Best Luggage for Family Travel? We Put the Arlo Skye and Monos to the Test

Mama Bird

Jun 30

4 min read

Big Brother rolling the Monos Large suitcase through a sunny parking lot, wearing a video game graphic tee and glasses

Privacy, Images & Affiliate Disclosure

Some images in this post are real family photos that have been artistically altered to protect our children's privacy while still sharing our real travel experiences.

Welcome back to Episode 4 of my Suitcase Series. If you're just joining us, you can catch up with Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3 first — but the short version is this: I bought two new suitcases, challenged myself to pack for a 10-night trip for a family of five using only three bags, immediately needed a fourth, and headed out on a trial run to Legoland, Universal, and a Disney cruise on the Wish with a lot of open questions.

After hotels, theme parks, and a Disney cruise, here's what I actually learned about finding the best luggage for family travel — and why the answer was more complicated than I expected.

The Hotels: Where Things Got Interesting

The first thing I noticed rolling the suitcases through the hotel was how differently the two moved.

The Arlo Skye glides. There's something about how wide it is that makes it stable and easy to steer — it just rolls where you point it. I loved it immediately in a hotel setting. And the top-load design delivered exactly what I hoped: prop the lid open, everyone grabs what they need, no suitcase taking over the floor. For hotel hopping with three kids, that alone was worth a lot.

The Monos, by contrast, moved like a typical suitcase — which sounds neutral but felt like a disappointment after watching the Arlo. Pull it too hard and it tips toward you rather than gliding. It's not a dealbreaker, but it's a noticeable difference once you've felt what the Arlo does.

Hotel hopping itself was its own reminder of something I already knew but felt sharply again: the cruise is so much easier. When you're hotel hopping, every checkout is a jigsaw puzzle — did we get everything, will it all fit back the way it did, what did we leave on the bathroom counter. On a cruise you unpack once and you're done. I'll take that every time.

The Cruise: The Moment of Truth

I left Episode 3 with one big open question: would the Arlo actually fit under the Wish's bed? I'd been skeptical since the moment I saw the proportions in person. I had video ready just in case.

It fit.

Just barely — you could hear the top touching the bed frame as it slid under — but I didn't have to force it. It went. I have the video to prove it. 😄

That was a genuine relief after all the doubt in Episode 3. The top-load design on the cruise was also genuinely useful — even tucked under the bed, being able to pull it out, prop the lid, and grab what I needed without fully opening a clamshell made the cabin feel less cramped.

The important caveat: the Wish has a King bed. The Wonder — where we're cruising for Alaska — has a Queen, and it's an older ship. Whether the Arlo clears on the Wonder is a different question, and one I'm not ready to answer yet. But at least I know what "just barely" looks like, and I have it on video.

The Nesting Problem — and What Monos Told Me

One of the things I was most hoping to confirm on this trip was the Monos nesting system — the Medium fitting inside the Large for cruise cabin storage. It didn't work on the trial run, and I reached out to Monos directly to understand why.

Monos Medium sitting inside the Monos Large with the lid unable to close, demonstrating why the two bags cannot nest together.

Their answer was straightforward: the Medium is not designed to nest inside the Large. The latch locks protrude outward and physically prevent it. This was never going to work — and it wasn't disclosed anywhere in the product listing.

The dimensions on paper suggested it should fit. The external measurements of the Medium are smaller than the Large on every dimension. But once you account for shell thickness, the aluminum frame, the wheel housings, and the interior structure, the usable opening of the Large simply isn't big enough. You can only discover this by physically trying it — which I didn't do before the trip.

Lesson learned, and worth sharing: always test nesting before you travel with it. I assumed, and I shouldn't have.

The Honest Scorecard: Is This the Best Luggage for Family Travel?

Coming out of the trial run, here's where I actually landed:

The Arlo Skye earned its place — at least for hotel travel. It moves beautifully, the top-load design is as practical as I hoped, and it passed the Wish bed test. It's a genuinely good suitcase. Whether it earns a spot on the Alaska lineup is a separate question I'm still working through.

The Monos Large does its job as a standalone bag. It fits under the cruise bed comfortably and moves well enough. The nesting failure was disappointing, but the bag itself isn't the problem — the system I thought I was buying just doesn't exist.

The Monos Medium turned out to have more of a future than I thought coming out of the trial run. More on that in Episode 5.

And the big picture — how does a family of five actually pack for 18 nights across airports, hotels, and a 14-night cruise on the Wonder — is still being figured out. The trial run gave me answers. It also sent me back to the drawing board in ways I didn't expect.