buggy advice - how long before switch to stroller - icandy or bugaboo or oyster

[mrcee]

Hi everyone,

We are expecting our first in very early January and have been looking at travel systems for a while. We got it down to I candy peach vs bugaboo camleon with my preference being the bugaboo for blokey reasons - engineering etc with the wife liking icandy.

At the baby show yesterday we were both quite impressed with the oyster in terms of weight and folding mechanism.

We would like to get some real life advice on the three buggies if anyone has got a view and also how long you used the buggy before switching to a lighter stroller?

Thanks

[Pickle]

The Bugaboo Cameleon will last you right up till the moment you decide you no longer need a buggy - the only need for a lightweight stroller would be for travel (although plenty of people take their Cameleons on planes etc). I find the lightweight buggies are very hard to push, especially if you have a heavy toddler in it.

Have you considered a Bugaboo Bee? We have one for our 3rd child and it's brilliant. Lightweight, yet ticks all the boxes for using from newborn until 3ish. We've taken it to NZ and back and find it much easier to manoeuvre than a McLaren.

[number 2]

i'd second the bee. i never regretted buying ours for a second. so light and easy to steer and brilliant for squeezing on buses which can very difficult with bigger buggies. i found that a lot of my friends who bought bigger ones ended up buying a maclaren or similar because they found their big ones too cumbersome.

[mrcee]

Hi Thanks for the quick response!

we were initially and probably wrongly put off the bee as it didnt seem to have a fully flat back cot like the other models. How is the bee in cot mode and is it suitable for long walks??

Also what is like when walking around the parks on grass?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Pickle]

You're right, it doesn't lie fully flat, but with a cocoon in it I found it a lovely cosy setup for a newborn (our daughter was born in January and I had to take her out to do the school run from 2 days old!). It does lie back to almost flat, and personally I liked that it wasn't 100% flat - in our case the baby seemed a lot happier in it than lying flat in her Moses basket.

We used the cocoon until she was 4 months old, then switched to using without. Now we've put a footmuff on it for the cold weather, and have a sheepskin seat liner, and I'm envious of her warm ride as I brave the elements!

We used it for long days out etc when she was tiny, no problem. I loved my Cameleon when I had my 1st baby (nearly 6 years ago), but that was before the Bee had been released. I much prefer the Bee due to it being so much more compact, it's an ideal city buggy.

[oimissus]

another recommendation for the Bee, and the plus factors with no carry cot - you can strap the baby in, and if you have a baby with wind / reflux then lying totally flat isn't great anyway. Long days no problem, and you can shove it across even long grass with a bit of effort - not so much that it's a problem. Miss Oi is 2.10 yrs and our Bee is still going strong (my niece a year older is still in hers too). Also, it's narrowness is so handy on buses and trains, and we have a very narrow hallway as well.

[mrcee]

Thanks everyone, I have just seen that the dreami carrycot can fit the bee with maxi cosi car adapters.

I think we may have a winner here :-)

[snowboarder]

I would just say that although fab and small and light and everything else, after having an iCandy and a mountain buggy I found the bee quite noisy and not smooth for long park trips (esp on the bound gravel paths in Dulwich park and p rye) and don't think best for grass....Depends what your priorities are!! Basically I coveted a bee for ages, finally got one for baby 2, and didn't really rate it (which I know makes me unusual!!). But I'm not a regular bus user, and suppose had got used to the smooth air filled tyres on my other prams.

[Susan]

Have to say I am with the previous poster on this. The Bee Plus was a fantastic buggy for my son for the first year, small, nippy, great on buses and in our narrow hallway,,after about 16 months I found the straps increasingly tricky to manage and now at 22 months my son (who is an average size for his age) cannot fit in the buggy with his winter coat on. Which is not good in this weather. I have extended the back and seat, moved the straps to the highest level but he often still has the crotch strap digging into him.

The other problem with the buggy is if it rains you have to put the hood the whole way down before you can put on the rain cover (again fine for the first 16-18 mths) but after that show me a toddler who is going to be happy not been able to see where their going?!

A great buggy for town for the first 1-2 yrs at most (after that if you lived in a dry country).....total cost of nearly ?600 with all the required additions I would have to seriously consider before I bought again.

[slh2009]

I had an iCandy Peach which I loved and used until my son was 18 months old. It was a dream to push and the chunky wheels and good suspension meant that my baby slept soundly and always had a comfortable ride. I was mainly on pavements but also went "off-road" in parks and forests a couple of times, no problem. The only criticism I have is that it was difficult to use the (large) basket underneath when the pram was in carrycot mode, and also the footmufff did not come up as high as the Bugaboo Cameleon so I used a blanket in very cold weather as well to keep baby's chest warm!

The seat in the Peach is not as big as the Cameleon and so at 18 months I could see it was not going to last us another year so I started looking for an alternative buggy. For all the reasons already mentioned I decided to sell my iCandy and buy a Bugaboo Bee+. I also love it for it's nipiness and the fact it is so easy to fold in one piece, but I totally agree with the above posters about it feeling rickety compared to the iCandy and also re the rain hood which my son hates having down.

I guess it really depends how much you are likely to use buses and tubes (trains not so much of a problem). I tend to walk or drive to most places so it wasn't much of an issue for me but it would be way easier to use the Bee than the Peach as it is much narrower (and no more getting stuck in shop doorways!).