Initially, parents planned to celebrate the minor changes to the Otago Peninsula bus route by riding the bus to school with their children yesterday.
However, because the bus was so full of school pupils, there was no room for the parents.
So they had to celebrate by waving their children off at the bus stop, parent Jason Graham said.
He and other peninsula residents spent much of last year fighting with the Otago Regional Council to get a bus from the peninsula to go closer to Bayfield High School and Tahuna Intermediate School before and after school.
After the long battle, the regional council introduced a variation to route 18 on Monday which meant two services per day would detour through Musselburgh, instead of continuing along Portobello Rd.
The services running the variation are the Portobello-City service, departing Portobello at 7.47am (this service replaces the weekday 7.57am service), and the City-Portobello service, departing from the city at 3.08pm (this is an additional weekday service).
The detour goes from Portobello Rd, down Marne St, Somerville St, Musselburgh Rise and into Andersons Bay Rd and vice versa.
Mr Graham said the service was very well supported yesterday.
About 30 pupils were on the bus, plus Otago Peninsula Community Board chairman Paul Pope, who showed the pupils which stops to get off at.
''It was full - even more successful than we expected. It's fair to say it was a celebration that was ruined by success.''
