Did I mess up? I just made a reservation from San Jose to Arenal... a 4 hour trip? But, my confirmation says I get the bus at 9:25am and arrive in Arenal at... 5:52!!! Can this be right? Am I going to see ALL of Costa Rica before I get there? Please straighten me out if they do their times differently from the USA. Thanks! (Interbus had no seats left.)

That has to be a mistake. You should get up there late morning or noon. The shuttle back to San Jose leaves Arenal late in the afternoon.

Thanks Jeff. I sort of thought that had to be a mistake. I really don't want to spend hours sitting in a bus station somewhere! Now I've emailed a copy of my reservation confirmation to Grayline hoping to get a correction. No reply yet.
Gretchen

www.interbusonline.com

if you cannot work it out with GL

Good luck...

I had some issues with a grayline shuttle reservation a few months ago. I'd recommend confirming that you are all set the day before you are scheduled to use them, just to make sure since any mix ups could cost you a lot of time and stress.

Traveler, Thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to reconfirm as you suggest. Did your problems get worked out to your satisfaction?

Honestly, the shuttle bus didn't come to pick us up. We had reserved for the afternoon shuttle (and I had a print out of the confirmation--had the same issues as you with weird times and confirmed the travel time and pick up a few weeks before we left). However when we got there they said there was a problem with the system or something and the reservation was lost. They offered to take us the next morning, which was the next scheduled shuttle bus service. We ended up navigating the public bus instead since we had hotel reservations and a tour scheduled already. Grayline refunded our money (took a while but we got it back). Could just be bad luck on our part, I don't want to make you overly nervous...the hotel we stayed at said they never had problems with grayline before and had more often had issues with interbus. We took interbus shuttles twice during our trip with no issue--but after our first experience, we were sure to reconfirm with interbus as well while we were there.

Again, thank you Traveler. I've used Grayline on two previous trips with no problems. I hope I can still say the same after trip three. It's Interbus that will be new to me. It's reassuring that most experienced CR travelers seem to prefer it. (Wish me luck!) Just curious, how did you make out using the public bus...just in case I need to go that route.

Well glad to hear you have used Grayline without problems before, good luck on this round.
Taxi from airport area to bus station ~$20. The public bus was kind of confusing for us, partly because we hadn't looked into it, and we didn't have the schedule. (Apparently the schedule is available online somewhere but you can't buy tickets online--not sure what the website is, maybe someone else can help you). We went in the evening and the ticket counter was closed already, in this case you can get in line at the bus and see if there is still space and if there is, then you can just pay the driver the fare and get on. We found it to be somewhat confusing, there were two buses leaving within 15 minutes of each other and we weren't sure if one was express and one was local, they appeared to be the same. I was with someone who spoke spanish pretty well, so we figured out the process (ex the local/express issue)--perhaps language wouldn't have been an issue, but we went with the spanish. All in all, probably wouldn't have been so confusing if it wasn't so last minute and we were able to buy tickets and ask questions at the station ahead of time.
Also we were warned a few times (i.e. by our taxi driver) to keep a close watch on our bags and personal items at the station and on the bus. I had read they went to a baggage claim ticket system for putting bags underneath the bus because there have been issues with theft, but there were no baggage claim tickets or anything on the bus we went on. Our luggage was small so we were able to bring it on the bus and put it above and keep an eye on it. There is no bathroom on the bus, but they made a stop along the way.

Hopefully you have no problems with your reservation though!