Kia Sedona SXL

DriveShop provided us with a vehicle during our stay in California. All thoughts and opinions are my own. #Kia #DriveKia

Last week, we got to have the ultimate test drive experience with the 2015 Kia Sedona SXL. Those fancy wheels took us all over Southern California while we were there on vacation visiting my husband’s parents. (You can read our Southern California Vacation post here.)

Since my in-laws live in Corona, Riverside county, we knew we’d have to do some driving to get to any of the attractions on our list for the week: beach, Oceanside, San Diego, Knott’s Berry Farm, Legoland. The Kia Sedona made it quite enjoyable to reach all our destinations!

I made a California I Spy game for the kids to give them something fun to do while we were driving. Copy this image and paste it into a word document, then you can print your own!

They loved it–and we’ve never been so excited to see a traffic jam 🙂

With the keyless entry and ignition, I just kept the smart key in my purse. As I approached the car, the rear-view windows moved back into place and I could unlock the car by pushing the lock button on the handle. Once inside the car, I pushed the start button to turn it on. We did notice that it seemed to take a bit of time to accelerate up to freeway speeds, no drag racing in your minivan, ok?

The backup camera was pretty awesome. The large screen let us see everything behind us, plus we even got an overhead view of the whole car, showing where other cars or obstacles might be so we could watch out for them.

Smart cruise control was another great feature for SoCal driving. I set the cruise control as you might expect, by setting the speed and adjusting higher or lower, and the car kept that speed. But when another car came into my lane, creating an unsafe distance, my Kia automatically slowed down so we weren’t tailgating. We went back up to speed when there was room again on the freeway.

Asher loved the foot rest on the seats in the middle row. Meagan felt the back row was a little uncomfortable for her. We had to move the head rest all the way down so it wasn’t hurting and pushing her head forward. But Emily, the 11-year-old was fine, and the back row definitely had good room for adults to sit back there.

The cooled front seats were a real treat on some of those afternoons when the Kia had been baking in the sun.

I put together this quick preview of a few of the features so you can see them in action. We loved our vacation and driving everywhere in style.

Which feature would you be most excited about?