In today's video, I'm going to give you my first impressions
of the storyteller overland beast mode!
What is going on youtube greetings from mexican hat utah i'm out here on blm land it's a really
pretty spot if you go to campendium and you search mexican hat you'll find this spot you
can stay here 14 days it's something i preach about van life all the time when you start
go out and find blm land find national forest land and camp for free you'll never go back
to a campground once you've camped in a beautiful spot like this and not had to pay a dime to enjoy
it so i picked up the storyteller three days ago i was pretty surprised when i got there and they're
like here's a beast mode i thought i was getting a regular mode so i was really really super stoked
about getting a beast mode after i picked it up in utah i drove three straight days my first sign
i stayed in a walmart and the second two nights i stayed in rest areas so i didn't record the pickup
or any of that travel stuff because i figured it's pretty boring i'm just staying in walmart parking
lots figured we'd jump right into the action let me preface this video by saying these are my first
impressions i'm gonna do a van tour and more of a review of the storyteller after i've lived in
it for a while but i'm gonna tell you what i think about it after the first 72 hours and spending all
my time in it driving so let's go the sun just came up so hopefully it doesn't affect this too
much but this is a storyteller beast mode so for those that don't know storyteller has three rigs
they sell they sell the mode which is the basic 4x4 they sell a stealth which is a different
color it's like a darker color and then they sell the beast mode which is the ultimate storyteller
and pretty awesome so as you can see it's got a lot of things that adventure vans have obviously
it's been lifted it's got bigger tires it's got a ladder up to the top of the roof which is pretty
awesome unlike my van the travado the roof has a rooftop deck so you can actually stand up on
it you can jump and down on it if you want that's what storyteller says so i'm gonna get up there
and do that again this is the beast mode so it comes with all the bells and whistles you'll see
it's got kc lights it's got kc lights all around the van which is pretty awesome you got the front
brush guard as well i'm sure you can add a winch to that so another thing that's on board this van
is a air system so you can deflate your tires and then re-inflate them when you're off the trail
all right so first impressions what do i love about this van there's a couple things that i
noticed right away that were different from my van so the first one is how stable everything is
i mean you can literally hang off this thing and be okay this stuff is really really solid
and on here really good that brings me to my second point inside each one of these cabinets
everything is padded so there's absolutely no noise created by the things that you have inside
your cabinets that wasn't the case in my travano everything would be rattling around like this
little area i'm using for all my electronics like something like this would have made all kinds of
noise on the road in my travato but here i didn't notice any road noise from things and cabinets
whatsoever alright so the next thing i love i've got half the bed up right now but what i
really love about it is the mattress is very very comfortable i like firm mattresses and it's really
firm i would not put a mattress topper on top of this thing it's pretty awesome another thing that
i really really love that i noticed right away was that all the windows open in some form or
fashion which is really cool and when you hit this fan it just sucks the air through your
bed area up to the fan so if it's a warm day you can stay nice and cool in the bed i have the same
thing in my travato i'm not sure why but for some reason the ventilation across the bed is just much
better in here i don't know if it's because the beds were lower in the travado but i really like
the ventilation that you can create inside the van the next thing i really like about this setup
is where the refrigerator is i'm not sure if i'll be able to get down here so when you're outside
what's really cool about this refrigerator is you can open it up and you have access to it outside
there's actually a table right here that folds down so you can have your table out you'll be
sitting out there and you can reach around here and grab something to drink i think that's just
a really cool smart feature of this van and it's pretty awesome so another thing i love about this
thing first impression wise is there is no propane so i don't have to worry about filling up propane
when i go to heat the rig it uses diesel fuel i don't know if you can see this over here let me
bring my face around it's like tracking my face that's why it's moving there's a little turn on
switch here that starts siphoning fuel out of the diesel tank to heat water or to heat the
rig i've already used it it worked pretty well so there's no propane here which i love and i don't
have to worry about filling up propane which was a huge thorn in my side once it started getting
