Travel by Charter Bus, DC Power

bigdaddy · Post by **bigdaddy** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:44 pm

my Family and I will be taking an 18 hour bus trip to Florida in April. A School trip for one of the kids. I will need to sleep on the way down, so does anyone know if a DC power outlet can be made available on charter buses? I've been on a few before and know the seats don't have power outlets, but wasn't sure if I could ask the driver to plug in on the way down. I'm going to buy an inverter just in case and a really long DC extension cord (the cigarette lighter kind).

Any suggestions or experience will be welcome.

BigDaddy.

BTW, all is well. Getting good sleep every night.

GarthsWorld · Post by **GarthsWorld** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:04 am

I would highly recccomend contacting the charter company. If it's OK'd ahead of time and you have a name of who ok'd it (better yet... something in writing, even if it's just a printed out email) there's a much better chance that you won't run into issues with the driver not being comfortable with the idea. If it is a matter that the only power that they can provide is from a cigarette lighter, they will probably want you to be in the seat behind the driver to alleviate any chance of folks tripping over the power cord and causing potential liability to their company. Or, they may have 12 volt power with a different kind of plug, which you would need to have hooked up ahead of time with the correct polarity. And if you do need to run the power very far, it's probably preferable to have the 110 power being the longer run, and the converter closer to the 12 vold source. Lastly, there is a chance that the bus will have 110 volt power; many of the charter busses do.

And it's a bus full of kids? Perhaps take along earplugs... and an Ambien....

Have a great trip! Garth

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