NYC Beach Bus

Great concept. Decent service. I’m a beach bum, and I’ll explore all ways to get there.

This place is unprofessional and not worth it. The site says the bus leaves at 9:15am sharp yet we didn’t leave until 10:30am. Furthermore we were left on the island because on the way home the bus left early. We sat next to our host on the water taxi back to the bus station yet were left while in the restrooms, all while being at the meeting point by 5pm sharp like the site says. When we called the company wondering why we had been left the owner got defensive and said we should have been there earlier (than the meeting time) to be sure and get a ride.

It’s an air-​conditioned school bus where they give you Six Point beer and blast top 40 music. All for $ 14 (to Jacob Riis Park/​Rockaways). What more could you ask for?
They’re tough to get ahold of (best to send an email and hope for the best), but one of my friends had trouble rebooking his seat, and they gave him some more free beers for his troubles, and all was well.
I had to cancel a trip due to rain, and it was super easy via email (just make sure you do it more than 48 hours out for 100% refund).
The ride was quick both there and bank (wasn’t a holiday weekend or anything), but we took the last bus back and it was completely full. A girl had to sit with a cooler on her lap and there were holding cots all over the place.
All in all, definitely a good way to get to the beach that doesn’t require going to a subway station 40 blocks away.

Oh Beach Bus — what happened? I had the strangest experience recently. I had purchased tickets for a Sunday morning trip from Barclays to Jacob Riis. I wanted to get one more ticket, hopefully, and was emailing back and forth with one of the employees, Ayo, about getting on the waitlist, using the
email. Their cancellation policy holds that if you cancel 48 hours or more before your departure time, you’re entitled to a full refund. My bus was at 11 am on Sunday; at 9:45 on Friday morning I emailed Ayo letting her know that because we weren’t able to get a second seat, I’d like to cancel. I asked when I could expect a refund, but never got a reply. Not a big deal, but a week later I followed up on the same email chain, this time expecting someone to get back to me. Still nothing, so this week I called and left a voicemail, and then sent another email — still on the same chain — this time, including the other Beach Bus email address listed on their website,
. Still nothing. At this point, I’m annoyed and have already spent so much time on this that the $ 14 refund is no longer worth it. I delete the email chain and forget about it. Today, I literally get a reply ON THE SAME THREAD from a man named Walter with a gmail address – not
–telling me that i have the wrong address and he lives in Virginia. So bizarre — I looked through the whole thread and I had only ever emailed official beachbus addresses. Who is Walter and how did he receive these emails?

great staff
free beer
takes you from point a to b
Bobby (the bus staff guy) looks mean but he’s really nice.

For $ 35 round trip to Fire Island, this air conditioned school bus with a free ice coffee and beer for the trip out is the best way to go. I didn’t have to worry about driving, dealing with the packed and pricey parking lot, and then shelling out more $$ for the ferry. My friend and I had a GREAT day — the driver was excellent (unlike our unfortunate death-​defying trip on Rocabus last year), and the staff was friendly and attentive. Scott was our «bus guy» and he not only told us (repeatedly) how to navigate to various parts of Fire Island once we arrived, he gave out his cell number in case we had any questions. The music on the bus was some crappy NY station, but other than that, this was a great choice. We’re going to do it again before the summer is out.

Faced with a pricey $ 30 ferry ticket, BF and I opted to go the cheaper route to Riis beach. At $ 14 RT, with a free beer thrown in, it was not an unattractive option. Upon arriving, we even got free sunglasses (sponsored by Clif bar) and a handful of free cliff bars.
We unfortunately hit a lot of traffic as this was the hottest Sunday of the summer. The trip took two hours each way, and it was awful, bouncing around in an uncomfortable old school bus with barely functioning air conditioning. Obviously the traffic was not the company’s fault, and the bus company employee was very nice and handled the crowd fine. It’s obviously still a good option for people who live near the stops and want to go the cheaper and more time consuming route.
Next time, we’re going with the ferry. No amount of beer, cliff bars or sunglasses make this attractive enough of an option for me.

This vehicular form of transport is an old school bus with poor wheel alignment and with minimal road shock absorption.
It bumps, swerves and grinds it’s way to various beach destinations, all too far away (2– 3 hours) for this dangerous, uncomfortable and outdated form of transport, meant in the 1950’s for the brief transport of young school children.

Their website was down for a few weeks, more specifically — their form to order tickets. No phone calls or emails were returned, but my friend decided to show up where the bus stops in Brooklyn. Note Viva Mobil is also closed permanently.
The bus never showed.

No idea what bus Abby L. rode, but it wasn’t mine. Decidedly low-​rent operation. 45 min in the back of an unairconditioned school bus. Shoulda taken the subway and spent my $ 12 on drinks at the beach.

Super awesome service! Express ride to the beach? Check. Awesome air conditioned bus? Check. Free drinks? Check. All for $ 12 so yes this is a freaking awesome deal.
I really didn’t know what to expect because why pay $ 12 for something when you can use your freaking metro card but then I got on and I finally got it. New York transit fucking sucks big time and to get to Riis Park from my neck of the woods takes a long ass time, you have to take a train to a bus to another bus. That sounds like fun when you are on your way to the beach, but sounds like a nightmare when you are leaving the beach and are sunburned, drunk, bleary eyed and all you want to do is coast on the good vibes of spending your one free weekend on the beach, not dealing with a crowded bus to another crowded bus and then a train — I would pay $ 20 to not have to deal with that shit.
The freebies are awesome too but at the end of the day its a cheap express ride to the beach that saves you time. In this city that is worth more than anything else.

