Is it Really All About the Skydiving View?

Published: July 6, 2017

Is it Really All About the Skydiving View?

What do you look for when you're doing your research into the best place to skydive? You might be surprised to know that the answer is different for skydivers with different goals and experience levels. So--let's talk about priorities!

For the most part, people looking to make the best possible skydive fit into two camps: the "price and views" camp and the "people and facilities" camp. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these camps are split along one clear demographic line: skydiving experience. The "price and views" camp is comprised pretty exclusively of brand-new skydivers about to take their first human flight. The "people and facilities" camp are the jumpers who have already gotten their knees in the breeze and have begun to discover what skydiving is truly all about. Here's what they've found out, so you can compare notes:

When you're a licensed skydiver, you can't really look around much anymore...

On a tandem skydive, it's super-easy to gaze around at the views below. Someone else, after all, is manning the wheel! As you learn to skydive, however, you'll discover that you can't really learn freefall skills as you're looking down and around at the world below you.

...But you don't mind.

Experienced skydivers have different priorities than seasoned skydivers. To a skydiver moving along in her educational progression, the beautiful views become the gorgeous mural backdrop at the back of a stage full of dramatic, thrilling action. The fact that it's out-of-focus is no loss; it's there to enhance the experience, not to be the experience.

As you do more skydives, you learn that the views are the garnish, not the dish.

If you're anything like us, you used to drown everything you ate in ketchup when you were a kid. As your tastes matured, you probably graduated from using less (but perhaps better and fancier) ketchup. That's kinda how it works with views and skydiving. Experienced skydivers choose occasional, special jumps to truly take time and appreciate the natural beauty of the aerial perspective. (For example: deploying our parachutes at very high altitude to get together up there and enjoy a truly spectacular sunset for a few sweet minutes.)

That said: If beautiful views are the icing on the cake, Skydive OC is a very thickly iced cake.

Let's just put it this way: Ocean City looks like art from above. From the watercolor swirls of the intracostal waterways to the green-and-gold slash of the seashore that borders them to the mesmerizing blue of the Atlantic, Skydive OC has one of the loveliest backdrops you'll ever see from the air. Whether or not you're buying a skydive based on views, you'll find reliable delight in gazing upon our gorgeous little corner of the world from your high-up perch,

Bottom line? Yes--for a first-timer, skydiving can be overwhelmingly about the views, but afterward, a jumper's perspective necessarily evolves. The more we progress in the sport, it's less about the views and much, much about instruction, events, and the rad community you become part of as you build your place in the sport.