Ozark Trail 12-Person Base Camp Tent with Light

Excellent product... very spacious and exactly as advertised. Plenty of head room and pretty straight forward to set up.

Way to hard to put up. The poles split in half when assembled. I will never use it again

I bought this tent on clearance @ Walmart for only $99, I had my doubts having several bad experiences with Ozark Trail in the past, but for only $99 (and some arm twisting from my wife) we went ahead. I must say it’s the best $99 I’ve spent. We’ve been out with the tent 5 times this summer, in wind (40+ MPH) and rain and it has held up with zero leaks and zero damage to the tent or poles (see below).This tent is HUGE! We have a family of 10 (My Wife and I plus 8 kiddos) and it will hold all of us with gear/equipment for a weekend, it gets a bit cramped when we add our two Huskies and their crates. It has easily held 6 cots (gear storage underneath the cots), and will fit 4 queen size mattresses.Set Up: YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST TWO PEOPLE TO SET THIS THING UP!!! The first time I pitched this tent it took over an hour and a half with my 12 and 10 year old daughter’s helping, I attribute the long time to being the first time we set it up. On at least 5 separate occasions I ran the poles through the wrong sleeves because it wasn’t laid out properly; I found that spreading the top of the tent out so all the sleeves are in line (from the middle outward) eliminated this confusion. Following the instructions insert the Dark Gray poles (x2) in first followed by the Light Gray poles (x4) and try to keep the ends even on either side while the tent is still flat on the ground. Here’s the important part. YOU MUST SUPPORT THE TOP OF THE TENT FROM THE INSIDE BEFORE SETTING THE POLES. I can only assume this is where the broken poles/sleeves reviews have come from. This is a very heavy tent, if you try to set the poles without lifting it in the center from the inside you WILL break poles and tear the tent; PERIOD! After the dark/light gray poles are in place have someone wiggle through the door, find the center (where the two dark gray poles cross) and lift the Center 5-6 feet off the ground while the other person(s) sets the poles. I was able to set this thing up solo but I set up a small canopy on the inside in order to lift the center, then moved outside to set the poles. Once the dark/light gray poles are set slide the orange poles in and fasten all the hooks. Finally stake the tent and secure ALL of the tie outs (The upper vents have small supports with velcro, make sure they are upright before staking the tie-outs). I would highly recommend buying and using heavy duty steel nail stakes rather than the included aluminum stakes.Weather: We’ve been in wind and rain with this tent and it held up with no leaks or damage. Wind speeds were in excess of 35 MPH and didn’t faze the tent at all. The rain was pretty consistent for about 2 hours (aprox. ¾ of an inch total rainfall) and we didn’t have a single leak, and we hadn’t even treated it with water proofing or seam sealer yet! We have since water proofed and seam sealed it just in case, but it held up with no issues! Note: This was not a driving/heavy rain. The tent design would allow for driving rain to be blown into the vents both on top and at the bottom, but you can collapse the vents by loosening the tie outs to minimize the intrusion.Summary: Overall a great tent! Set this thing up before heading out with it, allow yourself a good hour or two for initial set up, take your time, and don’t force anything! After you set it up once and get an idea of how things go together you will be able to set it up in less than 30 minutes (I’m averaging about 20 minutes currently). If you are expecting heavy driving rains, make sure you water-proof the tent before setting out, and consider getting a large tarp/parachute to set up over top to prevent leakage. Otherwise it is a perfect “moderate” weather tent for the entire family plus some!

First time setup: Getting ready for my camping trip next month. Ok, I'm 6'2" so that helps with this tent!! * I was able to get the tent up myself by using two poles connect. Yes, having a second person would be very helpful and suggested. I agree with the other comments. Commonsense… this is a 12-person tent, so you should have the extra help, if not, get a smaller tent. So other reviews about very hard to setup… 3 different color poles… read the directions, not too hard to understand after that. Some people have a hard time driving so is it the person or the car? * Next time would NOT fully connect the 1st set of poles but had too with 1 person. Since I'm tall, I was able to connect/fit the poles by pushing in on the tent a little. * Door entry.... I would make sure the poles at both doors are not pulled tight, this will cause issue with the zipper. * Rain -- No tested in rain. Water hose worked. Water as running off the tent. I did not see any leaks with about 5 minutes of adding water. I added extra Scotchgard Water Shield to the doors, windows, and the pole sleeves for added protection just because I had it already. * Height – Nice to have a tent that I do not have bend down. Issue: 50% of the lights would not work. I called the number inside the bag and they sent a replacement within days. Nice customer service! No issues. I go camping in a couple of weeks and will attempt replacing the lights at that time since the tent is down now. I’ll update my rating after my camping 4-day trip in July, if the rate changes. Weather -- We tested it out for one night in the low 50’s, had to close all windows. The windows should help in the hot summer weather. If camping in the cold, make sure you have a good sleeping bag, as you should anyway during cold weather. It’s not a house with R-19/R-30.

Set up one time and one of the poles sheared halfway down so now whenever setup I get splinters.update, i have now used this tent 3 times total and one section of 3 poles have split down the middle length wise, the fabric loops tore easily when setting up, definitely not a one person setup.

No stretch at all. This is a summer tent which I knew, I'm using it for a shelter for a 5k$ pool table and it does fine. The Dome shape holds to the wind excellent. It keeps the snow from getting near it. I'm happy with it, but it is a cheaply built tent. If they made it 18' round I could actually use the table. It's about 15' round not 16.. The should have 18', 20' 24' as well.

We have three small kids and we're kind of *extra* when we go camping. We take air mattresses and chairs and all sorts of stuff. In this tent, we can have a queen-sized air mattress and a king-sized air mattress without them being cramped. There's plenty of room inside and the height of it is great and accommodates my 6' husband. We actually put up a curtain divider in this tent and it doesn't end up feeling like we've lost a lot of space. When we got our tent, it had a broken battery pack for the lights so we use a simple rechargeable power bank that we also use for our phones. We took this tent camping on the Oregon coast and it rained nearly the entire time we were there and there were no leaks in this tent. It's worth the money if you enjoy camping and if you go camping with quite a few folks. This can also be used as a great gathering tent instead of a sleeping tent. It's big enough to accommodate tables/chairs/etc. Overall, a great purchase and definitely something we use regularly. Set up takes awhile the first time and is quite complicated, so make sure to read the directions twice or more.

Complicated set up pieces missing n parts broke