Custom Tours By The Busload

In the not so distant past, airline, as well as train, travel carried a certain amount of glamour, while a trip on a bus seemed a little down-at-the-heels.

Today, airlines are cramming people in like cattle and Amtrak can be a bit shabby around the edges, but bus travel, particularly the organized bus tour, is getting more luxurious with first-class seating and imaginative itineraries.

There are bus trips designed to take the hassle out of going to the opera in Los Angeles and ones meant to guide you through Europe or the Old West. Tours can cost as little as $24 or more than $3,000.

Here are some of the bus tours available to North County residents:

ADVENTURES IN TRAVEL

Olivenhain-based Adventures in Travel has taken a standard, full-sized, 47-passenger bus and converted it to a living room on wheels with 21 easy chairs that swivel and recline. It also boasts a galley, VCR, and stereo system, and is highly insulated for freeway sound-proofing.

“I’m not a bus person, but the minute I stepped on this one, I thought I was in seventh heaven,” said Anne Woolley of Rancho Santa Fe. “And the seating is more sociable than the usual side-by-side set-up, where you can only talk to the person you came with.”

Adventure’s approach to touring is as upscale as its limousine-style-bus. Partners Brenda Montiel and Theodore Kilman have between them numerous degrees in the arts and have traveled to more than 75 countries. Both are assistant professors at Palomar College, though Adventures in Learning is a separate entity. An entity, nevertheless, that mixes travel with education.

In addition to theater and museum trips where Montiel and/or Kilman acts as private docents, Adventures hosts art expeditions to Santa Monica and Venice Beach, seeking the unusual in outdoor art, street performers and architecture.

In their public art tour of Los Angeles, Kilman, the architecture expert, discusses 45 of the 150 public artworks downtown, including their origin and significance to the city. On both tours, participants stroll the neighborhoods for a close-up look. Lunch is included, usually at a restaurant where the art or architecture is as interesting as the food, according to Montiel.

A nine-day Santa Fe Opera, Taos and Southwest history tour is slated for July 27-Aug. 4. Participants fly round-trip to Albuquerque and are met by the limo-bus, which transports them throughout the tour.

Longer trips include a 16-day Mozart anniversary tour to Europe in October, led by concert pianist Nicholas Reveles.

An 18-day tour of Borneo in January will concentrate on indigenous arts and music, and a native botanist-guide will introduce participants to the local flora and fauna.

Foreign trips charter standard buses.

Price sampler:

Santa Monica Art Safari: $65, including lunch.

“M. Butterfly,” : tickets, transportation and lunch, $105.

Sixteen-day Austria/Mozart Tour: $3,338, including air fare.

North County pickup points:

California 78 and Broadway Park and Ride, Escondido; Westwood Plaza Park and Ride, Rancho Bernardo; Campanilla Road and Rancho Santa Fe Road, San Marcos.

Information:

Brochure available, 756-2142

MIRACOSTA COLLEGE

MiraCosta College offers 12 bus excursions in this season’s Horizons catalogue, and, although the transportation and accommodations may not be as snazzy as Adventures in Learning, most tours have an educational bent.

Watercolorist and art instructor Jo Reed will lead a one-day art and antiquities tour through the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu on June 29, and professional opera lecturer Vere Wolf will lead a four-day “Operatunity Tour” of Santa Fe, lacing performances with talks on the drama and history of the opera.

New tours in the summer ’91 catalogue include “The Murals of East Los Angeles,” a study of more than 30 historically significant paint and mosaic walls in what is considered the mural capital of the world, and “L.A.’s Oldest and Newest,” a combination historic homes tour and shopping excursion at the restored Citadel, a former tire company built to resemble an Assyrian Palace, now housing factory-outlet shops.

Perennially popular tours for the community college include The Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach, and long-running theater performances like “The Phantom of the Opera” in Los Angeles.

“Even without Michael Crawford, the response to the ‘Phantom of the Opera’ trip has been phenomenal,” says San Elijo campus coordinator Lynn Wetzell.

MiraCosta charters its buses from Goodall’s, and no refreshments are served on board. All tours are self-supporting through enrollment fees.

Price sampler:

J. Paul Getty Museum: $29.

“Phantom of the Opera”: $75.

