Mico Car Free Useful Tip

These adapters work fine, but be very careful that you use them the right way around, if not your going to be having hours of “fun” trying to get them to release from the car seat, not exactly the easiest thing to do. But if you follow the directions, they work well on the bugaboo, I wish they could stay on the care seat when not in use, but they are too big and prevent the car seat being placed into the base unit in the car.
You have to remove them when you take the Mico Car seat away from the Bugaboo frame, then release the adapters before you are ready to put the car seat into the car. (its not a big deal just a little extra step, and another chance to put them on the wrong way around when you got to use them again).

I will add either a color code or a label to one or both to make sure its easy to know which goes to the left and which goes to the right side.

1. Trying to get these things on the correct side is very easy to screw up, and if you do it wrong, you have to yank with all of your might to get them back out.

2. The adapters have to come off before you can put it in the car-seat base

3. Putting the car-seat on/off these adapters is extremely difficult and takes a LOT of force. I have no idea how even I’ll be able to do it with a baby in the seat. I doubt my wife could do it now. You literally have to step on the frame of the stroller and pull very hard to free the carseat.

I have been struggling with this thing for the last 11 months. Now that we’re finally moving onto a bigger seat I thought it would be a good time to write a review.
Like other people have said, this seat is great aesthetically. We got SO many complements on it. Plus I’ve never seen another one around, so it’s rarity has made it a bit of a novelty. Ours is a vibrant blue color and black. But from what I can tell it isn’t being manufactured in that color scheme anymore.
The frustration comes from it’s functionality. For starters, taking the seat on and off of the base is MISERABLE! It usually takes several tries (and brute strength) to get the thing on or off. Because of this we never really used it as an infant carrier. It was just too much of a struggle. There is an adaptor available for snapping it into our bugaboo stroller, but I never bothered to get it because it was too hard to get the thing out of the base. However, that being said, there has been a recall on the base and I expect to have a new one soon. We’ll see…
Unfortunately the recall does not include an improved buckle.
It’s difficult to explain in words… but the bottom (crotch) portion of the 5 point harness is really hard to use. You have to hold both sides together, and then snap them into the buckle simultaneously. They are forever slipping apart, making it a challenge to buckle in a squirming kid. Also it has a tendency to catch the babies’ clothing, and when this happens it won’t snap. So, you have to pull the two (slippery) pieces together, push the babies’ clothes out of the way, AND hold on to the buckle… all at the same time. It can be a challenge even when there is another adult there to help!
We have it in a VW Jetta, and while it fits there isn’t any room to spare. Also the passenger in the front sear has to sit further forward than we would like in order to accommodate the baby seat in the (middle) back seat. Also, the few times we did carry it around as a carrier the sunshade fell down bellow the seat and ended up dragging along the ground. The only solutions were to remove it and carry it around with us separately, or to hold it up in your hand that is holding the handle (very awkward).