What to look for in a holiday pushchair / stroller?

Travelling with babies and toddlers, does bring a whole host of extra baggage but one of the most important things that you will purchase will be your pushchair/ stroller.  Many of the people use their normal home pushchairs for their holidays but I haven’t for two reasons:

  1.  in order to take your stroller all the way to the gate it needs to collapse into one single piece and our main pushchair was 2 pieces so they would need to be checked in.
  2. you will still hand your Pushchair in and after being pushed around on several carousals, and passed from one container to the next, your pristine (often very expensive) pushchair will definitely be much much worse for wear.

So after travelling lots with babies over the last 7 years, my top tips for things to look out for when buying a holiday pushchair would be:

Single Bar Handle

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this may not seem important but it makes the world of difference if you need to push the pushchair and do something else with the other hand i.e. holding your toddlers’ hand, pulling your suitcase, opening doors etc.  Having a pushchair which needs both hands to push makes for handwork and if you are already a little stressed, this will just heighten your stress levels.  Even when we have purchased a double pushchair we still had one with a single handle.

Lightweight

Travelling means that you are in and out of taxis, trains, tubes, up and down stairs and escalators and you often need to carry your pushchair even if it for only a few minutes.  When you walking down your 100th step in the London Underground, you will be thankful that you bought a lightweight option!

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Easy to collapse

All of my travel pushchairs, were very easy to collapse.  If you are travelling out and about you will need to collapse your pushchair many times and the easier it is to do, the better.  Our current holiday pushchair is the City Mini Jogger Micro and it has a single hand close mechanism which I love.  Perfect for undergrounds (with their hundreds of steps) and generally being outdoors.  Being told on a bus on Singapore to collapse my pushchair, having two older children and then a third to watch with lots of people waiting behind me, I was thankful it was just one pull and it was done!

Compact

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Travelling with babies leads to paraphernalia of baby gear and i would also recommend a compact pushchair which makes it much more travel friendly.  Having a huge pushchair will be a pain when you find yourself on different modes of transports i.e if you are in Thailand and on  tuktuk (luckily our fitted in the small spot at the back!).  Also a more compact pushchair is much easier to carry.

Reclining features

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If you are travelling with children younger then 3 years old they are most likely going to be napping at some point during the day.  Check to see how far the seat reclines.  Our Zia Star relined fully and the little adventurers used to have an amazing nap in the pushchair.  If you are travelling with a baby younger then 1 I would definitely recommend a fully reclining pushchair.  Our City jogger does not reline very much but we purchased it after Zayn was 1 so was ideal for a toddler rather then a baby.

How much to spend

Babies are expensive and baby gear is often expensive.  Our Zia was on offer when we were looking and we purchased it for under £100.  Our city mini pushchairs have both been purchased second hand from Gumtree with our current Micro pushchair costing us £35 and it was hardly used!  So I would always recommend looking for pre loved/second hand pushchairs as you may find a real bargain like we did!

So there you have it!  I hope you have found the post helpful and if you have any questions or suggestion, please do share below.

Nisbah

I am a traveller, mother and blogger. We love to go on adventures (big and small, near and far) and strive to show our children how amazing and beautiful the world is! I caught the travel bug many moons ago and despite having three little adventurers, I still suffer from "itchy" feet. We love the great outdoors and one another. Come and join the fun :)

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7 Responses

  1. Great advice! I would echo that you shouldn’t spend a lot. Our travel pushchair cost about £20 on amazon and it has lasted 4 trips to the states and back and lots of school runs. It has gotten a bit bashed about when it’s been put under the plane so I wouldn’t want to travel with something I was worried about losing/getting a bit beat up!

  2. Great tips! I’m on the lookout for a lightweight stroller for the copious amounts of train journeys I have to do. I borrowed an umbrella one yesterday but needing two hands was a real bind, as you point out xx #TheList

  3. Notmyyearoff says:

    I’ve been looking at the baby jogger city lite on Argos, it looks so nice and I love the one hand fold thing especially for school runs. I have a quinny right now and it’s in two pieces so definitely need something more compact!

  4. Great post, it definitely covers the points we looked at when choosing our pushchair (though we were considering the airport points… Which are really useful, thank you #thelist

  5. Great tips! I would add that a big hood is also important, especially in hot countries and for sleeps. Or also a snooze shade would make a good attachment 🙂 x x

  6. Great tips and I totally agree about looking for preloved stuff – there’s so many buggies out there that have hardly been used, it’s worth a look around 🙂 I love the photos too, made me want to get in a buggy for a nap! Thanks for linking up to #TheList xx

    • Nisbah says:

      Hi Hannah, I think sometimes we get caught up in having ‘new’ items but the two pushchairs we bought were pristine. And for 1/5 of the price for our double pushchair. And yes I totally agree, I would happily have a nap in a pushchair.

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