The North Face  Wawona Front Porch Vestibule

So worth it! Also helpful during inclement weather

With this front porch added onto our Wawona 8-person tent, we essentially double our tent space, but with a lower ceiling. Don't let the slightly confusing method of attachment discourage you, this is an incredible addition to the Wawona tents! We can fit multiple chairs inside, a big storage box of car camping supplies, and even a camping toilet for those times when we disperse camp or just don't want to take a little kid to the campsite bathroom in the middle of the night! We like to put a tarp down inside, and just make sure it's not sticking out underneath the tent in case if rain.

Nice but hard to set up

Got this to use with the Wawona 4. It adds a nice, spacious area that's protected from the wind and rain but separate from the tent. There is enough room to stand and for a couple of chairs... HOWEVER, it is weirdly difficult to set up - the instructions were practically unusable. Additionally, there is nothing that actually attaches the front porch to the tent - there is just a strap that you tighten over the rainfly until it's snug. It makes it seem like the front porch was an afterthought. It does work, but I expected a more seamless design, especially for how expensive it is.

Don't let the bad reviews dissuade you!

The bad reviews miss the point.it doesn't add another room to the rent, it adds a covered porch. And it's quite a large front porch, basically doubling the useable space of the wawona4. The tensioned strap attachment method works perfectly well. The porch add on isn't meant to be air tight for a very good reason: ventilation. The porch shields you and your gear from both the sun and the rain, while also allowing for ample air circulation, hence it does not extend all the way to the ground. In warmer climates, people often spend the hottest part of the day sitting on their porch because the inside of the house gets too hot and stuffy. Similarly, with this porch addition, I can guarantee that you will spend the hot part of the day not inside your Wawona, but enjoying the breezy shade beneath this large and luxurious porch.

Just awful

The Wawona tent is nice. My first real tent was a North Face tent back in the 1970's, and it held up well. So, I expected better from North Face. The front porch vestibule is probably one of the worst design mistake in the history of outdoor camping. It has a really stupid connection with the main tent. It is unstable, even when completely tethered down with the guy lines. It merges very poorly with the fly of the main tent, so that if you are using the side doors, you have the flap of the fly vestibule constantly in your way. It would be challenging to find a use for the large end-on door with the strap that connects the two ends of the tent poles. Why oh why did they not form a simple zipper attachment to the main tent, and then redesign the fly to merge seamlessly to the porch?

Sort of works but a lot of annoyance

My previous tent was a trusty old REI Kingdom 4 with the garage addon which I loved to death, so had to find a replacement. I decided to try a Wawona 4 with this porch vestibule. The tent was okay, but the porch vestibule.... no. The good: It mostly works as a vestibule. And I did like how the door zippers were curved so I could unzip just the top part of the doors to leave horizontal ventilation holes in the porch vestibule for hot days. I couldn't do that on my garage since the doors had two vertical zippers. The bad: Where do I even start. As other reviewers have said, the way you put this on is strange and unintuitive. Instead of attaching with zippers, it is held on at the top of the tent by friction with a strap, and then clipped in at the ground on each side. It can be difficult to put on if you are alone and very short, particularly if there is wind. I was able to do it by clipping one side on the ground and pulling on it very firmly upward as I went over the top of the tent, but it took me a few tries to figure out the best way to do it. Next, if you look at the picture closely, notice how the porch vestibule is missing a triangle of material doesn't come to the edge of the tent - it feels like they were cheap so decided to use the tent's vestibule sides as part of the walls. So you are left with two bad choices: Leave the tent's vestibule sides staked out close enough together so that you can actually close the tent flap inside at night but due to the angles, that leaves a giant hole between the tent vestibule sides and the porch vestibule, OR you can move the tent vestibule sides farther apart to the make the hole smaller (but there still is one...) and then you can't close the tent's vestibule flap (or have to restake them) at night! It's annoying either way. Next, there are zero loops anywhere inside the porch vestibule to hang string lights or a small lantern. Finally, the big flap on the end does have webbing loops on the corners, but it would be nice if it had proper grommet holes when you use poles to make a porch. This really needs a redesign.

Don't buy

Don't buy. Design is flawed. Not seamless. The front porch is held to the tent by tension pulling over the front door. The tension cause the backend of the tent to lift up if not staked down. Decent gap between ground and where the fabric starts. The porch design needs to be re-engineered.

Love this!

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] Perfect addition to our Wawona four! Wish the Wawona 4 had option of buying with front porch!

Originally posted on thenorthface.com

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.]

Originally posted on thenorthface.com