The last two years and this year, 67 has taken a coach bus down to ATL. It is about a 14 hour ride for us. This is how we have run things:
We don't do a gender-based seating system. Our mentors keep a close eye on us. We've got a pretty effective punishment system to deter most wrong doing.
We leave at Midnight on Tuesday so we get to ATL about 2PM on Wednesday.
I usually throw a pre-massively-long-bus-ride party at my house up until 11pm or so on Tuesday to get the kids tired out a bit so they won't want to stay up all that long once they are on the bus.
There really isn't a set time to go to sleep, but usually quite quickly the lights are turned out and a quiet time is in effect until 6 or 7am.
Our bus makes a dead of night (about 2am) stop in Cincinnati Ohio for a driver swap. This gives people (who are crazy, mind you) a chance to get up and run around the bus a few laps.
We'll then stop for breakfast at a McDonald's or something in Kentucky or Tennessee about 8am. After breakfast everyone is usually awake and needs stuff to keep them occupied. People bring lots of personal electronic goodies for this purpose. iPods, laptops, portable DVD players, books
, and homework. However, for entertaining everyone else, we encourage everyone to bring movies on DVD or :gasp: VHS.
The ratings on these have really not been much of an issue in most cases. We've watched: The Incredibles, The Blues Brothers, Ladder 49, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, The "Rejected" animation DVD, episodes of 'Family Guy', The Notebook (which the girls forced upon the guys after the argument against), and Anchorman. Probably a few others that I forgot.
*tangent* I think that the hardest one to pitch was Anchorman, because the DVD said it was unrated, but among the students we had a laptop and a cell phone, got online to IMDB.com, looked up the movie and found that it was just the extras that were unrated.*/tangent*
Anyway, lunch is another fast food restaurant, we try for a KFC in Kentucky.
In the past, we stayed in ATL Saturday night as well, and left Sunday for the trip home. Which got us home around 9pm. This year, we're saving some $$ and leaving Saturday night. This should make it a similar trip to the way down. Historically, the ride back is less energetic and more homework filled.