Detailed review by koshkha
koshkha
Northampton, United Kingdom98%
For my birthday last year my husband bought me a voucher to fly in the windtunnel at Bodyflight near Bedford. The business is based on a business park a few miles outside the town.
Once we found the place, we parked up, walked past the vertical wind-tunnel which looks a bit like a big silo, and into reception. There's a nice swimming pool and gym on the ground floor and if you're visiting with a non-flying partner (or if you fancy a swim yourself) a day pass costs a fiver. I filled in my registration details, gave them my voucher and we headed up three flights of stairs.
Bodyflight ask you to arrive one hour before your flight time which seemed to be a bit extreme as there really wasn't much to do. Tunnel time is very expensive and if you turn up late, you'll lose it. The tunnel was booked every minute of the afternoon that we were there so it is important not to be late, I'm just not sure that it's really necessary to be an hour early.
We checked-in on the top floor where the girl on the desk explained that she'd by the trainer and told us to relax and told us where the viewing gallery was and warned us that the people in there were 'very experienced' and we shouldn't be worried that we'd have to do anything like they were doing. We later learned that these were international standard tunnel flyers and watching the pros was a real eye opener.
The most noticeable thing was how hot it was at the tunnel imagine being by a giant hot air hand-dryer both for temperature and noise levels and you'll get the idea. The professionals who were flying before us were just incredible, swooping and soaring, spinning on their backs, fronts, adopting gravity defying positions and leaping about like something from a CGI-enhanced adventure film.
About half an hour before we were due to fly, two more people had arrived and the instructor handed out the flight suits and told us to get ready. The suits have sausage-like extensions down the inside and outside of the legs and on the arms. I assumed that these would make us like flying squirrels and increase our resistance to the air but later realised it was to give the instructor something to grab hold of when we shot off in strange directions and flipped over like turtles. After putting on the flight suits, removing jewellery and watches and making sure our helmets were the right size, we picked up our ear plugs and eye shields, double checked our shoes were tightly knotted (nobody wants to lose a show in the tunnel) and headed into the training room. The instructor explained the basics of what would happen, got us to hop on and off a gym horse and 'adopt the position' and then took us through the basic hand signals that she'd use inside the tunnel. She explained how to 'fall into' the tunnel safely and that really was pretty much all there was to it. Unfortunately the one thing she didn't explain was how the session would run and what we should expect other than that our names would come up on a screen and we'd have to be ready when we were called.
About five minutes before we were due to start we put in our ear plugs, put on our helmets and headed to the waiting area. The pros were doing their final bit of swooping around and we watched jealously as they showed off. And then suddenly the time had come, the tunnel speed was cut to a much slower pace (to stop us shooting off in any uncontrollable way) and the instructor stepped into the tunnel and called the first flyer.who promptly got the collywobbles and refused to go in. After wasting half of her 75 second session deciding not to fly, her boyfriend stepped in and started his go. I was the last of the four to step in and by the time I started the scheduling was already all over the place because someone else hadn't turned up. I lifted my chin, tucked my hands into my chest and fell into the tunnel. It wasn't elegant, I wasn't classy and I flopped around like a fish out of water with the biggest grin on my face and a massive amount of saliva dribbling down my chin. Thank goodness we didn't opt to buy the photos as I'm sure I looked like an over-excited Labrador. The instructor grabbed the sausages down my arms and legs to flip me around and I was soon getting the hang of propelling myself around the tunnel by bending and straightening my legs.
After my first flight I was really disappointed to realise I was only scheduled for one more go. Whilst Bodyflight insist that 75 seconds is equivalent to one and a half free-fall parachute jumps, it still feels like a ridiculously short time. Hubby had bought me the basic voucher that gives you just two sessions in the tunnel but due to the late arrival of someone who'd booked a quadruple lesson (8 flights) and the girl who'd decided it wasn't for her, I got an extra flight. By the third flight I was starting to feel that I'd got the hang of what I was doing and I really wanted more but it was all over and I had to get back to the real world.
What I hadn't appreciated was that once the session starts, it's just so noisy that there's no possibility to get anything explained to you on how you might improve next time you step in. I also found the total chaos of not knowing who was supposed to be up next was very confusing and, whilst it worked to my favour, I wished it had been clearer from the beginning what would happen once we started the session. The instructor spent a lot of time man-handling the flyers into position so that the camera could get good shots of us gurning like idiots (and hence sell us pictures afterwards) and I found that a bit annoying. I also felt that the poor instructor was heading for a life time of back problems based on how much throwing us around she had to indulge in. One of they guys in our group was easily over six foot tall and quite chunky and literally a bit of a handful.
All too soon it was all over and we were back in the dressing area removing our flight suits, and handing back the equipment. I enjoyed my session enormously but tunnel flying is an expensive hobby and I already have too many expensive habits to support so I doubt I'll do it again. I can get the same flying 'buzz' from Scuba at better prices and with less flopping around.
My two and a half minutes had cost £39. The guy who'd had 8 sessions (or would have if he'd turned up on time) had spent £120 on his 10 minutes of flight time and probably wasn't that much better at the end of those 10 minutes than he'd been at the beginning. The experienced flyers get better prices of course but even so an hour will set you back £690. The most 'economical' way to buy tunnel time is to take 15 hours at a massive £8250 (or £550 per hour). I have to say that I'm struggling to see that as a bargain. Coaching will cost you £60 an hour on top.
You can jump off the outside of the tunnel tower for £25 (reduced to £20 if you've just been inside the tower) and they're also about to commission a really long zip line slide which looked like a lot of fun but was very expensive for something that would be over in just a few seconds. There's also a surfing simulator planned for opening in May 2010.
Bodyflight Bedford9
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"Must See"-Factor
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