My Sienna Story- #LetsGoPlaces

When I drive around town every third mini van seems to be a Toyota Sienna. When I talk to other moms, they all seem to have a Sienna Story. I even had a guy talk fondly to me about taking his drivers test in his moms Sienna when he saw my Sienna. So I thought I would share My Sienna Story.


Toyota and I go way back. One of my first cars was a 1977 Toyota Celica 5 speed. That was one of the most reliable cars I have ever owned. When I passed it on to my brother it had over 200,000 miles on the engine and was still running like a top. I paid $500 for the thing and when my brother traded it in on his new Toyota in 1996 he got $500 for it. That is what I call a good value.


I have never had an easy relationship with the mini van. In fact I never quite understood why so many people love the mini van. They would say things like " If you drive it you will understand." My car was totaled last year and the insurance company rented me a 2011 Toyota Sienna. I drove it for 10 days. I was impressed with many of the features, like the opening and closing of the side doors with a touch of a button,  and the integrated hands free telephone. I, of course,  got a kind of stripped down version as it was a rental. When Toyota asked me to drive the new 2015 Sienna I agreed but I wasn't excited. It was after all a mini van.

I picked up the mini van on a Friday morning, by Saturday morning my youngest was talking about reporting me to child protective services because he had lived 12 years with out a minivan. He felt I had deprived him of an important part of his childhood...a DVD player in the car. Yes folks, Airborne fell in love with the Sienna because of the DVD player. Wireless head phones and a remote control was all it took for my kid to throw me under the bus.

Agent Daddy had attended the car show and proceeded to tell me how Lexus doesn't have a minivan but if they did this is what it would look like. I have to say it is one of the most luxurious vehicles I have ever driven. It did not feel like a truck, SUV, or a van. it drove just as well and smooth as my Volvo.

The Tech monkey has button OCD. He cannot live if there is a button to push and he doesn't know what it does. But when he discovered just how many places there were to charge his phone, iPad, Nintendo DS etc he was on the band wagon with the rest of the family. By the way, we counted 6 charging places. ( 2 lighter plugs, 2 actual 120v plugs, and two USB ports.)

The things that I look for in a vehicle, and lets face it mom really has the final say on a vehicle, were all there. Side curtain airbags? Check. Plenty of seats? Check ( this baby seats 8). XM stereo? Check. Plugs for all the monsters kids electronics? Check. Hands free integration with my phone? Check. Heated seats? Check. GPS? Check. Cup Holders? Check...I counted 14. Do you need 14? Well I think I do. But this has some things I had never known I needed. This baby has a button which, when I push, it allows me to speak in a normal voice ( not my mommy voice which can carry 6 states) and be heard in the very last row. I tried it out when driving car pool and got a wow even from the teenagers.

Now I have never thought that we needed a DVD player in the car. Except of course on long trips. But let me tell you about the day that changed everything. On Wednesdays Airborne gets out 45
minutes before the Tech Monkey. We usually go to the high school and wait for the 45 or so minutes rather than drive home and turn right around to come back to get him. This 45 minutes is never anything to write home about . It is usually hot and boring. But not with the Sienna. With the Sienna I could open the side doors to capture the breeze, put my feet up and pop in a movie. Airborne and I were in heaven. I realized that I had a living room right in the mini van just waiting for me. Now you moms know how much time we spend waiting for our kids. Waiting for band practice to end. Waiting for swim practice to end. Parked in front of the school waiting for a kid to get out of school. Waiting is a big part of a moms life. I never realized that I could get a vehicle with a waiting room built in. I was now a minivan convert. Yes driving the Sienna is wonderful but having happy quiet kids AND a place to relax while I wait is AWESOME!.

There are several things I noticed about this minivan while I drove it. It is solid. There is none of the sway and feeling of leaning that I have felt driving other higher profile vehicles. In the 2015, Toyota has added over 140 spot welds to make a much more sturdy body and changed up the chassis to make it still handle like a champ. The head lights are really note worthy. You can see a clear line of demarcation where the lights illuminate and where they do not. And that path is wide and deep. I really felt actually safer at night because of how well the headlights worked. It was really that noticeable of a difference between these new ones and the ones on my current vehicle and the Sienna I drove last year.

The dash and drivers side is very cockpit like. Everything is well lit, easy to reach and intuitive. I love the color back up camera with park assist. If you have never had park assist you must try it out when you go test drive vehicles. It beeps to let you know there is something too close to where you are going. The back up camera has a great wide angle that really lets you see almost everything but the park assist tells you when that kid or other driver is coming behind you when you are backing up. It really is wonderful and I am adding it to my list.

Many times a car manufacturer says that their car seats five and it should say it seats five 6 year olds. I have two tall boys and I drive car pool with two more tall boys. They have wide shoulders. When Toyota says this seats 8 they really mean it.  You can see my 6 foot tall 15 year old fit nicely in the third row.  With the seats  that slide all the way forward, it was easy for him and his friends to get in and out. Even from that third row which is sometimes pretty awkward to get in and out of.

When you are using the GPS to guide you, the speed limit of the road you are on appears in the center of the dash along with the street you are going to turn on next. If you happen to go over that speed limit a red line appears around the speed limit sign. Not that I would ever exceed the speed limit but....

Each of the windows in the second and third rows have a built in sun shade that you can raise and lower and will never get lost because it is built in. Such a nice mom friendly feature to be sure. The second row windows roll down. It sounds crazy but I have never seen that before on a mini van and it sure  is nice.

My mother in law, who is a little bit of a snob, fell in love with this minivan. She could not say enough about how luxurious and comfortable it was to ride in. Too bad she has to go back to riding in my car now that I have returned my Sienna loaner. The Sienna I had comes in at about $40,000. Not bad when you see all that you get. And really what are happy kids worth to you?

Thank you Toyota, for changing my mind about minivans. They are not frumpy, they are FABULOUS!