Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
131 of 136 people found the following review helpful.
By Dan
FANTASTIC! The first time we set this tent up, it was in the house, just to get an idea... Took us about 15-20 minutes. It wasn't bad at all. But it DOES take two people!! Our first experience on the road with it took us to the Grand Canyon where we arrived at 9:00pm. It took us again less than 25-30 minutes to set it up (in the dark) using only a couple flashlights.. Do make sure you stake the corners down FIRST before you raise it. You need one person outside the tent, and one inside to raise it. After that, using the stakes to secure it was a breeze... Having so many windows and a full mesh ceiling was great for star gazing after a long day. We put a king sized mattress in the second room, and had plenty of space to move around.. This tent is so big, our puppy (Shih Tzu) named Kujo, got plenty of exercise just running from the door back into the 2nd room.
The first room is great to leave all your bags,cloths,shoes etc....and it has a floor in it, so you are not walking on dirt like some two room tents...
The 2 nights we spent at the Grand Canyon (May 10-11,2010)-(to verify winds)we experienced 75 mph winds.. This tent DID NOT MOVE! And the reason it didn't move was because it securly tied all the way around. The only thing we could hear was the wind, not the sides flapping in the wind like most tents.. We have recieved many compliment on this tent..
I researched every 8-12 person,family tent out there with three things in mind..1) Tall enough to move and walk around in. 2) It had to have a screen ceiling. 3) Had to have shock cords...BINGO !! I HIGHLY recomend this tent to everyone. When Wenzell designed this, they found a winner.... I am so proud of this tent, We can't wait to go on our next road trip...
Walmart had the best price of anyone.. I "researched it!" :)
88 of 93 people found the following review helpful.
By Keith Micoli
I just returned from our first camping trip with this tent, two nights at Lake George, NY. In the end, the elements beat us and our tent, and we only spent one night in it, but the 25-year camping veterans next to us didn't make it through the second night either.
Overall, the tent is huge, nicely designed for sleeping and storing gear, but that design also makes it unstable in foul weather.
My 13 year old son and I were able to set this tent up in about 20 minutes with little difficulty. You really do need two people to get the fly over the roof, but one person might be able to get the main body of the tent up by themselves.
Things I like about the tent:
-plenty of room and a nice high roof that a six foot person could easily stand up in
-easy set up
-the screen room can be closed up and used for sleeping, and it has a floor
-construction seems very good, very little leakage on the seams in the face of 20+mph wind and torrential rain (and I didn't seal the seams as I'd intended to)
-the screen roof and lots of windows should make this a great summer tent
Things I didn't like:
-the large interior and open roof make it tough for two (or three) bodies to heat up. You lose most of your heat through the roof and we were cold despite sleeping bags, air mattress, extra blankets and thermals, and it was only in the low 50s that night.
-the windows do not fully zip across the top, so high wind will eventually blow them open.
-the design which gives you so much useable space inside creates hard corners and very long walls that make the tent very difficult to secure against wind. One corner kept falling down against the high wind, despite adding an extra guyline and attempting to angle the tent against the wind.
-easy setup with only four anchor points for the main support poles also contributes to instability. The long side of the tent is 16 feet long and you have only two main supports and an angled anchor pole for the screen room.
-the huge size makes it tough to find a completely level spot for the entire footprint. I think our tent fell in on one side partly because we had one corner at a slight uphill angle and that put a lot of strain on that one cornet pole.
-it's heavy and a little bulky. I think it is probably close to 25 pounds, so you aren't going to want to carry this baby very far.
-there are four angled joints that hold the roof poles to the side poles. The fit is not very tight, and if you lose even one of these, you are not going to be able to set up the tent. I plan to glue these to one of the poles, because they are black and easy to lose while breaking camp.
Lessons learned:
-I would try to set up so that the front door faces into the wind. The back side of the fly really does not come low enough to keep wind from getting under it. On this trip, that wasn't possible because this would have put the entrance about three feet from a significant drop off.
-seal the seams and waterproof the fly
-buy extra stakes (the guylines only get flimsy metal pegs that don't provide much holding power), and bright-colored guylines (the included lines are black which are invisible in the dark)
-I would not use this tent in temps below 60 or in winds above 10mph, especially if this were your only shelter option
-I probably could have used a tarp to create a more angled face for the tent side facing the wind, but 3am in a wind storm is not when I do my best thinking and really shouldn't be necessary.
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
By Roxanne Sitarz
This tent performed above our expectations! We got caught in 2 torrential rainstorms, and the tent held up just fine...although one corner pole did bend a bit during 30 mph wind gusts...sadly, that pole did end up breaking into 2 pieces, but nothing we can't handle.
I was going to order it from here, but was unable to verify that delievry would be in time for our camping trip-so I ordered it from Wal-Mart and got it in 4 days!
