Home » Travel » Skydiving at 15,000 Feet in Queenstown, New Zealand!

Skydiving at 15,000 Feet in Queenstown, New Zealand!

Skydiving Queenstown, NZ
Just before we jumped 15,000 feet out of a plane!

With Queenstown, New Zealand being The Adventure Capital of the World and all, jumping 15,000 feet out of an airplane seemed like a reasonable thing to do while we were there. Right? Plus, we had already gotten ourselves warmed up by going bungy jumping off the world’s first bungy jump bridge while we were in Queenstown, and we were ready to try something even scarier!

Jumping at 15,000 feet is the highest option you can do at NZOne Skydive. (There are two lower options too.) My thought was – go big or go home for this one! I had no idea if I would be able to talk myself into doing this again. (I still don’t like heights! Haha.) Who would have thought I’d be saying that I just wanted to jump. For someone who was terrified, that is an achievement.

Skydiving Queenstown, NZ

Tandem Jump

And your only option is to go tandem as well. Which, honestly, I preferred for my first skydive! I didn’t want to have to worry about how to deploy my parachute or land properly. I just wanted to jump.

And everyone at NZOne was very professional and made us feel comfortable and safe. (These guys are jumping 10+ times a day!) As stupid as it sounds, the only time I had any anxiety was in the photo above because we were almost ready to jump, and I didn’t like that I didn’t have my goggles or helmet on yet! (I like to be prepared, haha.)

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Internally freaking out because I want to put my helmet & goggles on. Haha.

Our videos!

Below is my video of my jump! I’ll go into details about your options for purchasing photos/videos and my thoughts on this at the end of the post. (Spoiler, though, I wasn’t too pleased with the videos & re-edited them myself. More on that later, though.)

If you’re just interested in seeing my face as I jump out of the plane and not all the stuff leading up to it – head to the 1:40 mark, haha. Do you think I cried or laughed? 😉

My video

I actually had a really good time! It felt like we were free-falling forever! I wasn’t scared at all once we jumped out of the plane, believe it or not. And the only things I didn’t like about the experience were my ears started to hurt really bad, and my lips were getting chapped. Haha. Granted, though, I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to my ears and pressure changes. (My eardrum burst a million years ago, and I swear it still bugs me when I fly, swim, etc., despite getting it fixed a half million years ago). I’m sure anyone else wouldn’t be quite so concerned about their ears. Other than that, though, it was the experience of a lifetime! I also couldn’t believe how smooth our landing was. It felt like I just sat down on the grass, no big deal!

But I, personally, liked the way my husband’s video turned out a little better. He had some pretty cool shots in his! (I liked that we got to have a quick kiss before we jumped too in his video.) And if you’re just interested in seeing his face as he jumps out of the plane – head to about the 1:45 mark! Check it out below.

Zac’s video

The Views!

I still can’t believe we did it! Haha. I don’t know if I feel the need to ever do it again, but I’m really glad we talked ourselves into doing it while we were in Queenstown! And if there was one spot to do it…I don’t know if you could beat the views of Queenstown from above. Seriously, the mountain range there (The Remarkables) and Lake Wakatipu are out-of-this-world beautiful!

skydiving Queenstown, NZ
The views were amazing!
skydiving Queenstown, NZ
My favorite photo of the day. I can’t get over how high up we are!

The professional skydive jumpers who went with us were a hoot too. They were cracking jokes and making us laugh the whole time – which I really appreciated!

skydiving
Zac’s skydive!
skydiving
Look at that view!

Keep your body like a banana!

Also, when you jump, you’re supposed to keep your body in the shape of a banana – head back, hips out and legs back. That’s why our heads were back just before we jumped out.

skydiving
Keep your body like a banana!

My thoughts on the videos

You’re not able to bring your own GoPro with – so, you have the option to have your jumping partner just use a handheld one or have a photographer jump with you to take photos/videos from another angle. That last option I believe was more expensive than the jump itself, so we decided to just do the handheld one. And this was still really expensive, in my opinion. (I think it was $180 NZD if I remember right.) Granted, the guys are really doing a lot of work to get you some good shots, and video editing is never an easy task.

However, the video editor was apparently a new trainee that day and had a tough time editing our videos (especially with mine). They also put in over a minute of promotional material for the skydiving company – which I thought was bogus considering how much money we already spent on the video. So, I went ahead and edited that all out to the best of my ability. I had video editing software already on my computer..but I would’ve been SO mad about that if I didn’t have my own software to edit it out. (More than a minute in video time feels like 10 years!)

skydive
That’s enough promo material, in my opinion!

Bottom line, though…it was amazing!

Other than my annoyance with the videos, though, this was an amazing experience! And I definitely recommend jumping with NZOne Skydive if you’re a newbie skydiver. The views are amazing! Plus, going tandem makes it so much easier, and it was very freeing, in a way, to jump out a plane and know you had no control over what happened next. Quite the experience, I must say!

Have you ever gone skydiving? Or would you ever go skydiving if you haven’t yet? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Here are a few more photos of our jumps. Feel free to click on them to make them full-sized and to read the captions.

queenstown, new zealand _ skydiving at 15,000 feet
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Disclosure: some of the links in this post are affiliate links. Meaning, if you click a link and make a purchase, Have Clothes, Will Travel gets a very small commission. Thank you for supporting the brands that make this blog possible!

14 Comments

  1. I’ve always wanted to try skydiving. This is inspiring me to put that plan into action.

    http://ohduckydarling.com

  2. Looks amazing! Such great scenery. I have never been inclined to try it, probably because my friends do it it over fields here in WI and the scenery isn’t as great. Maybe in a place like that though.

    1. Oh yes, the scenery was awesome! I had never been inclined either until we came here. If you make it to Queenstown, this is the place to do it. 🙂

  3. Oh my God, Lindsey, you are so adventurous! And so brave. I admire you. I would never do that. I am just too scared. I really admire you. WOW!!!
    X
    Miri

    http://currentlywearing.com

    1. Oh gosh, thank you so much, Miri! You give me too much credit! Going tandem was very easy lol. 🙂

  4. Wow! I’d be so tempted to try that, and I know my husband would love to do it! Maybe someday! 🙂

  5. Wow! Such an awesome experience! Amazing pictures too!
    Thanks for sharing and have a nice day! 🙂

    jointyicroissanty

  6. Oh my goodness! Girl you do everything that scares me! Last time you were bungee jumping, now you’re sky diving! The views are incredible, and I would be the same as you, panicked about my ears. I’m extremely sensitive to pressure changes and even when I go in a tunnel on a train, I get ear pain, so I feel you. You were extremely brave doing it. I think you edited the videos well too, they turned out good despite them being not what you wanted originally.

    Raindrops of Sapphire

    1. Oh gosh, thank you so much, Lorna! Good to know I’m not the only one who gets worried about their ears. 🙂 And thank you so much for reading and watching the videos too! 🙂

  7. Lindsey—not only are you amazing in your style & travel, but wowza!! What an adventure to behold!!
    That is quite the bummer on your video—did you ask them for a little refund??
    And I subscribed to your YouTube channel—I can’t wait to see what else you post there!!
    Jodie
    www.jtouchofstyle.com

    1. Thank you so much, Jodie! And I should ask for a refund. I was peeved too after I uploaded it to YouTube to see that the songs they used were also monetized, meaning my videos will show ads but the revenue will go to whoever created these songs. Such bogus! And thank you so much! I’ll follow you back! Can’t wait to see your channel too. 🙂

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