Coleman 10-Person Dark Room Cabin Tent


Coleman 10-Person Dark Room Cabin Tent

It’s back! Previous thread stated it was an instant tent, but ended up being a “Fast Pitch Setup” instead. This is the Costco version of the tent based on previous Woot reviews.

I highly suggest reading the Costco reviews here:
https://www.costco.com/coleman-10-person-dark-room-fast-pitch-cabin-tent-.product.100474962.html

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I do quite a bit of tent camping. The negative reviews are all about waterproofing and need to be taken with a grain of salt.

No cheap tent like this is waterproof. You need to take that into your own hands. Get the water proofing sprays and seam sealer from the camping area in your store. That will help significantly. Still, these tents are built for fair weather and will not hold up to heavy storms. In that case, your better off leaving or look to spend $$$$ on an all weather tent. Have a Sam’s Club version of this but not dark. With It’s limitations in mind, it’s a great tent. Plenty of room for 2 adults with dogs, so it should be good for families too. Super easy set-up. Takes less than 10 mins. Good air flow with all the windows. Had it for a couple uears now, and I waterproof it every year. Holds up fine to light showers after that. No rain inside. Really tempted to switch to this dark version, but the mine is still in such good shapethat there is really no point.

I like the idea of this dark room feature but looking at the reviews brings home how poor the construction and bad the design of the fly and door is.
Even if you spent a bunch of time waterproofing this it’s not going to change the problem of the fly dumping water through the door when you go in an out which several reviews mentioned.
That said I normally put a blue tarp over these types of tents because I expect them to not be waterproof.

I used to have the dome version of this tent. Don’t have it any more because the plastic feet that are supposed to be touching the ground, don’t actually touch the ground. The nylon strap that holds the plastic feet to the tent is what sits on the ground, and if you actually use the tent, those straps wear down against the ground and break. One tent didn’t last a summer because the straps just worn away from rubbing on the ground. The tent is worthless then because there’s no tension holding the bottom of the tent and it just falls flat. It looks like in this one, the poles sit directly on the nylon straps which will be the breaking point.

We’ve owned a 10+ year old version of the “10 x 14” Coleman tent and it has been a reliable performer. We also own several other tents.

  1. Waterproofing - we never rely on a tent to be waterproof, especially after a couple years use. We use Nikwax waterproofing, carefully applied per the instructions. We also apply seam sealer.

  2. Normally a fair number of the negative reviews of a product by inexperienced users can be discounted. However, in this case, those negative reviews about water intrusion appear to be valid and related to the design of the tent.

  3. We love the hinged and stretched around a flexed pole, door on our tent. It is so much nicer than a floppy zippered door. But this model’s implementation might have something wrong with it. The rain fly on our model overhangs the door, supported by a dedicated pole.

With all those negative ratings at Costco, perhaps it is not surprising Coleman ended up with surplus tents they need to clear out. But selling them rather than trashing them appears to be trashing Coleman’s otherwise solid reputation for reasonably priced tents.