When we first set out to replace our Class C with something larger I did a pretty thorough scanning of discussion forums and contacted most of the people we know who also had RV's to get an idea of what to look for, what to look out for and any other general hints to help narrow the field. The advise we received and the clues we read saved us countless hours in online shopping, gallons of fuel so we could look over inventory and a great deal of just general stress of dealing with sales people who may know their job but didn't know us and what we liked.
"Set a budget, then shop." "Look at the floor plans, find the layouts you like then shop." "Go for a used top of the line you think you'll like because the chances are good you'll find something better down the road." These were some of the bits of advise and frankly they were all right on the mark for the most part. What I cannot recall ever being mentioned and to this day remains one of the least commented upon aspects of the RV experience is the mattress. After having our rig for the past year I can now see why.
A mattress is an individual preference item and until you've slept on it there simply is no way to judge if whether the one you have will be of the "Outstanding", "Okay" or the "Not another night" variety. In our case the stock mattress began its life with us as an "Okay" but after nearly a year of use it has quickly degraded to the final qualifier. What certainly didn't help was the size - a Short Queen. By the way, if anyone knows who came up with that design and designator please let me know, I have some crab pots that could really use their talents during an in-use performance survey. Seriously the short queen mattress, in my opinion, is simply the definition of a half-truth - the truth being it comes up woefully short measuring a paltry 60" x 75". My creaky back and stiff muscles may have lent a small bit of bias to this opinion and did I mention the past winter with my cold feet hanging over the end?
Enter our dilemma. Our existing mattress while still considered quite new was oddly enough showing its age with springs felt and in some places the hard board base of the bed. Okay, so now the weather has changed so I could fudge it a bit and not worry about cold feet for another 6 months but really?
I began looking around and what struck me almost immediately was slimness of the information available. I was coming to the conclusion if you didn't have a sleep number bed you might as well simply pile a couple more skins on the rocks. That is, until I read about some of the new foam mattresses out there.
I may be dating myself a bit but when I hear foam mattress the first thing that comes to mind is a light brown, 4 inch thick thing that usually smelled like a wet dog and if you were real lucky could soften one mashed pea slipped under it. Not true anymore with the eco-friendly, gel-supported,multi-layered, firmness selectable creations available. These things are so sophisticated now they rival some of the high-end conventional mattresses with similar price marks and yet remain very customizable in size and shape. Yea, we bought one.
The Excursion came with a short queen yet the bedroom accommodates a full queen size bed (Hear that Fleetwood? A FULL queen fits, stop using that silly weird looking SHORT mattress!) Despite this apparent space constraint a tape measure confirmed we could actually fit a mattress that was just a bit narrower than a king and still have room to move around the bed. The model size is known as the Expanded Queen or the Olympic Queen measuring in at 66" x 80" (yo, Fleetwood, see, 5 inches longer and now no more cold feet or silly curvy cuts on the end.)
We bought ours through Mattress Insider and couldn't be more pleased. Ordering was simple, the prices VERY competitive including free shipping. Within a week we were sleeping on the new mattress and I've got to say its not an RV mattress - this is a regular mattress that just happens to be in an RV. I doubt we'll have to worry about the 100 day no risk trial and only time will tell if we'll touch the 15 year warranty.
Bottom line? Very pleased with Mattress Insider even more so with feet hanging over the end of the bed no more.
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