Electric Coolers

[Melwood23]

I am checking into the electric coolers, such as Igloo, Coleman etc for my trip planned for 2007. Since right now I am making plans with a tent in mind, with a possiblity of buying a Livin' Lite *********** pop up that can be towed with my car next spring, I am wondering if any uses these coolers and do they really work well. Has any tent campers used them. I know if I do get one, and am reg tent camping, will have to find a lock and chain to keep the critters out

 

[mash]

We have a pop-up and use an electric cooler by Coleman. We love it - it works great as long as you keep it in the camper with the air conditioning on in the summer. One of the things we love the most is being able to turn it on a couple of nights before we leave to cool it off and pack it up. That's one less thing for me to do the day of departure! After that, it moves very easily between our tow vehicle and our camper. I would highly recommend it.

 

[Melwood23]

well my camp trip is planned for end of Oct, the week of Halloween 2007, so hopefully it is a little cooler. Especially if I have a tent, will not have AC. That is good to know about they work better if kept in a cool enviorment. I was hoping it would save on having to buy ice everyday.

I don't plan on having a lot of food, will mostly be eating somewhere else at Disney, but I thought I least make my own breakfast. Need to keep the eggs, bacon, potaotes, cheese, milk cool, as well as the flavored creamer for my coffee

 

[magicforever]

We love our Coleman electric cooler. We do keep it in the pop up with the ac on. We plug it up when we travel in the car. It sits in the back with next to the window. We traveled early this summer and it stayed cool in the car also. If you are tent camping maybe you could cover part of the cooler, not the fan side with something to keep it at a cooler temperature. I was thinking of one of those emergency blankets. They reflect the heat. It is just an idea. I have never done this. Even if you can't use it while you are tent camping in the middle of summer, they are wonderful things to own. We got ours off of ebay. I payed $25 less than the retail price. Good Luck.

 

[Tigger1]

I have a broken one. These cool about 30 to 40 degrees cooler than the outside temperature. Mine was never cool enough for the outdoors. I let someone borrow mine. When they came back it was full of ice (they had gone deep sea fishing). It has never worked since then. The ice covered the fan on the inside.

Also, you do need to turn on the cooler about a day before your trip. It takes time to initially cool them. That means you will need to plug it in your car cig lighter as you travel.

If you get a pop up, you can aircondition and that would help the cooler.

The coolers would be great for a dorm room if you have a family member living in a dorm. If you buy one be sure it has the plug in for household (ac) and the car (dc),

 

[Disneefun]

We have one and have found that we can cool it down even further by using an ice bag or those solid ice blocks. I never trusted it with just the regular cooling -- it never seemed cool enough for meats to be safe, long term. Since you can't put ice directly in the cooler (water and electricity=bad), we've found that if we fill a gallon ziploc bag w/ice (we double bag to be safe) it keeps things super cool and we never have to worry about food temperature. Those blue ice blocks work well, too, but on a longer camping trip you don't have a way to refreeze them so once they thaw, that's it. You don't need much ice to make a difference, so maybe you could offer to split the cost with another family if you don't want to pay for lots of ice every day. Just my .02

 

[F4disneyfan]

I am checking into the electric coolers, such as Igloo, Coleman etc for my trip planned for 2007. Since right now I am making plans with a tent in mind, with a possiblity of buying a Livin' Lite *********** pop up that can be towed with my car next spring, I am wondering if any uses these coolers and do they really work well. Has any tent campers used them. I know if I do get one, and am reg tent camping, will have to find a lock and chain to keep the critters out

We had the igloo koolmate40 and loved it we lent it to a family member who left it in the rain so they replaced it with the Coleman one and it was terrible. I would not reccomend the Coleman one to anyone we have recently replaced that one with 2 new Igloo Koolmate40's again.

 

[Tigger1]

BTW, My bad luck was with a coleman
Tigger