Newbie with a stroller/airport/age question

[EmmersIsTheMommy]

If i ever shell out the money for a carseat bag type thing I want one of the kinds that hooks on a carryon LOL (yeah pricy I know)

 

[RudemanRB]

well my 2 cents,

I'm with ya Sy.


leave as much as you can at home. you can rent a double stroller at DLR
seeing as I work at LAX, if you don't have any car plans, you can take the Disneyland express it's run by Grey Line Bus company. so your not gonna have alot of walking from the gate to baggage claim to the bus.(or rental car bus)

I have 3 girls an 8yr old and 6 year old twins. I had a baby backpack, that had 2 wheels and opened up into a stroller, you might want to get one of those for the airport and etc. I think I paid $50 bucks.

I see people struggling with Strollers up and down our Airport DAILY!!!
and car seats also.

if you can get a big duffle and put the car seat in, then wear it as a backpack, then when you check it in. take it out of the duffle(pack the duffle in another bag, or carry it on empty)
so you won't get charged for a luggage bag.


Best of luck


Rudy

 

[Sy-]

well my 2 cents,
leave as much as you can at home. you can rent a double stroller at DLR
Rudy

Yea no double strollers at DL.. There are doubles at WDW weird ya?

Check the car seats. Baggage people shouldn't be able to break em and if they are able to break em then you probably don't want your kids riding in em in the first place.

 

[bumbershoot]

The reason we're taking the carseats onboard (and the ONLY reason..not really a safety thing for on the plane) is because I know what can happen to a carseat if you check it. I'm sorta um..obsessed with carseat safety and I don't want to chance damage to my carseat I can't see. Yeah weird that I'm planning on checking my uber expensive stroller tho huh LOL

We checked our carseat once, and when I saw it tumbling down the chute and SLAMMING into the metal side of the luggage carousel I nearly threw up. The forces on that thing were huge. I can only imagine what forces were put on it as it went through the system behind the scenes. I've watched countless booster seats come careening down the chute and do the same slam since. Awful.

When you gate check, they take it down (there have been reports that sometimes they throw them down, but I watched the guy carry ours and several others down the outside stairs from the ramp), put it on the plane, then take them off the plane, get them back upstairs, and they are waiting for you on the ramp.

I made the mistake of gate checking the carseat, then allowing them to send it through to the carousel last December (ugh). Again, the same slamming. Stupid of me. I was tired and sweaty and didn't want to deal with the seat, and didn't want to struggle with it, carryons, and DS through the airport (we traveled home a week after hubby), so I went that route, but I shouldn't have done so. I'd rather struggle with the stuff and take breaks and have sore arms, than wonder if my carseat is REALLY OK (like if your bike helmet falls from a shelf, you might not buy a new one, but you will wonder and wonder if the foam is OK).

 

[EmmersIsTheMommy]

Sy, it's usually stress points, say they put a heavy bag on top. Something you don't see that compromises it's integrity. Same reason you replace a carseat after an accident (well more than a minor one) even if it looks fine.

But yeah we're renting a car, so I do need the seats and I refuse to rent a carseat from car rental places. That'd be one step worse than checking my carseat LOL.

Molly, that made me dry heave a little LOL I totally understand gate checking. TRUST ME, I wish I could ensure my carseat would be treated properly cuz I don't really wanna hassle with getting it in the plane. OR making people angry by doing so. I do plan to try to do family early boarding so I can get it on and not make other people wait for me.

So why DOESN'T DLR have double?!?!?!

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

I will kindly disagree that bringing an umbrella stroller for 2 children is enough. Maybe it's just us, but we need a stroller that reclines for those time my children want to rest/nap while we're in the park and I need the basket underneath for the diaper bag, waters, etc. Also, I like having the sun shades to cover them that most umbrella strollers don't come with.

We have used the travel carseat bag to carry the carseats through the airport, but at the time they were making us take the carseats out of the bag at security, making it much more of a hassle than it's worth.

And I totally agree with not using a rental car company's carseats. There is no way to know the history of those seats.

Your kids will love DL. This will be my girls 5th trip there and they are the same ages as your kids. There first trip was when they were 2.5 & 10 months respectively and they loved it then and they love it even more with each additional trip.

 

[bumbershoot]

Molly, that made me dry heave a little LOL I totally understand gate checking. TRUST ME, I wish I could ensure my carseat would be treated properly cuz I don't really wanna hassle with getting it in the plane. OR making people angry by doing so. I do plan to try to do family early boarding so I can get it on and not make other people wait for me.

So why DOESN'T DLR have double?!?!?!

I think they don't have double strollers b/c of the room it might take (storage) and also the narrower walkways of DL? I dunno.


