Kia Grand Carnival

[~ Mylitta ~]

Does anyone have a Kia Grand Carnival? What do you think of it?

We're looking at getting a bigger car because at the moment if the whole family want to go somewhere together we have to take both cars as we are a seat short.

My main question is about the seating. I'd prefer not to put the littlies in the very back row, so if I were to put a baby seat (one forward and one rear facing) in the side seats of the middle row, can people get into the back row without having to remove the baby seats? I'm thinking it may be possible to move the entire seat that has the forward facing baby seat forward enough to give access to the back row of seats, but I haven't had a chance to go look for myself to see if this is possible.

Does anyone have a Kia Carnival with more than 1 baby seat in it, and if so, where do you put the seats?

[Doing my best]

Size wise they are great.. My parents had one, and I used to put my 2 next to each other and fold up one of the seats beside the door for easy access to the back seat for my nieces and nephew.

Reliability wise, it was great in the beginning, but they started having problems when it was nearing end of warranty period.. May have been a co-incedence, but it may have just been the lifespan before things start going wrong..

[Miss K]

A friend of mine had one and had nothing but problems with it and it all happened when the warranty ran out as well!

I'd probably look into some other options

[misty]

Hi, We have just bought a Kia Grand Carnival - I have had it for about just over a week now. I LOVE it.

With respect to the problems. We were concerned about that too, as everyone had been telling us how unreliable, etc they are. It turns out they did have major issues with the Kia Carnival (Which is no longer in production - not the Grand Carnival which is the one on the market now). The issues were a particular problem in the model from approx 3-4yrs ago. They have (apparently) since sorted these issues out, and they shouldn't be a problem in the new Grand Carnival models. After looking into it, we figured it was worth the risk - it comes with 5 yr warranty, so will hopefully be covered if anything does creep up.

The space in them is FANTASTIC. Seriously, you could put adults in every seat if you wanted, and put the big double pram in the back with all your luggage or groceries on top. 5 out of 6 of the back seats all have anchor points for car seats. And if you wanted you can easily fit 3 carseats side by side in the middle row (big ones too - I can fit two maxiriders and a capsule in there if I want.) The only problem is that in the middle row, the middle seat only has a lap belt (no sash). We have chosen to put one of the maxiriders in the back (it isn't hard for me to simply lean in and buckle my 3.5yr old up, without getting in the car - which is a good thing and keep one maxirider in the middle row, With the other side seat permanently folded up for now. Once bubs comes, the capsule will be going in the third row near the door with the maxi-rider in the middle seat - although we are thinking about just taking the middle seat out altogether and storing it in the garage, and putting the max-rider next to one door, the capsule next to the other, and having the gap where the middle was as the walkway for the kids to get into the back (if you don't actually need to use all eight seats you can pull out each individual seat in the middle row to suit your needs.