Is there an alternative to bringing car seats?
Sometimes you may find yourself wondering, do I reallllllly need to bring the car seats on the trip? Before you reflexively snap “Of course you HAVE to bring them!”, pause for just a sec :). In general, yeah, you probably do… BUT there are some situations where you may not need to because there is an alternative worth learning about: car seat vests.
Some situations that may give you pause about whether to lug a car seat along might be:
You’re not really going to be using a car… like if you go to Disneyworld and you’re planning to take a shuttle to the hotel, take shuttles between the parks, and take a shuttle back to the airport. But what if you really want to take a taxi to <place X> once?!
You’re flying somewhere to take a cruise… Will you need it to get to the hotel before the cruise or after the cruise? …or to get from the hotel to the cruise? Will you need it in any of the ports? Maybe…BUT, really, are you going to take a carseat or two on the cruise ship in your already-tiny cabin?
You’re flying to a beach destination where you don’t plan to drive much at all. But what about that one time you might want to Uber somewhere?
You’re flying to a city with great public transportation… but you’re worried you might need to take a taxi/Uber sometimes with your child.
So, what do you do?!?!
There is another option besides the hard core, giant, tough-to-schlep car seat: they are basically car seat vests for kids ages 3+ (30lbs+). They have lots of harnesses and straps to disperse the force of a seatbelt and keep it in the right places– and they are certified for use in motor vehicles. So they technically count as a car seat for all intents and purposes, though I still personally wouldn’t use it as a permanent car seat solution. There are two brands we’ve come across that we like: the WhizRider and the RideSafer… the WhizRider is a LOT smaller than the RideSafer, which is the brand we discovered and bought first. Our preference is for the more compressible WhizRider; it’s easier to put in a carry-on suitcase or in your backpack when you’re out for the day (it was also significantly cheaper at the time of purchase!…like almost $100 cheaper!). The RideSafer is larger and chunkier, which might give a feeling of it being “better”, but it’s definitely more of a pain to carry around. Both are FAR superior to lugging enormous car seats for just one or two short car trips though.
There’s a little ramp-up time to get used to how the straps work with the seat belts so we do recommend trying it out before you get in your first Uber and stumble in the presence of an eager-to-zoom-off driver. But, once you’ve done it a few times, it’s easy peasy and you can get a kid all buckled up in under a minute. And after a few more uses, some kids can even do most of it by themselves
Also, you might be wondering if they’re comfortable? No complaints on either style from the kids – and sometimes the kids even fall asleep wearing them!
Pro tip 1: Be sure the kid is wearing the vest before your Uber/Lyft/Shuttle/Taxi shows up.
Pro tip 2: If you need the vests when you land in order to get to your final destination (like your hotel or a cruise ship), remember to pack the vest IN YOUR CARRY-ON…just in case your luggage gets lost. You don’t want to be stuck with your kid at an airport with no ability to use transportation for lack of a car seat / car seat vest.
Real examples of where we’ve used them:
When we took a Disney Cruise. We flew to New Orleans and then used the car seat vests in the cab to the hotel, in the cab from the hotel to the cruise ship, and both of those in reverse. We were ready to use them in a port, but ended up on a bus instead of in a car, so we didn’t end up needing them at all during the cruise. (I thanked my lucky stars we weren’t trying to store two unused enormous car seats in our itty bitty room!)
In Hawaii, where we mainly planned to stay around our resort area and we did not rent a car. We used the car seat vests in Ubers/Lyfts between the airport and hotel, as well as between the hotel and Pearl Harbor, where we couldn’t have carried and lugged around three enormous car seats anyways!
As a backup: We carried the WhizRider on a flight once when we thought our child’s car seat may not reliably make it to her destination on time… so that we wouldn’t be trapped car-seat-less at an airport at midnight if something went awry.
When we were in Portugal and knew we’d be taking short Uber trips with the kids in order to get places where public transportation wouldn’t work (ex: a specific beach, park, museum) and lugging three car seats around was utterly impractical.
I can totally understand there may be car seat vest skeptics… it’s worth reading more about them (both brands post a lot about safety as they know it’s the TOP priority for parents) and you can see if they might be right for your kids on one of your trips. If you’re comfortable with them in certain situations, myyyyy goodness they make travel less cumbersome!
**UPDATE 11/14/2022: It appears that Whizrider may not exist as a company anymore?? Their domain (http://www.whizrider.com/) doesn’t work anymore and their Facebook Page says the content isn’t available. You can try finding their vests on ebay, google, etc, and I will post an update if I can discover any more information about what’s going on. Sad 🙁
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One Comment
Mary
What a great solution!