Macpac Wanaka Camping Tent

We have had our Wanaka Tent for ten years plus. Used as second tent on camping holidays. Mainly used by Aunties and teenage children. Not to bad to put up. Lots of room and head space. Always find putting up doorway pole a problem. Off to get first repairs since purchased. Damage from an other tent . Top tent top design.

Light and yet strong, easy to set up! We’ve had many camping trips with this tent and still going strong! Can’t ask for a better family tent!

I brought this tent for the summer of 2017..the tent is not the biggest of six men tents but is a very practical sleeping area for me my partner and two kids! So In our tent we have two porter cots one on either side and one queen airbed in the middle along with a zempire shelter at the foot of the entry it's a perfect camp base! With four humans in it sleeping the condensation is very bad! how do we combat this? do you have a solution? It would be like a shower in there with 6 men sleeping in it! Over all though my family and I are happy considering it's packed away size you do get a good sized base! I rate it highly.

I've just spent 3 month travelling the UK and other parts of Europe with my wife and 3 children aged 7, 9 and 10. I purchased the Wanaka specifically for this trip as I wanted to make sure I had a good quality tent.
Good points:
It may seem weird but what will stick with me most about this tent is the soft blue light that greets you in the morning even on rainy days. It may seem trivial but it brightened each morning. The tent itself was easy to erect and I could do it myself although I prefered help getting the fly over the top. Similarly packing up was simple and placing it in the bag was easy.
Once set up the tent was large enough for our family but we opted to leave our packs in the car. The "room dividers" were novel at the start of the trip but spent most of the trip rolled up.
The Vestibule is fairly small for the number of people but serviceable.
For most of the trip we had no problems with rain or condensation entering the tent. The only exception to this was a small patch where condensation that formed on the inside of the fly dripped through the mesh vents near the side rooms, this was only minor though.
The Issue:
Three weeks into this trip one of the Black (side) poles failed. On contacting Macpac I was informed the only approved repairer was in Edinburgh. As we'd just come from Scotland I decided to split the pole and see if someone could assist us in London. 5 days before we got to London (about 10 days after the initial fail) the second black pole failed in a similar position to the first failure and the next night both poles failed in a second position.
Arriving in London I emailed Macpac head office again and was told my only options in Europe were Edinburgh or the Netherlands.
The repairer in the Netherlands was great however, sending a full pole set to London for me to take what I needed and send the rest back.
These second poles have not failed, however I have been placing them in the peg loop and not there eyelet as a way to reduce stress on them. This hasn't seemed to negatively affect the structural integrity of the tent (though might have something to do with the condensation issue). I'm still yet to determine if the failure is the result of the tent design or a bad set or poles. I wasn't that impressed with the support structure in Europe though.
While I had the black poles out repairing them the rest of the tent seemed structurally sound and I felt would have got us through in a pinch if we were desperate.

Have used this several times since we've bought it. Great sturdy structure. Packs up into a small sports bag which is great to pack in the car. Thoughtful extras inside - e.g. tags for indoor lights to hang from, dividers so you can have individual sleeping compartments, and withstood rain without any problems. Kids love it and it makes you want to use it because it's so easy to care for and erect. Very happy with the purchase.

Fantastic tent. Uses 4 aluminium poles to hold fly which makes it pretty bomb proof. Only used it for a couple of nights so far but it's very stable in wind. Also features a clever fabric for tent floor which seems to repel water i.e. we rolled the tent up dry despite it sitting on wet grass (it rained overnight) - amazing. Downsides to this tent were: (1) Not set up as a display in any stores so it was a leap of faith buying it (2) Stitching was a bit sloppy, although it was more cosmetic than structural (3) Instructions were in essay form and I still don't know where the tent shell grommets are supposed to be fixed to - a picture is worth a thousand words and pictures were lacking from the instructions (4) The internal partitioned areas are on the small size and unlikely to fit 2 adults. Overall an excellent tent that is made of quality materials and I'm sure will last well. You can stand up in the middle which is a real asset for family camping.

Finally, a family tent that doesn't weigh a ton but still with plenty of room and the technology to handle whatever the weather throws at you. After years of pitching tents specific for hiking it's been a relief to find a family tent that isn't over the top; this tent is for those that enjoy the simplicity of what camping has to offer – camping not glamping!