Decision to Book With GoOpti

This month we headed to Europe for ten days of exploring with our baby and toddler, and per usual, packed very light. We never take our carseats, relying instead on public transportation like trains and trams, but this trip we ran into an issue when we tried to book a train from Venice to Ljubljana - there were trains, but it was an all day long journey that required changing trains with only a 9 minute window to make the connection. That sounded tough with a one and three year old, especially since we knew the trip was only 2.5 hours by car. We didn’t want to hassle with renting a car, especially since it’s really expensive to return it in another country, so we started looking into buses, but quickly discovered every company we looked into (like FlixBus) required carseats but didn’t provide them. I finally stumbled across a transport startup company called GoOpti that offers private transfers and shared shuttles between a number of European cities for decent prices, so decided to contact them to see what their carseat policy was. They wrote back that carseats were required but provided for free by GoOpti and that you could indicate that you needed carseats at the time of booking. The reviews for GoOpti were pretty decent, so we went ahead and booked tickets on a shared shuttle van.

Good to know: GoOpti provides carseats for infants and toddlers free of charge. There is a place to indicate that you need carseats while booking tickets.

*Message from GoOpti regarding my carseat question*

Shared Transfer Option

The shared transfer option was significantly cheaper than a private transport, so we decided to risk a group share ride knowing that it would take longer since we’d have to pick up and drop off multiple people. Something else different about the shared transfer was that they provided a time range for pick up and stated that the exact departure time would be provided via email and text the day before the trip. The time range provided for our transfer was from 9am-12pm.

Good to know: If you book the shared transfer option, you need to be a bit flexible as the exact time of departure is not provided until the day before your transfer. They do, however, provide a time range for the pick up at the time of booking so you can do basic planning.

Booking With Carseats

It was super easy to add carseats to our booking, just like the agent said. First, I selected where we wanted to picked up in Venice and dropped off in Ljubljana. There were multiple options for both, so I looked up each address to see what was closest to our hotels in both locations as we’d be walking to our pick up location and from our drop off location. There was an option to select adult and children’s tickets, and entering two children’s tickets eventually took me to a screen that allowed me to choose whether I needed an infant, baby, or child carseat for each of their tickets. Super easy!

*Screen on GoOpti’s booking site that allowed me to select carseats for the kids*

Pick Up Experience

True to their word, we received an email the day before our trip verifying the pick up address and letting us know that our pick up time would be 9:20am. It also included a photo of a GoOpti van where we were going to be picked up to, presumably, help us to recognize if we were in the right location. The next day we put in the address provided (Piazzale People Mover, 30100) into Google Maps and headed out walking. The email said we’d be picked up next to the people mover cable car entrance/exit and when we got there, it was just a big parking lot next to an entrance to the cable car and we recognized we were in the right place from the photo, but couldn’t find anywhere that looked exactly like the photo, which was really confusing. We kept wondering if we were supposed to be in a different parking lot or transit area and were about to call the driver since his number was provided, when a guy got out of an unmarked brown van and asked if we were the GoOpti passengers. That was confusing too as we expected a marked vehicle, but it was clearly our GoOpti ride as he had two carseats in the back of the van for us.

*Confirmation from GoOpti the day before with specific pick up time*

*The pick up location photo from GoOpti that threw us off as it didn’t look exactly like this where the driver picked us up*

*This is actually where we were picked up. You can see it’s similar so we knew we were in the right-ish location but it still made us wonder if we were in the wrong parking lot or transit area.*

*The unmarked GoOpti van that picked us up*

The Carseats

While we were stoked that they provided free carseats and did indeed have two waiting for us in the back of the van, we were less stoked to see that they were pretty old and worn. Furthermore, the driver gave them to us to install and we weren’t familiar with them at all and found them difficult to set up properly. We even googled the brand and found an installation video but the seat in the video had slightly different features so we weren’t able to install it the same way. The driver came and tried to help but obviously wasn’t familiar with them either. If they had been newer carseats it would have been a cinch as the van was new enough to have carseat clips, but we had to use the seatbelt method and the carseats were rather loose no matter what we did. Not awesome.

The Transfer Experience

After getting the kids in their seats, we headed to the airport where we picked up two other passengers, then drove to a hotel and picked up one more person. At that point the van was full and we headed for Ljubljana. About 2hrs into the trip we stopped in a parking lot of a supermarket to drop off a passenger and the driver asked if anyone needed to use the bathroom. One person did so the driver went to a gas station in the same parking lot that apparently had a free bathroom. After that we hit the road again and didn’t stop until we reached Ljubljana. The other two passengers got off at a bus station at the edge of the city and then the driver took us to the roundabout at the Napoleon monument exactly like we had booked. Maps says it’s a 2.5 hour drive and it took us 3.5hrs with the extra stops for the ride share, so longer but not excessively so.

Good to know: Our trip was a solid hour longer doing the ride share option because of multiple stops to pick up and drop off other passengers

Pros and Cons of Our GoOpti Transfer

Pros

Reasonable price. We thought $86 for transportation for a family of four between countries was pretty decent.
Carseats included for free and easy to add to your booking.
Good communication. We got the emails just like they said with time confirmation and pick up and drop off details and later discovered that the driver had texted us an hour before pick up with his license plate number to help us identify the vehicle. We just hadn’t gotten it because of our data/text plan.
Punctual. We got to the pick up early and our driver was there about 10 minutes early.
Not extra stops. The driver only stopped to get other passengers and drop them off.
A bathroom break was offered halfway through the trip.

Cons

The photo GoOpti provided to help us identify the pick up location actually confused us as it looked slightly different than where the address took us/where the driver picked us up
The van that picked us up was unmarked, which threw us off. Thankfully, the driver got out and asked if we were the GoOpti passengers or we may have missed it.
The carseats were old, the driver didn’t seem to know how to install them, they were quite different than our carseats so we had a hard time figuring them out and never could get them very tight. Later we read some reviews where other people mentioned loose carseats and wished we had seen them before booking our tickets.

Would We Use GoOpti Again?

So, would we book with GoOpti again? Yes if were by ourselves or with older children, but no while our kids need carseats. We just didn’t feel that the carseats were as safe as they could have been and didn’t love that we couldn’t seem to install them tightly.

Have you used GoOpti before with kids? We and our readers would love to hear about your experience! Leave us a comment!

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