cold another cool thing about this rig from first impressions that i really like that are different
from my travato are the lights they're like touch buttons so i just touch this button and they come
on and off and if i hold the button down it'll dim and brighten the lights which i also think is
super super cool so you can dim them down really low at night all right now let me talk about some
of the things that i think might be a challenge like i said before this is a first impression
my ideas might change later but this is my first impressions of things that i think might
make it a little bit difficult living in this van full especially full time so the first one
that i noticed right away and i've heard this before that when you go from a promaster to a
mercedes what you'll notice right away is that the promaster is much wider or at least feels
much wider because it's more boxy so the one thing i've really noticed if you come down here
you'll see that this groove lounge and the little sink area is really really close together and
if you come even further down here you'll see there's these little things that allow you to
move the groove lounge up and down and every time i walk through here i whack the side of my leg
on those little latches that go up and down maybe i'm sure in the future it'll become habit where i
where i move sideways like this but you definitely can't walk i can't walk through this area
my hips are too big to walk through this area normally so you gotta do the van life shuffle
if i was designing this van and storyteller said hey kevin we want to make this van for you
keep everything that's cool like make little tweaks that'll fit your lifestyle better
i would ask them to make this countertop area about an inch and a half shorter
and maybe make this bench two or three inches thinner and then you'd be able to just walk
through it and i wouldn't have to do the whole van life shuffle thing okay so the next thing
that i think probably won't be an issue for me but could be an issue for other people is that
these cabinets are not as big as cabinets inside of a promaster and the reason for that
is the mercedes kind of goes like this where the promaster is just a straight box
so your cabinets have to conform to that shape so they're much less deep than the ones in my trovato
and because they also put that padding in there which is a positive to make it silent you lose
even more space in there i love the shower design in this van which we'll talk more about later when
we do a full tour video but it takes up a huge cabinet area so not only are the cabinets smaller
because of the dimensions of the mercedes and the padding that's put in there but you also lose
your biggest cabinet area for the shower even though i'm a minimalist and i didn't bring that
much stuff with me i'm still trying to figure out how to store my stuff in this van where it's not
laying all over the place okay so the last thing based on my initial impression that i don't like
is probably gonna surprise a lot of you i don't like the cassette toilet so i've always been a
huge proponent of cassette toilets on this channel but i think what i'm a proponent of
is cassette toilets that are built into the rig so all you have to do is go to the outside of the rig
open up a little panel and pull out the cassette and go and empty it somewhere that's not the case
with this cassette toilet you kind of have to move it around and pull this up and do a lot of things
but to be honest with you it's just a big pee bottle and so you might as well just pee in
a bottle it's much easier to dispose of and you know you get a sun-kissed sunny d bottle as a guy
and you can pee in that thing really easily and then just dump it out somewhere so i think
this is not as cool as i thought it was gonna be but we'll see as i go on maybe i'll adapt
and i'll figure out how to use this better okay so those were my first impressions both the positive
and the negative you know one of the positives i forgot to mention was how comfortable this rig is
mercedes and storyteller did such a good job on the seats everything in this van
is super comfortable this seat is just amazingly comfortable even though it's kind of in an awkward
sitting position now because i haven't like leaned it back the front seats are very comfortable i
mentioned that the bed is very comfortable anywhere that you sit and relax like a lot
of times i will just sit here and kind of put my feet up and this is super relaxing because
the walls are all padded with the headlock wool so it's just super comfortable to sit here and relax
but yeah i wanted to give you my first impressions of the van like i mentioned we're going to do
a full tour as i live in this thing longer and learn more about what i like and dislike
i'll obviously update that in the next few days we're going to be traveling to bali of the gods
that should be amazing so make sure you hit that subscribe button and notification bell
if you haven't already so you get notified when i put out new videos i'll probably be
putting out more frequent videos i'll be doing some live streams from really cool locations
i think this is going to be a super fun adventure so thanks for watching and see you next week