Hi, everyone, from my SECOND favorite vacation destination -- Ocean City, MD, land of miniature golf and crabs!
Anyway, as an owner of one of these devices, I thought I'd give some advice on them.
1. DO NOT, repeat DO NOT check them as baggage. They are NOT sturdy enough to handle the rough treatment these are often given (remember the old American Tourister commercial with teh gorilla?).
Why? The way they work. These things have a small rotor fan with a grille on one side. These fans are used to cool the machine while an evaporator/condenser cools the air inside the cooler, so as to cool your stuff.
All this electrical stuff would not, I think, survive being checked as luggage.
So I would REALLY strongly discourage anyone from checking one of these as luggage.
2. That caveat given, I use these things all the time. I have medication that has to be refrigerated, and I bring it with me. Honestly, I DON'T usually bring it to WDW because it's just a 3 hour airplane flight, which is enough for the ordinary playmate type cooler, and then put the stuff in a fridge in FL. I use my plug-in cooler more for drive-away trips (like Ocean City MD). They all come with plugs for cigarette lighters in cars, and will sell a transformer to enable t you to plug it into normal AC outlets.
The one I have is one of the first generation of these things, it's made by a company called Koolatron, in Canada. It's very sturdy as I've had the same unit now for about a decade (outlasting my parents' version which died earlier last year.).
4. Little known fact == they can also be used as WARMERS in addition by reversing the polarity of the plug.
5. Amount of cooling is usually 30-40 degrees below ambient air temperature.
Hope this helps; feel free to email me with any more questions as I am somewhat knowledgeable about them.
REgards,
Joe Hurley
