We spent 9 days in Sprinty (Aug 4-13) and from what I’ve seen written previously in reviews, this review is about to be the most detailed and honest one here, including things I wish I knew before renting and things we learned along the way from living and driving in Mr. McSprinter; big and small, important and not.PROS
Sprinty fits everywhere—every parking space (even the tight ones), every campsite, every road.It handles well—we had zero issues driving the van, even along some of the bumpier roads in Glacier NP, around construction zones, and tight curves.It is gas efficient—but caveat here—there are no gas stations near the west side of the park with diesel. The closest stations are not too far though, found in Coram, maybe 20-25 min from the park entrance? Not a huge deal, but good to know about if you’re on a tight schedule. The East side had closer diesel stations.Bear Spray—Since we flew into Montana, the fact that Sprinty had not one, but two cans of bear spray for us to carry around was SO nice. We didn’t have to worry about renting and returning or buying any.Cooking—it was lovely to be able to cook using the induction stove while it was either raining or too hot/too cold to want to be cooking outside. We loved using the Coleman stove too when it was nice out. Having both options made mealtimes easy and enjoyable.
Back-up camera—this was clutch! Since you can’t see behind the van, this made it possible to easily and successfully back in and out of everywhere, along with seeing other cars behind us.CONS
Starting with the biggest one:
Comfort. If you are a shorter person, you will have a giant bar protruding into your calves the whole time you ride in the passenger seat, unless you kind of awkwardly and widely straddle the seat. At 5’2”, my feet didn’t quite reach the ground, so it was even hard to plant them on either side of the bar to straddle it. I imagine if you have longer legs, straddling the bar and also just planting your legs farther away from the bar in the center would be much easier. I did not notice this in the driver’s seat, but I might’ve been too focused on driving to notice it as much if it was the same way. The seat also does not recline so you may get a bit fatigued sitting perfectly upright, while a bar is protruding into your legs for long stretches of driving.On the same topic of comfort, we have the bed. In the listing, It claims “The queen sized bed has a 6 foot length across the van.” This just simply cannot be true. At 5’2” I struggled to stretch out completely. It was possible to put my head against the very top of the headboard and stretch entirely out, with my feet just pushing up against the other side of the van. But this left me with an incredibly sore neck (and a very painful next day of hiking) because I was so crammed up against the hard wood sides of the van. At 5’10”, my boyfriend pretty much gave up on sleeping well. He had to dangle half of his body off of the bed. We ended up sleeping diagonally (this would work best with just one person) with him dangling off, but it was a challenge to get a real good night’s sleep. If you’re a fetal position sleeper, you’ll probably be fine. But if you’re taller than 5’2” and not sleeping alone, really think hard about this one.Safety/Maintance. Sprinty felt safe for the most part, but the driver’s side seatbelt is not functional. It’s baggy and loose, and you can sort of manually tighten it, but it’s still not functioning properly and does not feel like it would be effective in case of an accident. This is something the owners need to fix ASAP.Second, the brakes are squeaky. I’m not mechanic, but this is probably a sign that the brakes need maintenance in some way, whether it be brake pads or brake fluid or something else altogether. Glacier NP is not the place to have mediocre breaks. With carrying so much weight, the curves and hills on the Going to the Sun road, the unpredictable car and foot traffic, along with the fact that an animal could dart out in front of you at any moment, you want to have good breaks so you can execute the swiftest, safest stops possible. This is something the owners also need to look into ASAP.Lastly, sometimes, for no reason at all, the van took a bit to get started. It never resulted in any issues, but knowing that this was a thing that would happen quite frequently on startup would’ve put us at ease the first few times it happened.Storage. This is actually a pro and a con, but more of a con. Sprinty has a ton of storage! So that’s a pro. All of your stuff will fit. But the storage itself really isn’t all that functional. It would’ve been much nicer to have smaller cabinets and/or drawers that closely contained your things. Instead, the upper 3 storage bins are just one long compartment. So if you think it makes sense to separate your belongings amongst the three areas, think again. The moment you start driving, you’ll end up with one giant pile of stuff and no way to secure any of it. That made it so that basically all 3 compartments belonged to my boyfriend for ease, and I took the storage space in the “garage” with access from under the bed. Which leads me to my next major con:The door that leads to the garage from the inside of the van does not latch. It has a latch. It’s just a worthless latch. We would try to put our heavy packs against the door while driving because it would alarmingly swing open at the first bump, and then bang around until we pulled over to re-latch it. But that wasn’t sustainable. Our packs would slide around and then the door would soon again be open. I eventually temporarily fixed it with a hair elastic, but even that sometimes would fail. I really hope the owners fix this because it was a huge annoyance. And if they do find a better way to secure it, I hope it’s easier than the second latch that was