I am a student skydiver with 3 jumps (all at Skydive Toronto) and even I know this is a terrible place to go. Students are there lowest priority. All 3 times I jumped (3 separate days) I arrived in the morning at 9-10am and had giving them warning days in advance saying I'd be coming. Despite this I still did not get in the air until 2-3pm on every one of these days.
They are always packed with people doing tandems and they put ALL of their instructors on the tandems. The only time they use instructors for students is when there are no tandems to go. This is normally near the end of the day. Not only this but even doing a mere thing like waiting in line to buy a lift ticket took me almost an hour of waiting. Not even exgerating this. I arrived at a little before 10am and it was almost 11am before I even go to the counter to pay for a ticket. I was then told I had to come back in check with them in an hour and only at that point would they try to find an instructor.
Despite being told over the phone numerous times prior to visits to come in the morning and them even saying they left a note saying I was coming, they still did not care to serve me.
I understand waiting your turn to go up in the plane, but this is not the case here. They are just scheduling tandems all day and won't let students schedule. Students have to work around tandems.
This doesn't even get to the money part. You are going to be paying more here than a lot of places. While their site may not look like it is a lot, don't be fooled. You are very likely to be told that you have to redo a jump meaning you have to pay full price again for the jump. Their GFP program is very dumb. You have to do a lot of static line jumps to start with. Again, good luck with this. You'll be waiting most of the day. They usually only have one pilot and of course that pilot is flying the larger plane up to 12500 and does not do the 4500 static line jumps. You have to wait for the pilot to switch over to the smaller cessna plane. Again, you'll have to wait till the tandems die down for this.
I suggest going somewhere else. Most places cost about the same, if not cheaper and will likely care more about you than this place. Even when I talked to the owner I didn't get treated any better until I said I wanted a refund. Only after saying that would he try to help me out and find me an instructor. It is all about money there. Save your time and money and go to a better place. Somewhere that has a nice community and wants to actually see students get certified.
Skydive Toronto Inc.
in Ontario
They are always packed with people doing tandems and they put ALL of their instructors on the tandems. The only time they use instructors for students is when there are no tandems to go. This is normally near the end of the day. Not only this but even doing a mere thing like waiting in line to buy a lift ticket took me almost an hour of waiting. Not even exgerating this. I arrived at a little before 10am and it was almost 11am before I even go to the counter to pay for a ticket. I was then told I had to come back in check with them in an hour and only at that point would they try to find an instructor.
Despite being told over the phone numerous times prior to visits to come in the morning and them even saying they left a note saying I was coming, they still did not care to serve me.
I understand waiting your turn to go up in the plane, but this is not the case here. They are just scheduling tandems all day and won't let students schedule. Students have to work around tandems.
This doesn't even get to the money part. You are going to be paying more here than a lot of places. While their site may not look like it is a lot, don't be fooled. You are very likely to be told that you have to redo a jump meaning you have to pay full price again for the jump. Their GFP program is very dumb. You have to do a lot of static line jumps to start with. Again, good luck with this. You'll be waiting most of the day. They usually only have one pilot and of course that pilot is flying the larger plane up to 12500 and does not do the 4500 static line jumps. You have to wait for the pilot to switch over to the smaller cessna plane. Again, you'll have to wait till the tandems die down for this.
I suggest going somewhere else. Most places cost about the same, if not cheaper and will likely care more about you than this place. Even when I talked to the owner I didn't get treated any better until I said I wanted a refund. Only after saying that would he try to help me out and find me an instructor. It is all about money there. Save your time and money and go to a better place. Somewhere that has a nice community and wants to actually see students get certified.