I haven't noticed people getting annoyed at me while installing the seat. But I'm a fast boarder usually, and I'm strong enough that I'm not banging things into other passengers, not even with the seat. I'm also short and I just sit DS down in the middle seat, put the carseat on the seat, put carryons away quickly. Then I hunch over well in the row of seats, usually keeping a leg over DS so he doesn't do something crazy, and install the seat quickly (I've even installed it while he's sitting in the seat, LOL), and bingo bango boom, we're all situated.

But the time we checked the seat, it was our first time flying with him and I thought having a lap baby (16+ month old) was a good idea (ha ha ha ha ha never EVER again). And when I gate-to-carousel checked it, I was just flat out tired. Too much backstory: we spent a full week, just me and DS, at my brother's place in San Diego. I underestimated how much he would miss his dad. We were also still learning about his sensitivity to all things related to corn syrup, so had some heavy behavior problems, and it was very stressful. Poor kid had developed a lip-licking tic by the end of the trip, and the chapped mouth took 2 weeks to heal! STRESSFUL trip.

Sounds like you'll have a parent for each kid, so it shouldn't be as bad as that trip was for me.

 

[EmmersIsTheMommy]

Jamie- Good point about the sunshade! They also look uncomfortable to me? I mean..yeah ok I'm huge and it WOULD be for me LOL

Molly- Listen, I totally hear you. I would've done it too! I think the only reason I can consider it is because both of us are going and we can do one adult per kid. And we're both pros at installing so you're right, we could put a kid in our seat and put them in quick. (I'm also short LOL) But yikes..16 months on a lap! Poor little mouth

 

[bumbershoot]

Yeah, the lap thing was a huge mistake. I'm only 5'3" and when he was born he was 22". By the time he was 2 he was already more than half my height. Which means he's unwieldy! The ONLY good thing about being on my lap was that I could give him a milky snack, LOL, but then he fell asleep and then I was stuck with a sleeping baby-weight and wasn't able to move or go to the bathroom, lest he wake up! My arms were SO sore from that 2 hour flight. Hubby's no help in that situation b/c he has a big belly and in SW seats, he has no lap.

 

[EmmersIsTheMommy]

hahah man SW..I went on their teeniest (ok maybe next to teeniest?) Plane to cali last time. TINY!!!!

ROFL I'm 5'1..5'2 on a good day So I hear ya. I can't carry my 2 year old! She's huge! (OF course, I think i'm the one without a lap on SW hahaha) I can't even imagine how sore your arms were. I remember feeding my daughter and ALWAYS having to use a pillow cuz I could NOT support her head for long!

 

[dmked]

I always take my carseats (and gate check if they are lap riders) because I think they restrain them while in the plane so they are not as likely to want to run, and it gives them somewhere to sleep. I will also take my double stroller because I think it is dumb to rent something that I already own (or can buy for the price of the rental) and like the PPs said I do not want to carry my kids from DL to the hotel. My double stroller is pretty big and they collapse it and send it through the security thing and it fits (barely) so I'm sure yours will be fine! We also use the stroller as a luggage carrier when we need to But I would rather have my own stroller at DL that reclines so my kids can sleep when they need to and I can take it all the way back to the hotel. Also when I did check my carseat with my baggage and PAID for the bag to go on it by the time I got my carseat back, the bag was gone and my carseat was quite dirty so I will never check it with my baggage again.

 

[EmmersIsTheMommy]

See, I think maybe I'll be ok with the scanner cuz the sit and stand fits in the back of our Suzuki Forenza :ROFL: Not the biggest car LOL

What the heck happened to your bag?! Weird!

 

[RudemanRB]

We all have valid points; it's basically going to boil down to your personal preference, what airline and airport(s) you’re flying to and from,
I work at LAX, and I have access to certain areas on the flight deck and behind the scenes, I’ve never seen them treat a bag like how they joke on TV.

These guys have supervisors watching them all the time. Not to mention Cameras and Dept of Homeland Security folks watching their every move, to ensure the safety of this nation. (and to make sure they don't open your bags and steal)

Unfortunately the Baggage carousel's were designed 40+years ago (with a get it from point A to B mentality) not with "handle with care" in mind.


The only force applied to your baggage is when it slides down the shoot to the rotating carousel. beyond that, your bag(s) get treated better than you do sadly lol.

Worse case you can take your car seat up to the Gate and then check it on the plane.

I do agree with what someone said earlier, if your Car seat gets damaged from sliding down a shoot. do you really want your kid in that carseat?




Cheers


Rudy

 

[EmmersIsTheMommy]

I'll agree with personal preference

This is why I said that point was not debateable in my first post..cuz I knew it would be HAHA

And I don't care what other people are doing with their stuff! I just want to do what I wanna do with my carseats haha. That and the fact that they refer to lap riders as missels..I'd much rather my kids be in a carseat (ok so it IS a little bit of safety..possibly parental sanity so they're sitting still..and it's familiar to them..)

But yeah, I don't care what they do with my baggage LOL