National Express coaches - experience on price/availability

[woyski]

Hi all,

Hopefully this is the right place to ask! Very luckily managed to bag general sale tickets after a failed attempt on the Thursday. My partner and I are looking at booking a coach return with National Express from London Victoria. At the moment it's looking to be around £90pp which is more than the package would've been, but nothing too horrific.

I'm keen to get our transport sorted for peace of mind, but my partner has fairly raised that there may be no harm in waiting until we've paid off the balance in April (in case there is a change in circumstance, albeit we are very committed). I just wouldn't want to risk there being rubbish/expensive transport options left. As such, I'd appreciate any experience people have on the following:

 

1. Does the availability for National Express tend to be pretty abundant until well into next year when most people will have formally committed to their attendance?

2. Does the price change much / go up nearer the time, and by how much?

 

Any other views you might have are very much welcomed! 

[incident]

1. You should be fine until approximately the start of the balance payment window as that's when most people will start to plan this properly. Some individual departure times may fill up before then, but there's enough departures overall that you should still be able to get one half an hour earlier/later.

2. Yes, there's a definite risk that prices go up, especially on the more popular departure times as they can use pricing as a way to stagger demand.

Personally I'd say to buy now (indeed, I've already bought my own).

[woyski]

3 hours ago, incident said:

1. You should be fine until approximately the start of the balance payment window as that's when most people will start to plan this properly. Some individual departure times may fill up before then, but there's enough departures overall that you should still be able to get one half an hour earlier/later.

2. Yes, there's a definite risk that prices go up, especially on the more popular departure times as they can use pricing as a way to stagger demand.

Personally I'd say to buy now (indeed, I've already bought my own).

Really helpful, thanks so much! Based on that, I think if we know we don't really have another route there (that we can trust at this point, relying on friends to be able to still attend come next year etc), we'll grab now and take a calculated risk on attendance - not much could keep me away!

Glad to hear yours are sorted! I have one last question if you've used Nat Ex in the past - I've noticed that their departure times are as early as Tue. I know that the coach station comes into Gate A. For pre-gate coach arrivals, do you know if there a zig-zag queue system in the same coach area of gate A, or if you get put in the queue with the carpark folk?

[incident]

The queue from the Coach Station is independent of the Car Park queue, up until the point that they merge which is relatively close to the gate itself, so about 5 minutes to get through.

Think you may want to double check the journeys on offer though. The Tuesday departures from London aren't direct, so won't get you there any quicker than going in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

[woyski]

59 minutes ago, incident said:

The queue from the Coach Station is independent of the Car Park queue, up until the point that they merge which is relatively close to the gate itself, so about 5 minutes to get through.

Think you may want to double check the journeys on offer though. The Tuesday departures from London aren't direct, so won't get you there any quicker than going in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Perfect, thanks so much for confirming! This year we went with See Coaches and had the grim traffic from o2 so didn't get there until 12/1, at which point there was obviously no coach queue. 

We've booked thanks to your recommendations/help, and are indeed looking at Wed departure, arriving around 7, so expect to join a queue but grand to hear it is remains coach-side of gate A. 

[gfa]

Pretty sure you can get it with refund protection for a few £ more 🙂  @woyski

[Nduja]

Are the departures listed currently the full extent of the coaches that will be run?

[incident]

1 minute ago, Nduja said:

Are the departures listed currently the full extent of the coaches that will be run?

Not guaranteed, but that should be a fairly safe assumption.