So while I was at Sears I played with a Safety 1st infant seat.

You know, the ones with the no-splitter plate harness?

I loved the seat itself, pretty, padded, lightweight, it almost made me want an infant seat. (I hate them.) For the price it's a really nicely made seat. It had I think 4 harness settings. The crotch strap wasn't crazy long like the SnugRide. And the base is fairly small; while wider than the SR base it's shorter, too, so it wouldn't take up as much room front to back, which might be good for smaller cars.

Then I tried the rethreading. I have to say BOO. I knew just how to do it from the pictoral thread here; getting the S-clips out wasn't hard, and the pieces did go right out through the hole. It was when I went to put them IN the next slot that I had the problem. The tilted harness slots, unlike the straight bottom ones, caught the pieces. Next time, I would just take them off (which leads to more confusion and possibility of losing pieces and twisting straps, but would make it much easier to get it through the hole.) And, when I finally got them all back through again, and went to re-anchor the bottom, I got it through the slot in the cover but then there are 2 extra holes down in the bottom of the shell. The first time I stuck one through I pulled it through a different hole before I realized that was not the spot it was supposed to go through. And, the straps kept twisting on me as I tried to thread them through. I finally ended up buckling the seat before I threaded it, to keep myself oriented properly. And then I had a panic moment, when I thought that I had lost an S-clip (I was sitting on it!)

In the end, I suppose it was not really that bad (not as bad, for instance, as a back-adjust FF seat; more about the frustration level of re-attaching the cover on a Scenera, with all those little elastic loops to thread through.) However, it was definitely a lot more work than just using a splitter plate! And I can NOT see the average, non-carseat-geeky parent doing that several times through the life of the seat. Boo. Just boo on the engineers who decided to do that.

ketchupqueen said:

I finally ended up buckling the seat before I threaded it, to keep myself oriented properly.

Click to expand...

In complete agreement about the S loop things. I had posted on them quite awhile ago that I thought it was a dumb design. As more people are seeing them more are commenting on the design though.

As for the part you quoted, I always recommend parents buckle the harness anyways when changing harness height. It's the easiest way to make sure that the harness is re-threaded properly. :thumbsup:

The problem with that, is that it caused a lot of extra work to buckle/unbuckle it. i.e., I had to buckle it, get one side fixed, unbuckle, unthread and re-thread the other, re-buckle, and finish.

Gosh, splitter plate would have made it SOOOO much easier.

It didn't look as hard as that sounds... that sounds really bad... ugh... why can't they make things easy??

I'd call Dorel and tell them exactly what you wrote... when they have different slots that aren't marked, that's just asking for trouble.... and it should NOT take that long... what if this were at a seat check with people in line?