Travel without carseats?

I am planning a vacation in a few months and need some advice. There will be four of us traveling - me, my husband, and our 3 year old twins. The plan is to take Amtrak one direction and then fly home. I know Amtrak has no seatbelts, so carseats would not factor into that portion of the equation. We will not be renting a car because our destination is very pedestrian friendly and also has good bus transportation. However, we will need to take a taxi from the Amtrak station to our hotel and then to the airport, as well as one 80 minute flight home. Should we pack the carseats or try to rent/borrow/buy some harnesses? I know I can rent CARES harnesses for $25 or so for the flight, but they cannot be used in cars. I have been looking into the Ride Safer travel vest for the few car rides, but they are kind of expensive. In the past, we have taken our Sceneras (our extra seats for grandma's car) on vacation with us but that was when we had 4 flights and a rental car and would obviously need to use them a lot more than on this trip. We also are not planning on taking our stroller, which also helped us to lug 2 kids and their car seats around airports, etc. Has anyone used the Ride Safer vests and are they worth the cost? My kids are around 38 inches and 32 pounds so they would be on the lower end of the small size vest. Maybe we could get some more use out of them later but not completely sure my husband will be on board with spending the money for this one trip only. Help!

Would you never use the RSTVs again? I used ours more at home than I did for travel, though I got it for travel. It's great when you need to squeeze someone between two seats or two people. Great for a spare seat. Awesome to send along with the kids if someone else is going to take them home. And with no expiration dates you could use them for a long time to come.

I'd either do that, or bring the Sceneras.

Wendy

Im with Wendy the vests or Scenera. Even for a couple of short rides it is really safest to bring a seat. And who knows you may really like the vests and find lots of times to use them.

You could just bring the Sceneras, if you don't want to spend money. They won't count against your Amtrak budget allowance, will save you money on the CARES, and there's usually plenty of room to safely stow them if you carry them on with you.

I would not think of having them in no restraint, no worries there. Just didn't really want to carry seats for a whole trip for such little use. I did not consider using the RSTVs for unplanned car trips in another vehicle and did not think about them having no expiration so maybe it is a better investment than I initially realized. Thanks for bringing those things to my attention! I knew you guys would have good ideas, BTW love the site!

I did what you did. Bought the RSTV for travel, and figured I'd get a few trips out of it.

OMG, I used that vest a LOT. Sometimes it lived in my car. When we moved it was our daily seat for two weeks. A quick trip, it was the go to. Three across, use the vest. We only sold it because Piper got too big for the small (at eight years old, though she was much smaller than your twins and didn't crest 30 pounds until she was 4.5).

Wendy

Yep, I got it mostly for use in my mom's car for 3 across (tiny Sentra!) but I've used it way more! They're a great purchase for those "emergency" trips where you're trying to cram someone's vehicle full of kids unexpectedly!