A journalist tried to use the popular and inexpensive Megabus to take a five-hour trip from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. during the middle of the powerful nor'easter ripping through the East Coast — and instead was left to document being trapped without food or WiFi for hours on the side of the road.
"Reporting to you live from the @megabus from hell," freelancer Paige Pfleger tweeted Friday afternoon. "We’ve been on this bus in traffic for 5 hours from Philly to DC. We’re only halfway through the trip and everyone gets an email that says 'your trip has been canceled' even though we’re on the bus."
Passengers proceeded to "lose their sh*t" after receiving the bizarre email and their driver told them they're turning around.
"People are asking to get let off in the middle of the highway," Pfleger noted, though their requests fell on deaf ears.
Passengers had a multitude of reactions. One told the driver they were being held "hostage" while others tried to call rideshares or the company itself to get them to change routes. Another still commandeered the intercom to say they should all asked to be dropped at a casino, all while passengers found themselves becoming "hangry," a colloquialism that denotes being hungry and angry simultaneously.
"Can someone get me a pizza? Will they let us get food? People don’t have water...like if this wind doesn’t kill us will the hunger? The hanger? Each other?" Pfleger screamed into the digital void.
"Everyone on this bus is becoming friends and sharing food and it’s a really beautiful display of humanity that I’ll be sure to hold close and remember when people start killing each other," she continued.
Half-baked solutions began presenting themselves soon after: some were to be dropped in a town called Perryville while others who lobbied to be dropped off at a casino were granted their wish.
"The people determined to get to DC are telling each other to charge their phones and get ready," Pfleger recounted. "Who knows what is going to happen to them."
While on the way back to Philadelphia, Pfleger mused about what she'd learned.
"People have no chill in inclimate weather," she noted. "Always pack snacks no matter what. We need more pizza delivery bicyclists.
And of course, "if the zombie apocalypse hits don’t take a @megabus."
Elsewhere on Twitter, others appeared to have similarly bad luck with their Megabus routes.
One user, who was taking the similarly-timed route from D.C. to New York, said they had four drivers in the less than 250-mile trip between the cities.
"After 11 hours on a bumbling @megabus I'm here," user Erich Brubaker tweeted from New York, "and I would've kissed the ground if the first thing I stepped on out of the bus wasn't a diaper."