Mandy Patinkin at the Hollywood Bowl: $47.

Santa Fe Opera : four days, $746 per person, double occupancy, including air fare.

North County pickup points:

MiraCosta College, One Barnard Drive, Oceanside; MiraCosta College, 3333 Manchester Ave., Cardiff.

Information:

Catalogue available, 755-5155 or 757-2121.

GADABOUT TOURS

Gadabout Tours in Vista, Palm Springs and Phoenix offers a glossy catalogue of more than 500 tours with excursions as close as Old Town and as far-flung as an 18-day fly/bus tour of Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore and Bali.

The 26-year-old company owns its own fleet of buses and often combines its longer journeys with plane, rail and ship travel--a growing trend in the industry, according to Gadabout’s owner, Lois Anderson. But the all-bus tour has its devoted followers.

“People who like the all-motor coach trip are repeaters,” Anderson said. “I have customers who have repeated with us more than 100 times. They like the camaraderie of the long bus tour.”

Bob Bruemmer is a repeater. He is also a tour planner of R B Ramblers, a 1,200-member Rancho Bernardo retiree club.

Bruemmer uses various bus-tour companies when planning group trips, but stays away from the “fly-by-nighters who use dinky buses where the air conditioner breaks down,” as he puts it. “Gadabout is first class in everything: buses, hotels, meals and sightseeing,” said Bruemmer, a former TWA executive.

You see more and do more on a bus tour, according to Bruemmer, who is planning a “Great Trains of Colorado” trip.

“We’ll bus through the canyonlands and Indian country on the way,” he said. “A bus gives you the flexibility to go off and see the old caves and things. And you don’t have to worry about the details.”

Price sampler:

Huntington Library : with high tea, $40.

Newport Harbor Cruise : with lunch, $44.

Grand Canyon : five days, $525, double occupancy

Argentine-fly/bus: 14 days, $2,350, double occupancy.

North County pickup points:

Hadleys, 6115 Paseo del Norte, Carlsbad; McDonald’s, 1050 W. Valley Parkway, Escondido; Oceana Clubhouse, Vista Bella, Oceanside; K-Mart, 650 Sycamore Place, Vista.

Information:

Color brochure available, 471-1611.

TOUR DU JOUR

Fran Russell is known as the maven of the Los Angeles Garment District since she and her Tour du Jour were featured on Channel 10’s news segment, “Shop ‘Till You Drop.”

“I’m up there so often, I know which stores are best,” said Russell, a nine-year veteran of the bargain hunt. “We give a presentation on the way to L.A. on who has what, and how much it costs. On the way home, we get everyone involved in a ‘show and tell.’ ”

Tour du Jour leases its buses from Goodall’s, San Diego Express and San Diego Mini Tours and uses professional guides. In addition to to its shopping tours to Los Angeles, Tijuana and an outlet mall near Palm Springs, it offers theater and television-show tours, as well as two-day trips to Laughlin, Nev., and Hearst Castle and Solvang.

“Most of our clients are working professionals, a good chunk of them teachers,” Russell said. “So most of our tours operate on the weekend.”

Price sampler

Los Angeles Garment District : including refreshments, $30.

“Phantom of the Opera ,” including lunch and refreshments: $98.

Laughlin weekend: $79 per person, double occupancy.

North County pickup points

Governor Drive Park and Ride and Oceanside Park and Ride.

Information

Mailer available, 560-6545.

SUNDANCE TOURS & TRAVEL

Sundance Tours & Travel is new to the package tour and travel industry, but its bus company has been going strong as a charter operation since ’78. All buses have air conditioning, reclining seats, AM/FM cassette stereo and a restroom. A few have additional amenities including card tables, extra-wide seats, VCR, galley and window shades. All tours employ professional guides, and the company says it makes it a point to keep a few seats open so there’s room to move around.

Day trips include jaunts to Rosarito Beach, Medieval Times in Buena Park and Temecula for wine-tasting.

Las Vegas is a popular destination, and a stop at Ethel M.’s Chocolate Factory tries to ensure that gamblers won’t come home empty-handed.

Mystery tours with an unannounced destination are also big, according to Richard Savage, vice president of business operations.

