I am not entirely gushing....
Pros:
fantastic maneuverability, great on all terrains, tons of storage, looks cool
Cons:
difficult to fold, barely fits in the back of a minivan, expensive
The Bottom Line:
You really need to consider where and how you will be using this stroller before investing in it.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I am a bit of a stroller fanatic. We have 5 children including 18 month old twins and so far have been through at least 5 double strollers. For the twins we started off with the Peg Perego Duette which served us beautifully through the infant stage but as winter moved into Spring it became evident we were going to need something with better manueverability on the soccer fields when going to our older children's games. After much research, and anxiety over the price tag, I finally settled on the Valco Trimode Runabout.
I have a love/hate relationship with my Valco. I bought it over a year ago when my twins were just getting old enough to sit up by themselves. I remember the moment I fell in love with it in the store, the ability to fit through standard doorways, the ability to push it with one hand even with my four year old in it, the beautiful pistachio color we chose, all of the baskets! I could hardly wait to hand over my credit card!
For the first couple of months I never took it anywhere because I didn't want to get it dirty but eventually life demanded that I take my new baby (the stroller!) out into the real world. This is when my love/hate relationship began.
The first time I took it out was on a field trip for my older children. I had no problem unfolding it but after the fieldtrip was over I stood in the parking lot for 15 minutes trying to figure out how to close it again! Eventually I had to call my husband at work to have him walk me through it. I am neither stupid nor helpless but intuitive this stroller is not! Then came the struggle to get it back into the minivan. I turned it forwards, backwards and sideways and eventually managed to cram it into the back of the van. If you have a van you can put one seat down on this may not be a problem for you but if you are like me and all of your seats are filled understand that this is going to be a struggle.
This problem of folding and storage eventually necessitated our having to buy an additional double stroller, a Combi Twin Savvy, for day to day activities like walking the four year old in and out of school and other short trips. It is simply not worth the work to take the Valco.
On the other hand the Valco is an absolute dream on sports fields. The seats are wide, deep and comfortable. There is enough storage to hold all of my children's accoutrement, well short of the sports equipment itself! Best of all it pushes and rides super smoothly.
As winter moves into spring again I am finding that I am falling in love with Valco all over again. If I leave it up in the garage and use it for walks, only struggling with it for game days I remember all over again why it was worth the money.
BabyEarth
