Aaaah! Luxury in the sun! We got the green one. We already had the blue one we bought over a year ago. it still works just fine. These Coleman beach tents are incredible. Everyone sees the top review of how someone had no clue how to use it or set it up the right way, which is pretty easy, and, instead, blamed all the mishaps on this well made Coleman beach tent. No matter how hot it is outside, it is always cooler inside this Coleman beach sun tent. You don't have to guess if it really does have SPF protection, you can see the inside and recognize it. Many people took the time to understand very simple mechanics of how to put up a modern day tent. A simple tent. It takes about 10 minutes to put it up. Time goes by fast. Practice setting it up and packing it away, in your home, ahead of time. Watch a few videos about how to put up a tent. Plus, people should know if there is any problem before the return window closes and before you actually take it out to use it. If you know how to set this up, one person can, easily. Everyone, even our young teens, know how to put these up properly, by themselves. These have a place near the "front porch" area to hang wet towels or bathing suits, or really anything that isn't too heavy. You could even hang fairy lights from that area if you were using this for whatever reason when the sun went down. You can hang solar panels off of the top or top sides with some D rings or maybe some paracord. You can throw your big beach towel over the top and it dries pretty quickly. It has a nice "patio" to keep more sand from kicking inside of it and to lay on. On the inside, in each corner at the bottom, are cargo net type of pockets to put things in, if you wanted to. You could put sun tan lotion in them, toys, bottled water, etc. Many already know this, but some don't, which is understandable, but you don't use small metal stakes in the sand for any serious purpose. You use those in the dirt....ground dirt not beach sand. You don't need all of the many smaller sand bag holders that come with this. You just need two regular sized plastic grocery bags, double bagged (4 total), that you fill with sand and put on each side of the tent to attach to the lines on the left and right outside --and then bury them down in the sand. When done, take your grocery bags with you. It's just that simple. This awesome luxury beach tent does come with smaller bags to use for sand bags. I think there are 6 of them. We don't need to use the included metal dirt ground stakes on beach sand to hold down that extended ground cover. You could set your flip flops and beach towels on the extended ground cover to hold it down if a breeze blows through---even a bottle of sun screen holds it down. If it's so windy everything is blowing all over the place, pretty wild wind going on, we likely would not be set up on the beach. You can also rain proof this. In tropical heat a rain shower during the day is not uncommon. You can change clothes or breast feed in these because of the privacy options. You can probably solo camp in them. I know these are stable and good enough for camping. This is our second one. Sometimes a friend or relative likes to borrow our other one. Sometimes one of the teens like to take it out when off with their friends. You can rain proof it and seam seal it. We did our blue one. We will this green one, too. For those who understand the easy task of pitching a tent, you'll love this. You'll find how easy and fast it is to put up and take down. For those who practice putting it away and learning the simple process of how to roll a tent up to go back in its carry bag, good on you for being motivated. Not everyone has someone to show them how to do everything so they take the time to learn these things by watching videos or asking someone. Ours came with very clear instructions sewn into it, with pictures. That would also be helpful to someone. You can use these in the park or at lakes. If at a park, regular ground dirt, and not a beach area, those metal ground stakes that come with this will be useful. If you want to take a dip in the lake or beach for a few, and zip the front shut, you can also take a twisty bread tie, larger paper clip, or a really small D ring and from the inside you can connect the "back door" zippers of this beach tent so they can't be unzipped from the back side ---where you can't see what's going on. Anyone casually strolling along looking to adopt another person's things want to appear natural to others, especially in a populated location tourists often visit. They won't usually start cutting a whole in the back of a tent. That tends to draw negative attention. To pack this up properly into the carry bag, what we do is: If someone else is with you, after you break down the tent, someone else can fold up the tent poles or you can do that yourself. We put the smaller stake bag inside the tent pole bag after the tent poles go back into their carry bag. When ready to fold up the tent sit on the ground. We usually zip the tent closed at this point but have occasionally forgotten to. Place the zipper carry bag across your lap --the bag everything goes into. That tells you how wide the tent needs to be when you are rolling it up TIGHTLY, not loose, but tightly (best as you can). You keep folding in the left and right side of the tent so that the width of it stays the same as the width of the carry bag. Just practice doing that a few times if this is all new to you. It was new to all of us at one time. Once you get the hang of that, when you go to roll it up again, for the last time, to actually put it away, about half way through or close to being done rolling it up, lay the tent poles that are in their own bag, lay them inside the tent as you roll up the tent. Take those two ribbons that came with it when you first opened the tent up and tie each of those ribbons around the tent that you just rolled up, to make it a bit smaller in width. Tie one ribbon kind of near one end of the rolled up tent. Tie the other one near the other end of the tent. It makes it a little more compact. Place that into your zipper carry bag. (Side Note: You can tie those ribbons around the carry handles of the bag when taking out the tent, to make sure they don't get lost or blow away....and....we don't really use those set of six smaller sand bags but it was nice that they came with it.)
