of most everyone at Logan Airport, getting to and from Boston and NYC airports is brutal. Most Boston flights leave New York from JFK, which is a solid 45 minute (and $60) cab ride from Manhattan. Sure, you could take the train to JFK, but then you're adding an hour on top of having to be an hour early for your flight. Tack on an interminable cab ride on the Boston end of things (especially since the Big Dig is a failure) and you're easily equalling the time it takes to take LimoLiner.
It's easy to have misgivings about riding a bus for a couple hours, especially if you have any flashbacks to miserable Greyhound trips in college. East Coasters also know about the legendary Chinatown buses, which promise fast service that's as cheap as $10, at the expense of your safety, hygiene, and sanity. (Tales of livestock and fowl sharing the trip abound.)
LimoLiner ain't like that. All the seats are captain's chairs, complete with power and lots of legroom and recline. The ride is full-service, too, with a host (Drive Attendant?) who brings you drinks and a snack (usually a packaged sandwich) and whatever else you want. The bathroom on the bus is downright dignified. And the back cabin of each bus is a quiet area, with no cell phone conversations allowed. You can even kick up the footrest and watch a movie on the ride.
Best of all, LimoLiner is a small company. I once had a reschedule a trip, and called back a few hours after I'd booked my ticket. I started to say "Hi, my reservation number is..." and the woman on the other end said, "Don't worry, honey, I remember your number on the Caller ID." Can't say that's ever happened with an airline.
The Gotchas: The only shortcoming with LimoLiner is that I wish they offered service more often; There's a limited number of trips each day, and the timing isn't always ideal. I am also still holding out hope they'll expand service to Washington, D.C. and I can totally eliminate the once-great, now-pathetic Amtrak Acela experience from my travel routine.
They also recently raised prices by $10, but it's still so much cheaper than flying or Amtrak (and not much more than gas prices for driving yourself!) that it's a non-issue.
What It Costs: LimoLiner is $89 each way, and you get a sandwich and drinks. You can book reservations online.
Recommended If You Like: The Sox-Yankees rivalry, I95, making the honk-honk arm gesture at semi drivers, being able to do email or surf the web while you travel
This post is one of a series of unsolicited testimonials. Please view that introductory post for more background information.
10:39 AM
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Anil, thanks for all of these. Though I probably won't be able to use some of them, being in Canada, I really like how you've structured these and they were fun to read and tipped me off to some great new services.
I've been enjoying your reviews, but I can't say I agree that a cab takes forever from Logan - it's 20mins to most places in Boston, unless there's some nuts traffic. I routinely get to and from Logan from the 'burbs in 15-20 minutes.
And if it's traffic that's the problem, how's a bus immune from that?
Thanks for the review, it definitely sounds impressive. I commute from Boston to NY and back every weekend, and I take the Greyhound ($15 each way). It leaves from South Station in Boston (which is conveniently on the red line subway), and leaves off at NY Port Authority (8th and 42nd). Yes, they don't serve sandwiches or drinks, and they don't have wifi, but for a 4 hour ride, I would rather pay 1/6th the price of the limo liner, and get a fairly comfortable ride on Greyhound without the additional services!
All that and it's greener than flying too.
If you want unreliable transportation…feel free to take the risk. I was scheduled for 6:15pm bus back on Monday and there was no communication from limoliner that the bus was not running at the time. The only reason why I found out that there was no 6:15pm bus was during my conversation with an attendant on duty on Sunday who told me that 6:15pm on Monday was no longer running and for me to check with the office Monday morning.
When I called the office in the morning, customer service had no solutions for me but to take an earlier bus, get a refund or take the next day service at 11:00am. I then requested to speak to the manager and the manager suggested that I take the train home....
Needless to say, I had to rush through my afternoon meetings to take the earlier bus (to return back to NY again at a later time because I could not finish everything in time). It turns out-Gary Messina who is the VP of sales called me to let me know that limoliner forgot to call people about cancellation due to superbowl game distraction (which is shitty "quote on Quote" )and informed me that there was a bunch of people waiting for the bus on Monday night at 6:15pm in NY. I am rather lucky that I was able to find out about the cancellation on my own and make it home...I could have been one of the people standing in the rain waiting for the 6:15pm bus to arrive...
What did the management team suggest as their excellent level of service? 25% off the trip…woohoo~ no consideration for cancellation of my afternoon meetings and causing me inconvenience of rushing through work and feeling stressed that I may not make it home that day. I should have taken acela for the same price and less stress! I don’t recommend limoliner for business travel at all. Now, i have to go back to NY for follow up meeting and that's a waste of another full day for me because of limoliner's mistake!
Passenger beware! I just took a trip on the LimoLiner and had a very bad and very costly experience. When I boarded the bus, I took my wallet out of my zippered tote bag to retrieve my license for the attendant, put it away, then I settled in. My seat tray wasn't working, so I asked the attendant if I could switch seats. She agreed, but told me I couldn't move my tote bag (which contained my wallet) myself. She said only she could move my bag, which incidentally wasn't that big, to the new seat because it is LimoLiner's policy that a passenger can't move a bag to another seat when the bus is in transit. This policy didn't make any sense and the attendant was acting very odd, but I went along with her and moved to a different seat, then she brought my bag over a few minutes later. That was the only time I didn't have my tote bag in my possession; in fact, I rested my feet on my bag throughout the whole trip. When I stepped off the bus to retrieve my keys, I noticed my wallet was missing. After I checked the contents of my tote bag in my car with no luck, I tried to return to the bus to look for my wallet but the bus was already leaving. The on-call manager (also the CEO) didn't get back to me until the next afternoon. When he called me back after checking about my wallet, he said the attendant didn't know anything about my wallet (What a surprise!) and they were not responsible. When I spoke with another LimoLiner attendant at their lot in Framingham, she told me that LimoLiner does not have a policy that a passenger can't move their bag to a different seat -- that that was ridiculous. I guess it was my fault for trusting that LimoLiner has honest employees.
Limoliner does NOT stop bigmouth A-H's from yapping on their cell phones. Its just Awful,Everytime I go, Its always me that has to tell the big mouths to shut up. VERY,Very annoying.Limoliner wants business people to sit and yak on the phones and yet they want "other people" as customers too. You can't have it both ways. The rides lately are so bumpy they will not fix the suspensions on the bus. Its enough to make you so dizzy for 4 1/2 hours. I can't take it any more. I'll take BOTBus-$25.00 Save Money.
Would you park your car for a night totally unattended
in an open lot on Route 9 ???? That's what Limoliner says you have to do since they lost the parking privlileges at the hotel across the street.
The person @ Limoliner is so reassuring" Oh! the police check on the lot" That is such BS.
Parking your car there overnight is a real invitation to having it stolen. Of course Limoliner would never tell you that. The fact that you have to put a sign in your window stating you are a "Limoliner parker: actually advertises to the car thief that your car is there for the taking. And calling a cab is even worse.( I had to because I did not want my car stolen. The Natick cab companies have these old run down, broken, smelly cabs with drivers who had no idea how to find the parking lot.
What a bad and costly experience.
im on one right now. My ride to boston was better. Im currently on one with no working toilet and LED screens so bright a bat could easly get around this thing. No one is sitting around me
( there on another bus i suppose) so i ask to turn off the tv. No possible way im told. So they have it on the superbowl and pumping me full of commercials. Wont be on this thing agian the only thing about it i like are the nice comphy seats and wifi.
Thanks for this nice testimonials