King of the Road is a really, really, really big vehicle

Ask anyone how much fun it is to drive down to Denver from Fort Collins for a night on the town or a sporting event. The traffic, the parking, the wondering about whether to have that second beer.

And pity the event planner who has to move large corporate groups from the hotel to Old Town and back. Sometimes a stretch limo, even the largest stretch Hummer in Northern Colorado, just does not have enough seats.

Sometimes it takes a bus. A party bus.

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“We refer our party bus inquiries to Royalty Coach,´ said Jenny Scarpulla, who with her husband Mike owns Intrigue Limousines, specializing in exotic limos. “Our big Hummer can take 20, and we do everything from Quinceañeras to corporate work. But if people want to walk around as they travel, they need a bus.”

Walking around appears to be the least of the benefits associated with Northern Colorado party-bus travel. A Royalty Coach, which until recently offered transportation in its 20- and 30-person custom party buses, has brought into service the largest single-chassis bus on the road – any road, anywhere.

It has taken owners Robyn and Mike Vanosdall, in the business almost eight years, roughly three years to get the 80-passenger King of the Road ready to roll.

“Our King of the Road bus is one of only 22 built by a German company in 1984 and ’85 to move tourists around the NASA space center in Florida,´ said Robyn Vanosdall.

Although in bus years The King was not really old when it retired in the late ’90s, Florida’s salt air had not been kind.

“There was rust everywhere,” Mike Vanosdall said. “I had only gotten a hundred miles down the road from where I bought it in Kansas when the engine blew. It was a nightmare. It’s 50 feet long and we towed it in.”

And so began a project that the Vanosdalls describe as three years of ripping, tearing, grinding and welding (and along the way mortgaging their home to keep the project going). Their initial $38,000 investment became an almost $400,000 revenue stream for the local economy.

“This thing was a heap,” Robyn Vanosdall said. “It was a bucket. Mike has replaced every piece of metal on it and changed the design to bring it into the new millennium. Colorado Iron and Metal and Fort Collins Plastics, who have been helpful through it all, know us well. So does Willie in Nunn.”

Willie Holwerda owns Willie’s Diesel.

“Willie is 73, and built this diesel motor especially for us,” Robyn Vanosdall said. “It has a retarder on it so that we can come down steep roads, like the bypass up to Central City and Black Hawk, and be in complete control of the bus. We can go anywhere except where the underpasses are too low.”

It is hard to imagine a bus as big as The King slipping through the stone tunnel on the road along the Poudre River to Steamboat. But it did for the yearly trip organized by a Canadian group, the Big Dogs.

“These guys are the greatest,´ said Jeff Banfield, trip organizer. “The Dogs are still laughing about the Red Bull experience.”

Banfield did not elaborate.

Ticket to ride or private events

Having this year completed the transmission repairs that make it official that every moving part of the bus has been built or rebuilt, the Vanosdalls see endless possibilities for how The King can be pressed into service, either on “ticket-to-ride trips” – for example, to the Colorado State-University of Colorado football game for $25, or a Denver Broncos game for $15 – or for private events.

Susan Pfeuffer, account executive with the boutique marketing firm Fig Street Marketing Group, already has the bus booked for corporate work this summer.

“We’re a Los Angeles-based niche agency that specializes in working with the technology and entertainment sectors,” she said. “I’m psyched to have this big bus in town because it means I can use it logistically and for entertainment.”

Pfeuffer explained that in May a local high-tech company would be bringing partners into Fort Collins for a training event to take place at the Hilton Fort Collins on Prospect Road close to CSU.

“When you have 65 people come in for a training, you want to showcase the town,” she said. “But it’s not easy to move that many people from the Hilton to Old Town for dining and entertainment. It’s too far to walk, so the big bus can take us.”

In addition to hiring the bus as a shuttle vehicle, Pfeuffer will be using its services for a trip to Denver for a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

“You put people in a car for more than an hour and they get antsy,” she said. “The bus is a great venue for wining and dining. It also eliminates the problem of drinking and driving in a corporate setting. This is a win-win.”

Troy McWhinney, vice president for development at McWhinney Enterprises, had used the Vanosdalls’ 30-person Royal Coach in the past and can imagine using the big bus in the future.

“We do a lot of team-building exercises with employees and clients,” he said. “Putting people on a bus is a good way to get them around. It makes transportation part of the process.”

Like McWhinney, Debbie Armstrong with Security Title in Fort Collins has yet to use the King of the Road, but plans to.

“I have gone to the CSU-Wyoming game on the 30-person bus,” she said. “I also rented that bus for my bachelorette party. Robyn makes sure everyone has a good time. She does karaoke.”

Robyn Vanosdall confesses that there is an ulterior motive to getting party groups involved in karaoke.

“It’s a party bus, and we have a very nice bar,” she said. “But if people are having a good time singing along, they just don’t drink as much. And that makes it even more fun.”

In fact, The King and his five-person “court” – the Vanosdall family crew – are all-around good citizens. When it is rolling to an event, the bus takes about 25 cars off the road. It is configured on the upper deck to give kids their own place to watch a DVD on one of the three flat-screen TVs. It leaves driving through inclement weather in professional hands.

Ultimately, however, nothing quite compares to cruising down the highway in the biggest, coolest bus in the world.