installed to secure the fridge—that thing is hard to use! Definitely childproof, and almost adultproof.While on the topic of the fridge, along with it being hard to unlatch, nothing stays put. Be prepared for all of your food and drinks to fall out, despite there being compartments that look like they should hold your drinks in place. The freezer is worthless. Only half of what was in there stayed frozen, so I would probably stick to refrigerated foods only, or frozen foods that will be eaten within a day or that won’t go really bad if they start thawing.Sink. It’s just bad. All of it. The size, the location, the knob. It can’t fit anything but small things like a cup or a bowl. Nope, not even a plate, and definitely not a pan. So when you wash your dishes, you will get water everywhere and you won’t have any leverage to actually scrub a pan unless you move your pan full of soapy, dirty dish water away from the sink and scrub on the table or counter.I’m getting into my smaller cons, let’s just call them annoyances.Grey Water Tank. It’s small and it’s opaque. There’s no real way to check how full it is, no window, no gauge. It’s something we constantly had to check by feel and hope we were right. We started to get the hang of what 1/2 full v. 3/4 full and so on felt like towards the end of our trip, but it was a bit tricky at the beginning. Even with what felt like extremely conservative water usage, it always seems to fill up quickly, and so we emptied it everyday just to be sure.Outlet. There is one and it is in the most inconvenient place. You can’t really reach it and if you’re charging something that has an indicator light for when it’s charged (like a camera battery), you can’t see it. And it’s not near anything like the bed or dashboard so definitely bring a USB cable for charging your phones at night via nightlight.Nightlights. A good idea in theory, but their tap functionality was wacky since you had to cycle through the brightest setting again to turn off the nightlight part. Also since the USB inputs were underneath, if you wanted to charge your phone at night, you were left with a cord dangling over your head and your phone under your pillow since there’s no cubby or shelf to rest your phone on.Cabinet Handles. Ouch. Square knobs! Hard metal knobs with four corners is not the most comfortable thing to yank on. I hurt myself a few times on those buggers.Fan doesn’t really move much air. It get stuffy in there.Fully-stocked kitchen = not really fully stocked. The honey was unusable, hard as a rock. The seasonings were almost empty. We had to buy some staples.
It did come with paper towels but the kind that virtually disintegrates when they get wet. They are useless at drying anything unless you use an entire wad. It feels wasteful.The knives were really crappy and didn’t cut anything well, especially not a tomato.The cutting board and some of the plates and bowls were dirty.They claimed to have cleaned the van before we arrived but I ended up wiping/peeling off several squashed bugs that were there upon arrival from the ceiling above the bed on my first night because I was tired of looking at them while I was trying to fall asleep.The trash bag/cabinet door situation was annoying, there’s gotta be a better way!Just one mug. After the first day of having to share, we ended up buying another mug at a gift shop.The magnets for the window covers were so weak, it was frustrating every night.Also frustrating is the light switches controlled the opposite lights you think they should control.The sliding door was HARD to use. We couldn’t close it from the inside, but even when it was closable from the outside, it was still very hard to open and close properly.And now, on to our hosts.
It seems based on past reviews that people have had positive experiences with them so I’m sad to say we had the opposite experience. Perhaps this was just an off kind of week+ for them, but our hosts left on their own camping trip, were not there to greet us or show us around the van when we arrived, and were also gone when we dropped the van off. We had this trip planned for 7 months, but yet they felt it would be a good time to go away themselves and be entirely unreachable and out of service.Since they weren't there to walk us through anything and the youtube video leaves out a bunch of things, we had to rely on the
the instructions in their handbook which aren’t the best. At one point I needed to locate the first aid kit. It was NOT where it said it was in the book, and we looked everywhere for it. I ended up buying a whole box of bandaids just for one.Filling water sounded simple in the handbook. It wasn’t. They either left out that we needed to unclip the bent hose on the side of the tank for water to enter the tube without squirting back at us or that we needed to lift the tube up while pouring water in, while also holding the tube firm where it meets the container so it doesn’t leak. We figured it out, but none of that was instructed.They left the van in mediocre condition and things on the checklist that were supposed to be included were missing. When I brought the missing items to their attention they got very dismissive and condescending. We have a checklist, they clearly did not go over it. In addition to things being missing, dirty and unfilled, the didn’t even leave us with a full tank of gas. Sure, they told us we could return it to them at that same level, but that is much harder to figure out than just filling it up, as it should’ve been. How do you even fill a tank to a certain notch when there aren’t any numbers or anything that tell you how much gas that is? To me, it’s just lazy. Fill the tank. Fill the soap. Fill the spices. Check the list. Look over the van. Actually provide things people need if you say it’s all provided. Be available. And be kind.
