WARNING Check the weather before you pay if you are out of town, NO REFUNDS due to weather conditions. I had two friends visiting Houston and I took them to spaceland for their first tandem. The weather wasn't great, it was cloudy.
However, they told us very confidently that it usually clears out around noon so we signed in and pay $660. Yes, it cleared out later that morning and we saw nice blue skies for a few hours, but it was still windy. We didn't have idea on the weather conditions required for a safe tandem. It turned out that over 20 knots winds you can't jump. They won't tell you that, as they won't tell you once you pay you won't get your money back!, even if you can't jump due to weather conditions. We waited 7 hours but wind conditions didn't improve and eventually it became cloudy again, they closed the place and gave us rain checks! "SORRY we can't control the weather" was the response of the girl at the desk. Your only option, if you are out of town, is to plan another visit to Houston within 6 months or transfer their f* rain check to another jumper and pay a $50 fee! (if you are lucky to find someone willing to do that without any discount). Later I met a couple in my condo that had the same issue, they had three friends visiting from Mexico that couldn't jump due to the weather, they went back home with spaceland's stupid rain checks after paying almost a 1,000 bucks. So, this is not again the staff, instructors are nice there and very professional, but unfortunately this dishonest and rude way of the owners of making businesses makes the whole place look bad. Some of the guys there looked ashamed that day, it is clear they are just following orders. C'mon owners, your staff knows when it is a bad day to jump, they have weather reports that are normally very accurate, they are very experienced, they have seen bad and good days, they know that over 23 mph winds nobody is going up. We didn't know that. One of the instructors told us that winds usually die by the end of the day, "it is aaaaalways the same" he said. But you ask your staff to keep their mouth shut until you get people signed in. That's low.
You have to be transparent and let people know that it might not be a good day to jump, and let them chose what they want to do with their time and $, instead of trying to be smart and taking people's hard-earned money like this. You give false hopes, made visitors wait the whole day and then come out with this unfair rain check b.s. I'm not bringing friends to spaceland ever again, and I happen to have a lot of friends visiting. Too bad.
