When we brought our first daughter home from the hospital we had a small car. Her little infant car seat fit just so in the middle of the back, but we had no leg room. There’s all sorts of rules when it comes to infant car seats and how they need to be positioned. It’s stressful and left us knowing that we’d need to change vehicles in time. This was our first experience with needing a larger family vehicle.
Anyone else been there? Your family has expanded and suddenly you find you’re running out of room in the vehicle. There’s a word that is sometimes avoided by parents. A word that for some reason is dreaded by adults once they have kids. We all know the word… MINIVAN.
How about we replace that word with Odyssey? We recently had the chance to try out the 2018 Honda Odyssey and see what it would be like to be a family with a larger vehicle.
WHAT WE LOVED ABOUT DRIVING A MINIVAN
There were some things that won us over instantly with the Odyssey. Space is a given, but this really had a lot more room than our SUV. We were able to pack for a road trip and had room to spare. We were also able to drive 8 people total in the vehicle, which came in handy when a last-minute carpool was needed.
The girls always love when a vehicle has an entertainment system that allows them to watch a movie. What was well thought out in this vehicle was that it had built-in storage for DVDs in the center console. There’s one unique feature that really stood out, and no it’s not the vacuum. Which is great to have in a vehicle by the way, but this is not new to the Odyssey.
There is CabinWatch! What is this? There is a camera above the 2nd-row that allows you to see what is going on in the back. You can turn this feature on and view it on the dash where the navigation and radio are displayed. As parents, we really appreciated this because normally we use a baby mirror that attaches to the seat in order to be able to see our kids, especially when they are rear facing. This feature makes a huge difference and helps brings some ease of mind when driving. Just be sure to keep checking your surroundings and focus on the road still.
THE GAME CHANGER FOR THE HONDA ODYSSEY
There’s something very special about the second row in the Odyssey. It has what is called Magic Slide 2nd-Row Seats. There were three seats in the 2nd row, but you can easily remove the middle seat and this then allows you two slide the two remain seats into different positions in that row. It’s brilliant and gives the Odyssey even more versatility. On a road trip and your kids in the middle row are bothering each other? Use the handle on the sides of each seat to separate them! Need easier access to the 3rd row? Slide a seat over to the middle so that people can easily get past and into the back.
Are we ready to make the switch to a minivan? Not just yet, but in the future, as the girls get older if we are finding we need more space the Honda Odyssey is a great option. There are some things we’d love to see Honda work on in future models of this vehicle. We had some issues with the DVD player where is would not play movies even with the aid of the remote to go through the menus. We’d like to see there be an option for the passenger to be able to get movies playing through the front control panel. Otherwise, we found the passenger had to recline their seat to be able to see the screen and get things sorted. We also had the rear hatch suddenly start closing on us when we were trying to place items in the back because of the sensor being accidentally triggered. You can imagine our surprise when this happened.
It was really nice having such a smooth and quiet ride when on a road trip. Plus the girls were entertained with the DVD player when needed. We did find that it was more pricey to fill this vehicle up with gas as it does have a larger tank than our SUV, but with that, we were able to go farther on one tank of gas. The large windows were beautiful on scenic drives. We often caught the girls just looking out the window. All around, we were really impressed with the 2018 Honda Odyssey.
Disclosure: Honda provided us with the vehicle to use for a week in order to put this review together. We were not otherwise compensated for this post. We just love trying out different vehicles and sharing our experience with you.
So, the 2nd row.. you can move the seats over into the middle (assuming the middle has been removed) so that you can get in and out easier?
That’s pretty cool. With ours people have to enter the 3rd row going through the middle (when the seat is removed) because the two car seats don’t allow you to move the backrest so people can get past the side seats.