Land Travel with Toddler

[MyTempered]

How do you travel on land at port with your toddler? If we do an excursion with a motor coach, do we bring a car seat? Is it a better idea to take a taxi and strap in the car seat?

Christi

[cb at sea]

If you're on a bus, there won't be seat belts, so you can't use a car seat. Remember, in some countries, not all taxis will have working seatbelts...you may have to pass up one or two until you find one that does! Other countries don't have the "safety laws" that we do.

[Mom2B&Z]

How do you travel on land at port with your toddler? If we do an excursion with a motor coach, do we bring a car seat? Is it a better idea to take a taxi and strap in the car seat?

Christi

 

If you search this forum for discussions on car seats, you will find a plethora of information on this topic. In a nutshell, people fall into two categories: those that find vehicles that accommodate their car seats, others who do not. People make their choices for a wide variety of reasons. Personally, I travel with my two boys aged 6 and 4 yrs (and my DH lol!) and we will not do a tour where I cannot install a car seat or where DS 2 cannot use a 3 point seatbelt. We have travelled extensively throughout the Caribbean and Europe and I have never had a problem, especially when I explain to waiting taxi drivers that this is as not negotiable for us. This decision is largely due to the fact that I work in healthcare, see the consequences of motor vehicle collisions daily, and volunteer as a car seat technician.

As for the bus, cb at sea is right, there will not be seatbelts in the bus so you cannot use the child restraint. There are different opinions on whether young children are safe/ protected by the bus in the event of a collision, my own personal opinion is that they are not until about school age, so we found other forms of transportation. I did find the ports of call forums as well as the family forum very helpful when planning excursions on cruises that will accommodate our child restraints.

This all being said, there are people who strongly disagree with my opinions, I'm just not one of them ;)

[TheCalicoCat]

Depends where you go...

 

In the Bahamas, we went without (with trepidation mind you, but unlike what others may say - another option was not in the cards for us - we had to get back to the ship & none of the busses have seatbelts. No taxis where we were, not that they would have had belts either.)

 

Our next cruise is to Alaska & we will have a car seat for our land excursion there.