“They’re usually to new places off the beaten track that want to bring in business,” he said. “They give us a really good price, and we pass that savings on to the passenger.”

Longer trips include a nine-day fly/bus package to Canada for the Calgary Stampede and Rodeo, with two nights in Vancouver as well as in Banff with sightseeing to Lake Louise and the Columbia Ice Fields.

“We stay in three- or four-star hotels,” Savage said. “We find our clients want to spend a little more money for better accommodations. But I have some groups who insist on Motel 6. Whatever they want, we’ll give it to them.”

Sundance used to have a strong ski trip business, but, like the snow, it literally dried up. “We’ll come back with the snow,” Savage said.

Price sampler:

Citadel Factory Outlet and L.A. Garment District: $24.

Las Vegas: Fremont Hotel, 2 nights, 3 days, $95 per person.

Indian Trails: 18 days of cookouts, restaurant dining, museums, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Durango, and more: $1,800.

North County pickup points:

California 78 and Broadway Park and Ride, Escondido; Oceana, 567 Vista Bella, Oceanside; Clairemont Mesa Blvd. and Limerick Ave., Clairemont Mesa.

Information:

Brochures available, 497-2100.

SMITH TOURS

Seniors are Smith Tours best customers, and Las Vegas and Laughlin are their favorite destinations.

“Seniors love to gamble,” owner Kitty Smith said. “And they’re the only ones with any money these days.”

Smith’s newsletter lists dozens of gambling tours, as well as day trips to the Laguna Beach Art Festival, Lake Arrowhead, the Queen Mary and the Tournament of Roses, among others.

Longer trips include a two-week tour of Western national parks, a four-day trip to the Grand Canyon and an 11-day tour of the Pacific Northwest.

Smith charters buses from Goodall’s, Gray Line and Friendship; uses volunteer guides, and may be the “fun ships” of the road.

“It’s not unusual to find a party atmosphere on board,” Smith said. “We have games, sing-alongs, and sometimes white-elephant auctions.”

Smith is a civic-minded individual who says she donates most of the company’s profits to senior and children’s charities. She also co-sponsors KORU, an Australian version of the “Make a Wish” foundation, where the company regularly hosts a group of terminally ill Australian and New Zealand children flown into this country.

“We bus them all over Southern California to the various theme parks,” Smith says. “But the No. 1 attraction, that even beats Disneyland, is the California Highway Patrol.”

Price sampler:

Laughlin: one-day gambling tour, $17.

Solvang & Hearst Castle: two nights, $215.

National Parks Tour: two weeks to Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone and Grand Tetons, $1,359, double occupancy.

North County pickup points:

I-805 and Governor Drive, University City; Pea Soup Andersen’s, Carlsbad; Oceana Clubhouse, Oceanside; California 78 and Broadway Park and Ride, Escondido

Information

Newsletter available, 748-4967.

GRAY LINE and SAN DIEGO MINI TOURS

When you’ve seen all there is to see of the zoo, Sea World and Tijuana, but your visiting and car-less relatives are still rarin’ to go, hooking them up with a local bus tour may keep you all happy.

Gray Line and San Diego Mini Tours offer many close-to-home tours with a variety of pickup points, including many La Jolla and San Diego hotels. Both lines are geared to tourists, but have trips with appeal to local residents, too.

San Diego Mini Tours offers a three-night, four-day trip to Ensenada and San Felipe. The trip, including some meals and cocktails and a bilingual driver-guide costs $185 per person, $169 after Sept. 16.

Gray Line offers Mexico overnight packages at Rosarito Beach hotels from $65 to $75, and at Ensenada hotels for $80 to $90.

The Tijuana shopping and lunch tours are among those popular with locals. Trudy Vicedomini, general manager at Gray Line, says the same trip by car usually takes two to three hours longer than by bus, considering the average delays at the border crossing. The normal wait by bus is 10 minutes, and never longer than 45 minutes, she said, since there are special vehicle and customs lanes for bus passengers.

Both companies also offer day trips to Disneyland, Universal Studios and Ensenada. Gray Line offers a pickup at the Oceanside Visitors Center for the almost-daily trips north.

Information:

Gray Line

Brochure available, 491-0011.

San Diego Mini Tours

Brochure available, 234-9044.