The Kia Carnival is a spacious and easy-to-live with minivan that packs some surprisingly luxurious features in its voluminous interior.

The Kia Carnival is a very good minivan. It’s a bit of a dark horse candidate compared to the Toyota Sienna and Honda Odyssey, which have dominated the space for years. But the Carnival matches or beats both the Sienna and Odyssey when it comes to comfort, space and driveability.

Minivans are basically rolling living rooms, and the Carnival is no slouch in that department. Available second-row reclining captain’s chairs with foot rests (!) put Dad’s Lay-Z-Boy to shame. There are a whopping nine USB ports available throughout the Carnival, making the optional rear seat entertainment system something you can probably skip, and the Carnival comes with 14 standard active safety features.

The Carnival is easy to drive, with plenty of acceleration for pulling into traffic and merging on the freeway. It’s also stable and composed in turns, and outward visibility is good – something that’s especially important in a vehicle that will likely be dealing with pre-school parking lots and carpool lanes. There’s no all-wheel drive or hybrid option, but the Carnival gets a respectable 19/26 MPG.

The Toyota Sienna is not only a reliable workhorse of a minivan, but it’s also the only minivan on the market with all-wheel drive. Now, in Car Talk’s experience, a front wheel drive van like the Carnival can do just fine in the snow when equipped with snow tires, but if you want all-wheel drive, the Sienna is your only option. The Sienna has a higher starting price and a shorter warranty than the Carnival, but it also has a trump card: a hybrid powertrain that gets an amazing 36/36 MPG city/highway. It’s the clear winner if fuel economy is your main area of concern.

The Honda Odyssey is another minivan that’s been the default choice for scores of families, and it does earn some points for being the sportiest minivan on the market, but that’s kind of like being the coolest guy at the Star Trek convention. The Odyssey gets better highway fuel economy, but the Carnival has more cargo space. The Odyssey also starts about $4,000 more than the Carnival. The Odyssey is certainly worth a look, but make sure you check out the Carnival as well.

The Kia Carnival starts at $33,100 for the base LX model, while the top-of-the-line SX Prestige trim will run you $46,200. That’s a pretty wide price range, but the Carnival has a number of trims where you can split the difference on price.

The table below shows the most common trim levels and how much they will run you.

Changes to the Kia Carnival for 2023 are focused on the top trims: SX and SX Prestige. The SX gets a massive 12.3 inch infotainment display and a 12.3 inch digital gauge cluster so you won’t need your reading glasses to see how fast you're going anymore.

The SX Prestige loses the standard second-row recliners in favor of a three-person bench. You can still get the recliners as an option, and the switch to a standard bench sounds like a change that was made due more to supply chain issues than consumer demand, but that’s mainly because once we sat in those recliners we couldn’t understand why you’d ever get anything else.

Kia also dropped the base LXS model for 2023, which makes the 2023 Carnival’s starting price a bit higher than in earlier years.

All trims of the Kia Carnival are powered by a 3.5-liter V6 engine that makes 290 horsepower. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but remember those horses are pulling a heavy vehicle that’s likely loaded with people and cargo. The Carnival has no issue keeping up with traffic and even feels fine in the left lane, but don’t plan on taking it to the dragstrip (but if you do, please send us video).

Like most minivans, the Carnival’s ride is focused on stability and comfort, and it delivers on both. It never feels unstable or tippy, and for a big vehicle, it has limited blind spots. Steering is direct and the Carnival goes where you’d expect it to.

If you’re reading this going, “That’s a pretty generic write up, Jamie.” Well, the Carnival is a minivan. You don’t buy it for how it drives; you buy it for what’s inside. When it comes to driving, the Carnival is kind of like your favorite leggings: comfortable, does what it’s supposed to, and after a while you forget about them.

The Kia Carnival hasn’t been rated in crash tests. However, it comes standard with 14 standard active safety features like blind spot monitoring, lane keep assist and forward automatic braking. Other minivans have similar active safety features.

The Carnival was introduced for the 2022 model year, so we don’t have a lot of data on reliability. That said, Kia has moved into the top 10 of Consumer Reports’ brand reliability ratings, and is the highest-ranked mainstream brand in JD Power’s Vehicle Dependability Study.

There are a ton of options on the Kia Carnival, but because it has so many standard features, you don’t need to get upgrades to have a great minivan. Skip the rear seat entertainment system, since your kids will probably just use their own devices and the Carnival has so many USB chargers that power won’t be an issue.

There’s an optional panoramic sunroof, which opens all the way to the second row, making the cabin bright and airy. If you get it, make sure to keep sunscreen in the massive center console.

Those second row recliners are amazingly comfortable and worth getting if you frequently have to sit in the car waiting for baseball practice to end. We’re mean enough to suggest skipping the recliners if only kids are going to sit in them. They can have recliners when they start paying rent.

The main option worth getting is the optional SynTex or leather seats. We suggest skipping the standard cloth upholstery if you are towing the kids around. Cloth seats are just too hard to clean to ever be in a family car.

The Kia Carnival has a great powertrain warranty – 10 years or 100,000 miles – that beats the coverage offered on other minivans. Kia also backs the Carnival with a five-year/60,000 mile limited warranty. Kia doesn’t offer free scheduled maintenance, but you might be able to negotiate a maintenance plan with your dealer.

• Limited: 5 years/60,000 miles
• PowerTrain: 10 years/100,000 miles
• If buying used look at our best extended warranties

The Kia Carnival was introduced in 2022, so there aren’t going to be a lot of used models to buy. If you’re considering a used Carnival because of Kia’s warranty coverage, note that the basic warranty will transfer to you, but that the powertrain warranty will become a 5-year/60,000 mile warranty.

Because the Carnival has a lower starting price than most other minivans, it’s likely that if you can find a used Carnival, it will be cheaper than other used minivans, but that’s not a guarantee. We spent a week in the 2023 Carnival and if you can find one that has the features you want and decent time left on the warranty, we can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be a good used car. However, for the best warranty coverage, the most up-to-date features and the privilege of not having to clean some other family’s gunk out of the seats, just get a new one.

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