National Express

With the downside of departing from Cardiff Bus Station, instead of a having a unique departure point like rivals Megabus, National Express always seems to manage to have marginally more stinky coaches than its competitor too. Whatever, the upsides of choosing the Express route are slightly more luxurious seats, generally faster services and routes all over the country that run later at night. As mentioned in other reviews, though, the system of taking your online booking printouts to their poky office adjacent to the bus station to exchange for a boarding pass before getting on the coach is a total bureaucratic waste of time. If you’re waiting for one of early hours services you’ll probably feel a little more comfortable not waiting alone in the bus station’s otherwise deserted, desolate ranks. And it’s only the cheaper prices that will dissuade a dash across to the Central Train Station a minute away to get a train instead. But that’s the key: you can get to London for a handful of pound coins if you book sufficiently in advance, so you get what you pay for in that respect.

I write this coming off the back of a recent nightmare with National Express which I’ll put down as a ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ fault wise. I recently booked tickets to see a comedian in Leicester Square. It was about £12 return which was booked a couple of days in advance online. Long story short, I though I lost my wallet in London, cancelled my card, found my wallet again, explained the situation to them and was given a new price of £25 to get home to Cardiff. Online the price was the same, but as I’d cancelled my card, I couldn’t actually book it. I thought charging the higher price was a little unfair but couldn’t really complain too much after a sleepless night in Victoria Station.
The trip there was fine and more comfortable than the Megabus and only slightly more expensive. The whole system of taking your printout into the Cardiff office, where they give you a boarding pass to carry the short walk to the bus is absolute insanity, as I’m sure the conductor letting people on is just as capable of reading a printout. I queued for a good 15 minutes to get that pointless boarding pass too.
Ah well on the whole I can’t really complain. They run a decent service, the staff in the Cardiff office are efficient but a little wooden and impolite and they got me from A to B alive, in one piece and in good time for a fair price. On the way there anyway…

This is simply a National Express counter to buy tickets or collect boarding cards located opposite the main bus terminal. It is no more than that, really. My best tip with this company is to book advance online as it’ll definitely be cheaper. If you’re leaving from Cardiff on a National Express coach then you need to take your printed ticket to this National Express counter to exchange it for a boarding card. This is, to say the least, a wholly pointless system when returning from Victoria Coach station in London you just have to show your printed ticket.
So, if you’re leaving from Cardiff make sure not to have left to the last second to board the coach because you’ll have to go traipsing off to exchange the ticket for a boarding pass and the coach driver, depending on his mood, may not wait.

Although I’m certainly afan on National Express in general, the set up in Cardiff city centre is really a shambles. Being fair, this isn’t really their fault as construction woork is seemingly never-​ending in the bus depot, but the service is a little lacking in efficiency and politeness.

I recently went to enquire about a bus to Bristol at the National Express office, opposite the Central Bus Station. I was really impressed with the guy who dealt with me, the breadth of his knowledge seemed endless. Every new bit of information he delivered in his quietly enthusiastic manner, increasingly made me want to take that National Express bus whenever he told me to. I was sold!
The only thing is that when we got to the price, it was only about a pound less than the train. Unfortunately, I am one of many people who can’t read on buses, but I can on trains. So despite the level of service (which, in anybodies money, was exceptional), and the fact that it was marginally cheaper, I opted to hop on the train instead. I do prefer them to coaches!