Families of 4–how often do you use 3rd row?

[Anonymous]

Soooo much!

Grandparents visit
carpooling
weekend outings to the pumpkin patch, hiking, strawberry picking, kayaking, tubing,
Sports practice when it rains and I need to pile all the kids in until their parents arrive (okay I don't really need the seats)
College - it hauls so much, but okay so do trucks but i have friends borrow my Odyssey to take their kids to college.

[Anonymous]

I thought we would grow out of the minivan someday. Now that our kids are 16 and 18 I think we use the 3rd row or cargo area more than ever. I'm hoping this one (Odyssey 200k+ miles) will be our last but maybe not.

[Anonymous]

Ugh I would always argue with DW that we didn’t need a stupid suburban for the third row but we’d get one every two years for something like 14 years and I can count on one hand the times I saw anybody in that third row. Family of four.

[Anonymous]

I mean, we don’t use it every month but then we’ll use it for a week or even two when my in-laws or my mom visit. It makes life easier for us overall, but not daily or even weekly.

[Anonymous]

Kids are younger (4 and 6), we use our third row pretty frequently. Sometimes one kid wants more space on a road trip, and we have local grandparents that come with us on a lot of outings. Love the Ascent.

[Anonymous]

We always used the third row for guests/carpooling, and were grateful for the extra space when we’d fold the 3rd row down and load up the back for extended vacations. Now we use it on a regular basis because we adopted a large dog. When we went away for a month last summer, we had room for lots of luggage and the dog could still lay on his dog huge bed in the back for the drive.

[Anonymous]

We have 10 year old twins. When my kids were younger, I had a 5 seater SUV and when grandparents came to visit I usually rented a minivan for the week. When they were 8, the SUV died and I replaced with a Highlander. The optional 3rd seat is very handy. We don't use it often, but we do use it regularly. My parents come to visit about once a year (at least until the pandemic) and we use it then. Also my twins best friends are another pair of twins. We see them 2-3 times a month. And it is very helpful to have the third row to haul 4 kids around when we have them. And when we carpool for cub scouts. We even took all four twins to Great Wolf Lodge for 2 days last year. And it was a 3 hour drive each way. Having the space for the kids to spread out (two in each row) was great. We end up using the third row about 2-3 times a month. So the optional 3rd row is perfect for us. Most of the time, I have the extra cargo space, but when we need it, we have the extra seats.

[Anonymous]

pre-COVID 2-4x/week for carpooling.

Since COVID 1x/month for hauling stuff to recycling center, buying stuff, etc.