It was a 2 and a half hour ordeal in the end. Bus was late, AC wasn’t working, bus was sweltering. I’d bike or take the MTA anytime over this!!!

It’s an easy way to get to the beach and back, faster than taking the subway. The only provide drinks on the way there and the drinks are first come fist serve, so if your the last person in line you might not get anything. Get there on time, the confirmation email say 15 min early, which I would recommended. Also other reviews say volleyballs and sun screen was provided, but I guess they don’t do that anymore.
The bus itself… I thought I was going to be sick, the bus driver kept slamming on the breaks and he even swerved bc he almost hit someone! I honestly thought the bus was going to tip over with how fast the driver was going through turns.
The take away it’s easy way to get to the beach and fairly cheap, but I honestly don’t know if I would do it again, as I was a little concerned for my life, with the way the driver, was driving. He even ran a red light, not a it’s yellow I might make this, it was 100% red and he had time to stop. I like the concept, but I rather not be in a car accident on the way there.

I’m sure this bus is awesome if you manage to get on it, but we arrived exactly at 1 pm for a 1 pm departure and there was no bus in sight. An email I immediately sent to the company asking if there was any possibility of a refund just went unanswered, so yeah, awesome customer service. So if you plan to take this bus, definitely arrive well before the scheduled departure time. They do not wait, and they apparently leave not promptly on time but a minute or more before.

Before the fat lady sings on the summer season (Sept. 2 to be exact)…I’m going to have be the biatch that keeps in real here.
Just because there’s a much needed innovation in the field of direct NYC beach transport does not mean that the first instantiation of it is the ideal. Moving on:
Who should get TEN stars are the staff… or actually, I feel like there was actually only one girl on the bus ride doing absolutely everything; counting heads, making sure everyone got free beers, taking photos to promote on the businesses’ website, and basically being a hipster wrangler/​entertainer on the whole trip out and the whole trip in.
And the price, for a direct trip, is great, and unabashedly weighted towards a round trip purchase (only $ 3 more than the $ 9 one way price). But you have to not forget that this is NYC and that each new and outlandish thing is guaranteed to be overrun and old by the time it reaches your consciousness. If you forget this and decide to be a New Yorker and «play it by ear» ’til the last minute, then you will be shut out of web purchases (
) and be met with the equally New Yorker experience of standing like a chump in the sun in downtown Brooklyn while all the cool kids file first onto the school bus to claim whichever forest green, ramrod-​backed, 2-​person maximum seats aren’t on the wheel hump. If you used to favor the wheel hump seat, remember that this was when you were five, and your legs were a foot long. Even an adult with short ass legs (yours truly) will be uncomfortable if stuck on The Wheel.
Anyway, back to the cool kids… if you were smart enough to buy an advance ticket, you have to wait in single file anyway, and feel like the young Forrest Gump when looking for a free spot to park yourself and all your beach gear in. You might even get that anxious feeling that you had when you were a child facing the gauntlet ranging from the four-​eyed, asthmatic boys-​in-​bubbles up front to the near-​delinquents who have undergone accelerated maturation in the back… but then you realize half the people have beards and bald spots and even fucking babies (it should be illegal to bring babies into these environments) and it dawns on you that you have made a choice between being in a cattle car of humanity (MTA) for a 90 minute trip and a covered wagon of aging hipsters (NYC Beach Bus) only for a length of time dictated by street traffic.
One thing that might sway your decision is that they give out candy on the bus, though.

Whoever came up with this idea is a genius. They realized that there’s a big summer problem for young Brooklynites: we want to get to the beach, but Coney Island can be kind of gross (sorry, it’s true) and the Rockaways are just way too hard to get to. No one wants to spend 90 minutes (or more!) on the train on a hot afternoon when you’d rather be drinking a beer on the beach.
Solution? A bus that takes you from Brooklyn (there are two pickup locations, in downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg) to the Rockaways! You can get off at Jacob Riis Park, or at Rockaway Beach. And guess what? On the way, you’ll be having a great time, thanks to the TWO FREE BEERS per person. Not just any beers — delicious tallboys from Sixpoint! Um, yes please. There’s a candy basket as well, so between that and the yellow school bus, you’ll have a rockin’ ride down to the beach. And once you get there, you’ll have a fantastic time with the frisbees and volleyballs provided for you, ALSO free. Come on — this is NYC, right? We aren’t used to the good things in life coming cheap (let alone free). It sounds too good to be true… but it ain’t.
The best part of all of this? It’s just SO easy. Buy your tickets online, or at the pickup spots — it’s $ 12 round-​trip, or $ 9 one-​way, and you can choose from several pickup and dropoff times. The staff is so friendly and fun, and it was seriously one of the best ways to spend a summer day.

The NYC Beach Bus will bring you right back to the bumpy field trips of your childhood… but with beer!
$ 12 round trip ($ 9 one way) to Rockaway Beach + free bottled water + a free beer or two! The bus makes a stop at Jaccob Ries Beach and another just outside of Ripper’s at Rockaway Beach. The driver even accommodate a request to stop at Rockaway taco so some riders could get there before the line formed.
The owner, Ayo, wielded and iPad and a ton of positive energy. She offered sunscreen and frisbees and a dose of good cheer to start off a great day at the beach.