Printable View
Good afternoon. This seems to be the best forum to ask potentially silly questions as we consider purchasing a bus.
are there any members on here with younger families? How is travel with your kids in the bus?
I have 4 kids and bunks is a must.
would love to meet some families on the site.
None of our Prevost friends have young kids but we see young kids in many of the parks we visit and they always look like they are having a great time. They also seem to be more polite and better behaved than the kids we see in the city!
There are a few bunk buses out there. And of course some layouts might be easily converted if you price that in to your purchase.
We started the Prevost lifestyle when our sons were 6 months old and 3 years old. They have been to 48 states and 3 Canadian provinces in the bus. We started with a 40 foot XL with the boys sleeping on the two couches up front. After 5 years we moved to an XLII with two bunk beds. We had that bus for 12 years. The bunk coach was a great improvement over the first bus with the bunks and the ability to be in the living area without having to move the boys off the couches. By the time we purchased our current bus, the boys were in high school and college and had stopped traveling with us. Traveling by bus was great with the boys. It was exponentially easier than trying to get to young kids through an airport and to sit still on a long plane ride. If you have four kids, I would look at an entertainer type coach that has six bunks (one for mom and dad as well) and a rear lounge and a front lounge so there is more space for them to live on the road.
After renting a Prevost with bunks (see my introduction for details) for a month with 3 adults and 3 kids I can whole heartedly agree bunks will be a must (yet I have seen an H3 and XL with basement bedrooms....yet I don't have the self control not to put something heavy on the hatch in the living room floor and lock them in there - search YouTube, they're quite creative). 6 people in a coach going down the road with at least 2 of the 3 kids going at each other at one time or another...LOL - separate areas/separation is the key. One kid in the dinette, one on a couch, one on the other or in a bunk (since all kids have electronic baby sitters these days). However plugging your kids into electronics is definitely easy, peaceful and quiet, it defeats the point of going on a RV trip IMO. But sometimes giving the wild one an iPad and letting them chill in a bunk is priceless. I would definitely recommend at least a main living room slide for 6 people. The bedroom slide adds the benefit of the ability to have storage drawers on the outside wall at the foot of the bed, good for more storage, bad for trying to squeeze by when underway. Slides do not come for free. There is usually a $100k-200k premium on a 15 yo coach, for a like for like slide vs no-slide coach.
RV kids are like boat kids, usually. Very outgoing, friendly and wanting to play with someone other that their siblings that they have been couped up with for the past thousand miles. They usually have bikes, scooters and may or may not have shoes (LOL.. seems all young kids, including myself, run around barefoot) and will be standing around your RV as soon as you pull in and are setting up - it's like they have some kind of kid radar that senses other kids. They are actually the best resource for the RV park as kids in general, have the entire RV park scoped out in SWAT like detail within one hour of arrival. They know where the store, game room, pool, bathrooms, and other kids are - just ask one of them, they usually know where the nearest grocery store is and other things. If you have a bbq and throw on some hot dogs and tell the passing kids to spread the word, "I have free hot dogs to the 1st 10 kids that show up", I promise you'll have 10 kids waiting in less than 10 minutes and your kids will playmates for the duration of your stay.
We found that a daily stop/attraction worked well. That way the kids felt like they were constantly doing something and not sitting in the coach for 2-3 days of solid driving. It didn't take much, a 1-2 hour stop at a minimum to see a little museum, attraction, even a Food Network TV restaurant, ice cream break, something to break up the drive. Let's face it, you're in and out of Carlsbad caverns in 3-4 hours and can still make 6-8 hours of driving for the day. The Roswell UFO Museum is a 1-2hr stop. There are tons and tons of things to see that stopping for a main attraction every day is pretty easy and on the days you need to cover ground there are plenty of 30min to 1hr attractions that can usually double as lunch, fuel, restocking, etc.. We just kept the kids busy with little attractions as well as made them use maps and internet to find all the little attractions and stops along the way. It's a bit cheesy, as most of the attractions are, but they leave lasting memories and produce photos that pop up at family functions a decade later.
In summary, do it - kids will be fine and have a blast!