Fitting skis in the car!

[JustABigBearAlan]

Thinking ahead a bit here!
We're going skiing this winter and so I've been looking at booking transfers from the airport to our accommodation. I've worked out that it would be easier, quicker and cheaper to hire a car.

However, I can't work out if we'll fit everything in! There will be five of us, plus luggage and one bag containing a snowboard and a pair of skis ( the rest of the kit we're hiring there) As we're flying we won't be able to take a ridiculous amount of stuff, but would it all fit in a people carrier type car (I.e 7seater)?I've been wondering what size vehicle we need to hire.

I know some car rental places let you hire a roof rack, but as we're already going to need to hire two car seats (at extortionate extra cost), I don't want to rack up extra costs unnecessarily. We'll only use the car for transfers, so I don't mind it not being the most comfortable journey in the world, but I do want everything to fit in somehow!

So those of you who drive or hire cars, what type of vehicle do you have and how do you fit everything in?!

[anotherdayanothersquabble]

Well, we drive a lot with our ski gear and three children in our Ford S Max. Usually we use the roof rack but can fit adult kid between the seats. You could put down one of the middle row of seats down and put one of the children in the third row of seats.

You can bring your car seats on the plane with you at no cost with most carriers.

[JustABigBearAlan]

Ah brilliant, thanks, that's good to know you can fit it all in an S max. I shall try to hire a similar sized car. I had wondered about taking the seats. One is a high back booster, so not too heavy, but the 3 year old has one with a 5 point harness and it's big and bulky and heavy! I'd just assumed it would be a pain to take with us, but I guess it might be an option.

[anotherdayanothersquabble]

Before deciding to hire a car seat on the other side, check what the rental company offers, they might offer a simple booster in which case it might be cheaper to buy something lighter than your current one and bring it anyway.

[anotherdayanothersquabble]

Where are you travelling to? If Geneva, you need to watch out for new rules since May this year on hiring in Switzerland and driving in France. By then the rental companies should have figured it and I believe are offering EU registered cars for hire.

[Tokelau]

We hired a car when there were five of us, DH, me and three teenagers. We had a Kia Sportage I think, or something similar. We got the luggage in with no problems. We hired skis, and were hoping to drive to a different resort, but we couldn't get five people and five pairs of skis in the car. It was impossible.

Another time, DH and I went on our own and hired a Ford Focus estate. We got two pairs of skis in there easily, although I don't think that would have worked if there had been passengers in the back seat.

[JustABigBearAlan]

Thanks for your replies, really helpful.

To answer questions, no we're going to Munich not Geneva. I hadn't heard about the restrictions so will have to see if it affects us as we are also hiring a car in one country and driving to another (Austria in our case). Obviously both are EU countries in our case, but I hadn't even considered a problem with travel between 2 countries, so thank for pointing that out!

Tokelau I'm hoping that as we only have the equivalent of 2 pairs of skis we might manage to fit them in. I can see that with 5 sets of skis we might struggle!

[clarrylove]

Make sure you book winter tyres on the hire car. I have some magnetic ski carriers which stick to the roof. They were cheap to buy. Might that be an option for you?

[SweetChickadee]

Don't lots of european cars have ski holes? You pull down the middle of the backseat and a hole goes right thru to the boot

[OliveOrTwist]

We had a Vauxhall mokka with 4 adults, luggage and 4 snowboards (in 2 bags) this year. It was a squeeze, we had one seat down in the back but everything went in easily enough.The huge supermarket shop on the way was a step too far though and we had to have that on our laps for the last 30 mins