Indoor Skydiving
(I’m in the yellow helmet, the instructor is wearing the white helmet)
I wanted to do something fun when I was in Orlando on Friday afternoon and I flipped through a few of the tourist coupon books. I came across an ad for SkyVenture, which has an indoor skydiving facility and looked really interesting. I called and made a reservation for 2:00 PM.
I arrived at SkyVenture around 1:40 and the facility was interesting. There was a small office building next to a tremendous round tower where the indoor flying takes place. I parked about 30 feet from the tower and you could hear the roar of the huge fan ( ~ 1000 horse power!) that provides the 120+ MPH wind that people float in. I filled out the paperwork (basically a disclaimer saying my heirs can’t sue if I fly into a giant fan and get chopped up in legalese), paid, and then headed over to the tower to watch the group that was currently flying.
There were 5 or 6 people in the group taking turns and it all looked like they were having a lot of fun, but I could tell it wasn’t easy. Some of the people were pros and floated around effortlessly while others needed a bunch of help from the instructor. Towards the end of the session I was watching, the instructors jumped into the air stream and did some crazy almost Matrix-like maneuvers.
Around 2:00 out instructor called for everyone to head upstairs to the class and equipment area. The class consisted of a mother with two young daughters and myself. The instruction was somewhat of a let down, it took about 5 minutes and mostly consisted of the instructor telling us to relax, make small movements and then showing us a few hand signals he would give (raising chin up, and straightening or curling your legs) when in the flight tunnel. We would have to use hand signals because there is no way you can hear over the fan noise if you are in the air stream.
In the classroom there was a table you could lay down on and I expected that the instructor would have us use it to practice the skydiving position but no dice. He did show us the position we should use (stomach facing down, chin up, knees bent at about a 70 degree angle, arms bent), but I felt somewhat short-changed on the instruction since the price per minute of time inside the wind tunnel itself was really high (basically $20-30/minute) and it would have been nice if we could have had a bit of more realistic practice first during the “free” classroom time.
After the class session was over, another customer who had about 10 indoor skydiving sessions under his belt also joined us to get equiped. We got suited with knee and elbow pads, jumpsuits, earplugs, helmets and goggles and then headed down to the wind tunnel entrance.
The experienced guy went first and he was able to float around pretty comfortably. One of the young girls (maybe 10 years or so) went next and she required a bunch of assistance from the instructor. Then it was my first turn (I had paid for (2) 2 minute sessions). The first minute or so was pretty awkward, I would feel like I was getting the hang of it and float for a second and then I would shift position a tiny bit and start flying up, down, or sideways. The floor was a spongy mesh and you were never falling fast so it was no big deal if you hit the ground. The instructor helped guide me sometimes with a hand and sometimes with hand signals. Towards the end of the first flight segment I started feeling more comfortable and then the flashing lights went off indicating my 2 minutes was up and I had to exit so the next person could take their turn.
During my 2nd turn it went a lot smoother, I was able to spend much more of my 2 minute turn gliding around and expending less effort trying to stabilize myself.
This is definitely something I would like to do again next time I’m in a location that has this type of facility. It was a lot of fun and I’d recommend this to anyone. Note that there are weight restrictions, so if you think it might be an issue, ask about it when you call for a reservation.
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Nice! We have a skyVenture over here (About 10 minutes away from where I work) too. I’ve always wanted to try it, but could never convince myself to spend the money to do it.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Sounds like fun. I agree… sounds like they should have given you more “free” advice before you went in.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Gerrit – you can try it for just over $40 if you don’t care about getting SkyVenture supplied pictures/DVD (have your wife take them) and snag one of the $5 coupons on the web.
Eric – I saw some photos later of other sites and it looked like they did a more thorough classroom instruction, so maybe my instructor just wasn’t into it. Still a blast though.