Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

UPDATE: We've now camped with this tent for 3 seasons and have experience with weather resistance. It rained the entire week, with some serious downpours, this last camping trip in August. Ours was the ONLY tent that didn't flood out. We kept the doors & windows zipped up and had no water leakage at any of the floor, window/door, or side seams. We had a tarp over the tent & camping area so can't attest to the resistance of the ceiling but have no doubts it would perform as well as the rest of the tent. Another commenter gave some information regarding vents in the ceiling that we didn't know about & will definitely check out next summer so that eliminates my ventilation con. And now that we have some experience setting up & taking down the tent it is MUCH closer to a minute than our previous 15!! So the only con that remains is the lack of ties or toggles to help keep the windows rolled up neatly when they are zipped open. Minor annoyance! ORIGINAL REVIEW: We just returned from our 1st camping trip with this tent. We usually camp once a year, for 4 nights/5 days, at a campground. Our family consists of my husband & I and our 3 kids, aged 13, 14 & 17. Our must-haves in a tent when we were looking were a room divider and a non D-shaped door (D-shaped are too vulnerable to zipper blow-outs with lots of not so gentle use...). We bought this tent based on those requirements, the dimensions & # accomodated, the ease of set up & reviews. Our two cents: PROS 1) this tent definitely is easy to set up. My husband & his mom (I'm 8 1/2 months pregnant) set up the tent straight out of the bag for the 1st time in about 15 minutes. I read the directions but it wasn't even really necessary, it was that simple. 2) take down was just as easy. 3) plenty of room for our family of five. It would be 8 man as long as everyone was very comfortable with each other! It fit our family on 2 queen and 1 twin mattresses with space for our gear and our boys gear. My daughter is too particular & kept her stuff stored in the car! We're going to have to store more gear in the car next year when we add the pack & play though! 4) the room divider was WONDERFUL. My husband didn't think he'd like it (being separated from the kids) but he admitted he liked having our stuff separated from theirs & not having to paw through everyone's things & bedding to get to our own. 5) two doors. One was T shaped, which is exactly what we wanted, and the one the kids used. The other was D-shaped, and not what we wanted, but we put it at our end where we were more conscious of the care needed to operate it without zipper blow-outs. CONS: 1) there is no rain fly and therefore no ventilation in the ceiling. Heat rises. Even with the walls being almost completely screened & open all day to allow air flow the tent was warm. And humid. I was thankful the temps got down to the 40's & 50's on a couple nights to allow more comfortable sleeping conditions! 2) there are no ties to secure the windows with when they are rolled down to expose the screens. You roll them down and sort of tuck them into themselves at the bottom. It's not quite deep enough for them to stay & they wind up falling out. Some ties would be nice to help them stay in place. We had great weather and a tarp covering the tent & area around it in the event of rain - so we can't speak to the weather resistance of the tent. We did seal the seams, as one should do with ANY tent anyway. Oh - and get some beefier tent stakes. The ones included are pretty wimpy!