The Bubblebum: The Best Portable Car Booster Seat For Travel
I love the Bubblebum inflatable car seat. Easily packable when it is deflated (it fits in a backpack or even a large purse) but comfortable and safe when inflated, which takes about 10 seconds. Image courtesy of Bubblebum- https://www.bubblebum.co/us/
The Easily Portable Bubblebum Booster Seat Made Our Family Travel So Much Easier
The Bubblebum inflatable car booster seat inflates in seconds to make a safe yet easily portable car booster for all your travels or even for use at home.
Traveling with kids always involves carrying more stuff than you think. From diapers to car seats to Pack ‘n Plays to carrying harnesses, babies end up needing a bigger suitcase than I do. It is definitely not a pound for pound exchange. More like 5 pounds of luggage for every one pound of baby. I was therefore ecstatic when the kids moved out of car seats and diapers and I finally got to leave the Pack ‘n Play at home, as it significantly cut the amount of luggage I was hauling. But, alas, they still needed a booster seat...
This isn't as much of a problem if you are flying somewhere and hopping straight into a rental car for the duration of your trip. But if you are only planning on using the booster for 1 or 2 days out of a 10 day trip, the giant plastic ones become a pain to lug around or store in your hotel room, carry into an airport, etc.
Enter the Bubblebum Booster Seat. Invented by a Mom in Ireland who also disliked lugging large booster seats on trips, the magic of these seats is that they are inflatable.
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Why We Like The Bubblebum Travel Booster Seat
The Bubblebum booster seat is easily packable
When you don't need the Bubblebum, it compresses down to about the size of a large, hardback book and weighs only a pound. It even comes with its own soft carrying bag.
The Bubblebum fits easily into a suitcase or even a small backpack, perfect for touring cities like Washington, DC or Paris, when you might only need it for the Uber ride home. Put it in your carry-on and then if your luggage doesn’t arrive, no worries. (I mean, not “no worries” because you will have that headache, but at least you can still stick the kids in the rental car and get to your destination without having to hand over a billion dollars to the rental agency in return for renting a $20 booster seat.)
Click on images below to enlarge
The Bubblebum booster seat is very safe
If an inflatable booster seat sounds too flimsy to be safe, then be rest assured that the Bubblebum has met all the safety requirements of the US and the EU.
It has been crash tested and is recommended by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
There are attachments for the lap belt to keep it in place, and it even has an attachment that attaches to the shoulder strap of the seat belt to keep the strap in place over the shoulder. This one is a little annoying to hang the hang of but once you get the trick, it is pretty easy. And frankly, the kids mastered it faster than I did.
You can see the lap and shoulder strap attachments of the Bubblebum booster seat here. The shoulder strap attachment can be adjusted tighter than this picture to keep the shoulder strap down over the shoulder and not the neck.
The Bubblebum booster seat is durable and stays inflated
The Bubblebum is made out of the same material as life vests and airbags, so it is durable and stays inflated for a long time. We have kept ours inflated in the car for months with no leakage. It inflates quickly with just about 5 puffs and deflates just as quickly with a little pressure. I like to fold it in half, put my knee on it, and presto, deflated in seconds.
You can fit 3 Bubblebum booster seats in the back seat
The other benefit of the Bubblebum is that because of its small size, you can easily fit 3 of them across the backseat of a sedan, something I can't do with hard plastic booster seats because they are so wide and they have arms. As an adult, I also find it far more comfortable to sit next to a Bubblebum for long periods-say on summer road trips- than a regular car booster seat.
The Bubblebum booster seat is a great gift for relatives who only occasionally transport kids
The Bubblebum also makes a great gift for the grandparents or other family members that only occasionally drive children around. It is a lot easier to keep one of these in the trunk than a hard plastic booster seat.
My Mom only transports the grandkids occasionally so she prefers the Bubblebums because she can store them in her trunk when not using (and it doesn’t take up her whole trunk). It is the best of both worlds-- she has her backseat available like normal when not transporting kids but can pop the booster seats in super fast when she does need them.
She likes being able to carry the Bubblebums in the car and not worry about forgetting them at home or in case we need her on the fly for a forgotten basketball/football/ piano/ dance/ play/ violin and all the other rehearsals/ practices/games that we seem to spend all our days shuttling back and forth to.
And she likes being able to put 3 grandkids in the backseat together in booster seats, so she could pick up a group for “Grandma camps.”
The drawbacks to the Bubblebum booster seat
The downsides to the Bubblebum is that it takes a minute to get familiar with the lap belt and shoulder strap attachments. But like all technology, the kids mastered it faster than me and could belt themselves in in no time.
It also doesn’t have arms. One kid preferred his hard plastic booster seat at home because he liked the arms but would use the Bubblebum on trips, while another preferred the Bubblebum at all times.
The Bubblebum booster seat comes in a variety of colors so the kids can pick their own
Final Thoughts About The Bubblebum Booster Seat
If you are looking for a great booster seat for traveling, then the Bubblebum is the best one I have found so far. We have two and have been very pleased with them. I only wish I had found them when the older two kids were in booster seats.