The front seats are roomy and plenty comfortable, with eight-way power adjustments for the driver in all but the base van (it gets six-way manual adjustment), and four-way adjustment for the passenger. In the second row the removable centre seat is actually much more comfortable than it looks, while the outboard seats are downright cushy, and both sides of the centre row can slide fore and aft to share legroom if necessary with the third row. That said, sharing legroom shouldn’t be a problem – at 5″11″ I could set the second row with gobs of legroom to spare and still sit comfortably in the third row. Slide-out cupholders, a 120V outlet and RCA-style video inputs for the rear entertainment system means that older kids can drink their pop and play video games, or of course you can pop in a DVD and let them watch a movie. And if they can’t agree on their entertainment choice, Toyota’s 16.4-inch wide entertainment display with split-screen ability allows two programs to be played simultaneously.

Passengers in the third row get a couple of cupholders per side, a pair of headphone jacks, closable cubbies for holding snacks or what-have-you, and pop-open vent windows. If they start misbehaving back there (or if you want to point out some passing point of interest) there’s no need to shout, as Toyota has equipped the Sienna with a “Driver Easy Speak” system that when activated via the infotainment screen picks up the driver’s voice and broadcasts it through the rear speakers (my wife said she half-expected me to start making announcements about cruising altitudes and arrival times). Access to the third row is reasonably easy thanks to the second-row seats’ ability to clamshell forward, but I found that they are fairly heavy and awkward to move back into position, so if you’re loading a vanful of six-year-olds you’ll probably have to help out with this task. The third-row seats are easy to stow and deploy when standing at the rear hatch, but less so from within the van.

Cargo space behind the third row is a usable 1,107 L, which rises to 2,466 L with the third row stowed. When you need to haul a lot of stuff you can either clamshell the second-row seats forward to get them mostly out of the way, or you can remove them entirely, presuming you’re able to manhandle them around and have somewhere to put them. Maximum cargo space is 4,248 L.

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