Am I mad to be even considoring taking own travel cot longhaul?

[PDR]

AM I MAD to be even thinking about taking our Graco Pack and Play (ie. not small) travel cot with us when we go to Kenya in a couple of weeks time?

I want to take it for the following (perhaps crazy?) reasons:

a) I am worried what kind of cot the (all be it 5* luxury) hotel will provide for my PFB

b) I think it would be useful as a playpen or somewhere to put DS for a few mins while I am on the loo or something so he doesn't wreck the hotel suite.

We have 69KG of luggage allowance and it weighs about 12kg and does fold into carry-bag which could be checked in.

We are driving to the airport.

Your thoughts please.....

We took one to Australia 2 years ago, because we were staying with friends (dd was 2.3).

Why not? The only downside i can see is the weight limit

Depends whether you will have to pay excess on it.

On another note where are you flying from and to. We are going in February with my sister to stay with some friends of hers and there are too many options on flights to Mombassa.

Could you phone the hotel to find out what cot they provide? It will probably be similar to the cot you are planning to take and it will be a bit of a pita to cart your one around. (though totally possible I guess)

Not completely mad. I did find the cot provided in our Mumbai hotel for DD not entirely safe (although as she was a NSB I put her in it anyway). But that was largely a business hotel not particularly used to babies, whereas your Kenyan hotel will probably be more geared up for families.

If you think you won't need the luggage allowance for anything else then take it, if it makes you feel better. But you'd almost certainly manage just fine without it.

How old is your DS?

If you're just staying in the same place while on holiday and you have enough baggage allowance, then taking it with you is probably the best thing to do. We went to Barbados at the end of last year & rented a cot for DD (who was then 15 months). It was one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen and she really wasn't that happy in it. We would have been far better taking a travel cot with us.

We just took our 10 month old and 3 year old to Italy with 2 suitcases, a pushchair, a car chair and 3 sets of handluggage. Wanted the car seat as before in Italy we were given awful baby seat. Glad we took it, but to get to car hire at Pisa airport you have to get a bus and lug all that stuff on and off. In 30 degrees heat with 2 whinging kids it was stressful. As long as you can get a trolley you should be ok but why not ask hotel what they have or what about a pop up cot?

Ok so I am not totally mad....

Fivegomad We are flying to Mombasa with KQ and it is not possible to check baggage all the way through so we will have to lug it from international to domestic terminals (not far for those of you who don't know and entirely possible with the use of a trolley).

Port DS is 13 months and I am just worried they will provide something a bit flimsy for a very small baby... DS likes to bounce on his mattress, hang on to the cot bars and shake etc!

We will def have no public transport to negotiate as have private transfers orgniased to hotel from Mombasa airport.

For the record, am also taking:
Car seat and pushchair but am taking this on board (pchair to the gate) so presumably this won't count towards baggage allowance...?

We have taken ours longhaul
It didn't count towards our baggage allowance
Also took pushchair & car seats