We just took ours down this past weekend. I started on Thursday night by vacuuming to waste to get the dirt off the bottom and start lowering the water. Then I backwashed and rinsed the sand filter good, which also took some water off. Then I let the pump run to waste until the water was down to the intake. Then hooked up the hose to the drain in the bottom of the pool and let it go. By Saturday morning it was empty aside from the little bit of water that was below the drain plug. Then we hooked up a portable sump pump type thing to pump the rest out. We lifted the bottom of the liner to try to get the water to pool in one specific area for the pump to get. Then I went in with the shop vac and sucked up all remaining dirt/water. Then sprinkled the inside liberally with baby powder (especially at the seam where the sides meet the bottom since water tends to stay in there), then took down the frame and laid the sides in, being sure to sprinkle the baby powder where the sides overlapped. Then I folded 4 sides in to make it a square, cleaned the bottom and let it sit for a while to dry out good. Then folded 2 sides in, cleaned the bottom, let dry, sprinkle, fold. Kept doing that until it was all folded up. It's a bit of a slow process, but it's what I did last year as well and we had zero issues setting up this year. While the bottom was drying I cleaned other things to pack away. We store ours on shelf in our basement and have a large Rubbermaid bin that we store all of the hoses, plungers, toys, etc in. I also throw in one of those things you can put in a closet to absorb moisture.