Anyone have hard sided luggage?

[peyjax]

It is time to get new luggage for us and my dh mentioned getting hard sided luggage. We need something decent as we travel one to two times or more a year Anyone have this kind and like or dislike it? All I remember is my parents had one growing up and it was puke yellow and you were limited as to what you could put in it as it did not expand.

 

[Dani C]

I have and have had both soft and hard sided luggage.

Soft sided is nice for the following reasons:

1. It can expand (even a bit matters sometimes) to allow odd shapes/sizes of contents.

2. It doesn't weigh as much on its own. With luggage weights limited as well as size, this too can matter.

Hard sided however, will allow more delicate items to travel better as they do not crush easily.

As far as length of life, it has not varied. Generally the damage to the case for me from air travel has been with the wheels (found on both types). The difference here is that the soft sided was a bit less expensive to replace.

Benfits can be found either way, so consider what you will be packing and make your decision based on that and your personal preferences. (They come in all sorts of colors and designs now, not just puke yellow.)

 

[Namsupak]

We have hard luggage and we love it. Mostly I agree with what the above poster mentioned. I'll just elaborate on some points

2. It doesn't weigh as much on its own. With luggage weights limited as well as size, this too can matter.

I found that the soft luggage we used to use was much heavier (of course this will vary depending on what you buy).

We have a Samsonite 31" F'lite and a 28" F'lite. The luggage is real basic but it weighs 11.5lbs and 9.5lbs respectively. There are a couple of things we really like about these cases.

1. One thing is obviously our stuff is more protected from a crushing injury. We also find that when we had luggage we did expand it caused us to go over the weight maximum for checked bags. With the hard case I think it forces you to pack a little more efficiently and think about room for stuff you may buy on vacation.
2. Another aspect of this set I liked were the wheels. There are just two large wheels that are very close to the case. We had Samsonite spinner luggage before and on an international trip one of the wheels broke, very inconvenient during your vacation. While it was covered by warranty we decided to switch to the F'lite to further alleviate the problem.
3. Color. We have a red set and a blue set, I like it because I can easily spot it at the airport.
4. Waterproof. This is not a major issue since most luggage has some water repellant aspect, but I have had soft luggage get wet and nasty before. Then when a weird smell sets in your luggage its hard to get out.
5. Warranty. Hopefully won't need it on the Hard luggage, but have used it on the soft ones before. It is nice to know they actually honor it. All we paid was $15 shipping of the new luggage to our home and we left the damaged ones at the store. The damaged one was called the Samsonite Sahora part hard case, part soft, the hard portion was cracked by WDW Luggage handlers unfortunately. It was real pretty though.

There are a few problems with our luggage I will also point out:

1. The locks are not the TSA ones. So instead of using the built-in lock we just use a TSA locking strap. We leave the actual luggage combination as 000. Now we have had this luggage for several years and have taken it to Asia (not just WDW Asia) and back with only one occurrence of the lock that is built into the luggage opening up. If memory serves me correctly I think that the TSA inspected the checked luggage that time and left us one of those notes.
2. Storage. Before we would store smaller luggage inside the larger case, then store that in our closet on the cruise ship for example. This works somewhat easier for soft luggage. But since we now use the 31" and 28" hard case the sizes are too close for that. So we have to find a place to store two cases in our vacation room instead of one.

We bought our luggage from a Samsonite luggage outlet that was closing down. They were on sale for around $85-90 per bag. You might have a similar place around you that has a deal as well. Hope this helps.