Legitimate question, not trying to start an argument, but what do ya'll see as the benefits of an RTT over other options? You can get a nice base camp tent for a 1/3 of the cost of an RTT and they take up about a 1/5 of the space when packed up.
Not to mention I'm lucky if I make it out of my vestibule to answer the call of nature in a normal tent. If I had to go down a ladder, I'd probably end up taking a leak on my truck.
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I've only camped in ground tents until we got our RTT about a month and half ago. Since then we've had two trips and 6 nights in the RTT and I have so far been very happy (and even more importantly my wife and kids love it).
Benefits:
-Set-up is quick. The first night we set up at 11:30 at night in a thunderstorm. It took less then 5 minutes to get it open to the point where the rest of the set-up was under cover and out of the rain.
-In Florida there is a real benefit to being off the ground. The ground here is always wet, muddy or sandy. Also keeps us away from all of the ground critters around here (which makes the wife happy).
-Comfortable. I have never slept so well in a tent, especially when the low temperature at night is about 75 degrees. We had a couple portable fans going in the tent and it is up above the low vegetation so there is always some air to circulate through the tent. The mattress in our tent is also way more comfortable then any camping air mattress or pad that I've ever used on the ground.
-Everything stored inside. This goes back to the quick set-up. We store all of our blankets, sheets and sleeping bags in the tent. Just open it up and go to sleep, no need to haul things out of the car and then set it up in the tent. In all it has actually opened up more storage space inside the 4runner for other things.
-It's cool! This is just an opinion, but honestly the roof top tent is a pretty cool outdoor toy. They are rare down here in Florida, so everyone is kind of in awe of it.
Drawbacks:
-Having to pack up every time you want to move the vehicle. This is the only real negative I have found so far.
-Nature calling at night. Although this was not as big of an issue as I thought it would be. You still have to get up and get out of the tent, there is just a ladder involved, but that really only delay's the relief by about 10 seconds.
In all for our family the benefits have far outweighed the drawbacks. If you are person or family that sets up a basecamp at one spot and then drives from there to explore places nearby and comes back to the same camp every night, the RTT can be a pain and a ground tent would probably be a better option. If you are a person or family that stays in different places, and you would be setting up and packing every day anyway, or you set up camp and explore without driving from the campsite the RTT IMO is a better option. To me the best of both worlds would be a RTT mounted on a trailer so that you can use that as the basecamp to explore around driving, but still retain all of the benefits of the RTT. This is just not in the funds for us as of now. As I recently posted, having the quick release mounts so I can take the tent on and off to store quickly helps a lot. If I did not have them, I don't know if the RTT would be worth it as I don't want to spend hours mounting and un-mounting the tent every time I want to go camping, which over time would get tiring. Since my 4runner is also my grocery getter/child-family transportation vehicle and I live in hot and humid as hell South Florida I also don't want my tent on my roof for weeks or months at a time.
Just my .02
