Coleman Skydome XL Family Camping Tent, Blue Nights

This is a nice tent. Sets up quickly and packs up nicely. Just be aware that this tent does not have windows. It has large mesh vents that are covered by the rain fly, but no zippered window covers aside from on the door. If you’re camping in cold weather this might not be so great. We do summer camping in warm areas so it’s fine for us.

Bien

Took me an hour & 1/2 to figure out how to put it up. Ok, maybe I’m dense but I never owned one with poles attached. During the process of learning just HOW to put it up?? I discovered, its a cussing tent…lol…until you learn how simple it really is! Lol. Great tent! Gotta love it & have a sense of humor!!! Without that, you will not survive!!!

The tent is easy to set up and spacious. It has a nice number of storage pockets inside. It only has 2 windows with the other sides being mesh that is covered by the rain fly. I wish they had windows on each side despite the rainfly to keep warmth in overnight. Also, even with the “expandable” carry bag which is permanently activated by removing a strip of plastic after purchase it is very hard to fit the tent in the carry bag. Our prior tents could accommodate extra stakes and a mallet in the carry bag, not this one. We have to really press the tent to make it fit in bag. There is no extra room.

Nice big tent. Plenty of room and easy to set up/take down. I believe Coleman makes a great product, however, the issue I’ve had with EVERY Coleman tent is their storage bag. You’d think they could make them slightly larger to make it easier to pack it back up. It’s incredibly difficult and usually takes a couple tries to get it to fit. I’ll be looking for a new storage bag. They have a little spot on the bottom to tear off and make bigger but that doesn’t work well – the design of the “extended space” is extremely poor.

Also of nite, one end if the poles is reattached to the tent. While this was convenient thus far, I hope it is Sturdy enough to stay this way. If they rip/detach, there will be no way to set up the tent.

Beware – this is not a normal, enclosed tent. It is a screen room with a rain fly (so there’s no place to change or privacy when sleeping without the fly on…which is not just a simple fly). Even with the rain fly on, there are areas where you can see out; not a big deal for privacy, but the wind could go through quite easily We ended up having to get a new tent to use for cold weather camping; we were afraid the kids would be miserable.

I’ve never struggled so much to get a tent set up. Given, I did it on my own and it’s a 2-person setup, but I’ve set up many tents on my own. If you get this tent, make sure to try it before you go camping, unless you’ve owned a similar type tent. I REALLY do not like the integrated poles. It made it cumbersome to set up and very annoying to fold and put away. The hooks were very tricky to work with; the poles got stuck on them and wouldn’t slide through, so I ended up stepping all over the tent trying to reach things to set it up and to take it down. I can see the hooks breaking in the future as well.

Also, this tent HAS TO be staked down; there’s about 2 feet on each end of it that do not have any pole tension to hold them up. We live in Arizona, so that can be tricky in some campgrounds.

Skip this tent and save yourself a lot of frustration on your camping trip. i’m going to try to REFOLD it to fit it in the bag. Urgh!