Hi all and thanks in advance for any advice offered. I have been researching CT's for about 6 months now and have changed my mind at least twice that number of times on which one suits our needs. My wife and I have 3 small children aged between 2 and 6 and we generally spend 2 - 3 weeks camping per year spread between national park camping and caravan park camping. I convinced my wife we should look at getting a CT so that we can head off far more quickly than it currently takes for me to pack/unpack our trailer each time we go away. Doing overnight trips over the weekend would hopefully become practical as we wouldn't have hours of packing/unpacking time for each trip. So goes my theory and selling pitch to my wife anyway
I discounted hard floor rear folds early on due to price and restricted size. My mother has a cheap imported soft floor CT which I tried out but I discounted that CT style too as I don't like using a ladder to climb up to the bed and don't want to have to crawl over my partner, or her over me, to exit the bed. I really like the extenda style CT's and I was set on a Trackabout Safari SV Extenda for a long time due to it's great design, quality and size. My thoughts changed recently after a camping trip to a caravan park. The site was only 6m x 6m and I realised the Safari SV Extenda wouldn't fit. If I had an extenda style CT, and I wanted to go to a caravan park, I would need to check the site size every time I booked to ensure it was large enough to fit the CT and I may then be limited to where I can go due to it's size.
I started then thinking about smaller options and looked in to the forward fold CT's (really like the ModCon HF series and Ecomate traveller). I like the FF in that it extends over the draw bar so if the site can fit the approx 5m long trailer, it can fit the full set up. The bed layout also means you don't have to crawl over your partner to get out of bed. My main concern however is whether it will comfortably, and practicably, sleep 2 adults and 3 kids. The Ecomate and HF trailers have seats inside the camper which convert to a double bed suitable for 2 small children which means my oldest would need to sleep outside in the annexe. The annexe isn't large anyway so it seems that it would be quite a squeeze from day 1. As my youngest two grow older and taller they too will probably need to move out to the annexe area which leaves even less room in the annexe. The internal seating doesn't look like it would fit 5 larger people comfortably at all either.
So my main question is, is there any other family's out there who use a forward fold CT with 3 or more children? Is the seating area in a FF practical as it looks very cramped in the pictures when the table is in place. I am over 6 foot tall and my son will probably overtake me by the time he is 10 at the rate he is growing so I don't want to make a purchase that we outgrow in a couple of years. The next caravan/camping show isn't for a while in Brisbane so I can't go and actually get inside some CT's and compare different make and models for a while.
I have looked at the Opus campers website which have beds at each end and the internal seats can also convert to a double bed which would allow all 3 kids to sleep inside (until they get too tall) but I haven't been unable to find any reviews from owners of Opus CT's to see what they actually think of them. The glossy brochures and videos always look great but getting real honest feedback is required before I would even consider something like the Opus. I am also not sure about the folding pram style look of them. It may be just too big a step away from the traditional canvas tent style look that I am used to for me to be able to live with.
Thanks.
