graco car seat opinions
Ease of use- Graco My Ride 65?
I’m going to be buying my friend a convertible car seat, her son will be out of his infant car seat pretty soon (A little over 18 pounds at 6 months). She doesn’t have her own car, and relies on friends and family to drive herself & her son around. She’s a SAHM so she doesn’t have to drop the baby off every day at day care or anything like that. I’m looking for opinions on your own experiences with how easy/hard it is to remove the convertible seats from cars. Also, for anybody with personal experience with the My Ride 65, is this difficult to fit into most cars?
I want to make sure I get her a high-quality car seat and that it will be easy to use and easy to fit in a variety of vehicles- all comments and suggestions and personal stories are very welcome!
To remove and re-install any car seat–if done properly–takes a bit of doing, mostly strength to get the seat tight enough. If the seat moves as little as 1 inch when pulled side to side, it is moving too much. The vehicle should rock side to side slightly when the car seat is pulled or tugged side to side.
That being said, we have a Graco My Ride 65, and we love it. It is my 14 month old 24lb son’s seat. He is rear-facing in it, which is how your friend would use it for her child.
The thing that drew me to it the most is that it rear-faces up to 40lbs.
As far as car seats go, it is not overly hard to install. I usually take it to our local car seat technician to have him tighten the straps (when I have to remove it for various reasons). It is a rather large seat, but I think most convertibles are. We have a Ford Escape, and it fits really well in there. But with my daughter’s car seat in the back too, there is no room for anyone else to sit. So it takes up the whole passenger side and a little less than half of the middle.
We have been using the Graco My Ride 65 since our son was about 6 months old, and if given the chance, we would buy it again.
Hope this helps.
