Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me start by saying I definitely feel in love with the "idea" of this tent and made the purchase with my heart and not my brain. I read all the negative reviews (no rain fly, poor door design, water everywhere) but choose to focus more on the positive ones (goes up in like 5 seconds, very spacious, no rain fly needed.) Our Colman 4 Person had been serving us well for years, but we've added two outdoor-loving little girls to the family and it was time to upgrade. We live in Belgium and rain is an everyday occurrence, so I figured I could benefit from having a tent that would go up and come down before the next time the sky opened up. I set it up in the backyard (by myself in just over a minute) and let the weather have its way with it for a few nights. After it stayed put and kept the water out, I was convinced it was time to take it for a field test. We set out this past weekend to camp from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. The rain came and went several times a day as anticipated but the painfully obvious design flaws of the Instant Tent forced us to cut the trip a few days short. Here's the short list of reasons this is a failed experiment of a tent: The doors are awful. Both the back and front door's zippers catch on the rain flap....constantly... about every foot. There is no way to do it with one hand. Both doors are also placed just so that they funnel the water from the roof into the tent or onto your head if you jump the gun getting out in a hurry. The windows are a hassle. Once rolled down, the ties (two of which broke) are either horribly placed, or missing all together. This means the fabric just kind of hangs there and we had to "custom" roll and fasten them every time they went up and back down (which were numerous in the rain.) Then there was the condensation. Looking back it makes perfect sense if water can't get in, it can't get out either. I thought keeping the many windows cracked would be a fix. I was wrong. After tracking in two days worth of moisture, and keeping the windows and doors zipped up through the night, we woke up to an indoor rain shower from the gathering condensation on the roof. Our sleeping bags had soaked up the majority of the water, but there were still a few puddles around and if you bumped a wall, you were treated to a similar experience to pulling on a tree branch after a good rain. We were not soaked, but I could only see it getting worst, so we packed up camp in the rain. Just to add insult to injury, I was in the process of showing a fellow camper how easy it was to pack up the tent when one of the tension straps ripped off in my hand. Now I'm soaked, mad, and embarrassed. It's hard for me to believe Coleman, a company that I've always trusted, could have properly tested this dud. Seems to me a few days in a realistic camping situation would have provide them more than enough feedback to convince them this wreck of a tent design was not gonna cut it. I thought I'd be able to overcome the Instant Tent's flaws with my years of outdoor experience (born and raised in the Sierra Nevadas) and my problem solving ability (12 years in the Army.) I was wrong. And that's never easy for me to admit.