We sent Greg to try Fritz's Aerodium in Branson. It's sweaty, airborne... and awesome.

Show Caption Hide Caption Take a flight on Branson's newest attraction, Fritz's Aerodium The Aerodium, an outdoor skydiving simulator, opened on Saturday on the Branson 76 strip so we sent reporter Greg Holman to try it out.

News-Leader reporter Greg Holman writes about business, culture and entertainment.

This article is a column describing his experience at the newly opened Fritz's Aerodium in Branson.

In Branson, people love to use as many superlatives as possible to describe anything. Best, biggest, fastest, first.

The Aerodium, which opened Saturday at the Fritz's Adventure attraction at the corner of Highway 76 and Fall Creek Road, has a good claim to at least a couple of superlatives: first and most unusual.

Let's start with "most unusual." You've probably never experienced anything like the Aerodium — unless you've gone skydiving.

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I had neither gone skydiving nor flown in an Aerodium until Tuesday afternoon.

Essentially, the Aerodium is a giant fan that forces high-speed air straight up from the surface of the earth.

Human beings — well, anyone age 4 and older, so long as you weigh less than 300 pounds — can lean in over the airstream. Essentially, it turns your body into a horizontal wind sail.

You go aloft, riding on a cushion of air. Yes, the surface beneath is heavily padded and surrounded by safety nets — but kids, this is as close to being Superman as it gets.

While you're in the Aerodium, your body is doing pretty much what it would do if you were skydiving: your legs extend backward, slightly bent; with arms out, hands flat, chin up.

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I tried it out with News-Leader photojournalist Nate Papes. We queued up on the flight deck behind a quartet of young fellows vacationing in Branson from Texas and Oklahoma.

They were all under 13 years old, none of them overweight, so I wondered how well they would fly. If you're skinny, how much lift can the Aerodium's jet stream get from your body?

As it turned out, the kids were all right. There was some wrangling and dangling in the air as our flight instructor, Edgars Strads, helped them lean into the blasting air.

But all four of our fellow flyers elicited hearty cheers from Fritz's crew as they wheeled and turned. (My observation was that the crew was really good with kids, by the way.) Sometimes the youngsters were quite high up, a good dozen feet above the pad surface.

Jake Schenk, general manager of Fritz's Adventure, noted that his 5-year-old son, Kowen, was among the first Aerodium flyers.

After a standard two-minute flight, Kowen bounded off the Aerodium and onto the flight deck, wanting to know when his dad would let him do it again. (Schenk showed me the video on his smartphone, so my natural skepticism didn't even have time to form.)

I'll be honest: I wasn't sure that I would feel the same way about Aerodium as Kowen did. This time of year, I enjoy floating in swimming pools.

But I gave it a go with a pair of two-minute flights.

My first one was kind of like bicycling with training wheels, except in this case the training wheels came in the form of Strads, an infinitely patient and cheerful Latvian man.

Strads had to help me up from the padded ground three or four times and kept signaling for me to straighten out my legs, which is necessary if you hope to get as much lift as possible from your body. We probably got eight feet off the ground, tops.

If round one was like biking with training wheels, I lack any metaphor to adequately describe my second flight in the Aerodium.

Emotionally, I was caught somewhere between ecstatic thrill and complete terror as Strads had me at least as high off the ground as he'd had some of the kids who'd just gone before.

As it turned out, that was just the warm-up. Then came the spins, starting up high, then cycling close to the pad surface.

It was not a slow process. "Remember to breathe, Greg," I told myself, as a whirl of images rotated around my eyes: the Fritz's building — forested Taney County hills — the 76 strip — the flight deck.

I could feel my own slobber leak from my mouth, accelerate to jet speed and fall on my own face. Meanwhile, I worried my casual slip-on shoes would fly off my feet. (They didn't.) My helmet seemed to lift a tad bit away from my scalp. (It remained hitched to my head.)

We spun around like that several times. My two minutes seemed to stretch out toward infinity. Just at the point where I started to worry we might never land, we landed.

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Beaming, Strads gave me this thumbs-up, as if I'd been a good student of the ways of the Aerodium. "That was all you," I told him.

So that's it for "most unusual." What about the other Branson superlative, first?

The Aerodium at Fritz's Adventure is the first of its kind, said Schenk, the general manager.

Based in Latvia, the Aerodium company has been in business since 1979, and according to the company website, there have only been a couple of temporary Aerodiums in the United States: one for a recent NFL draft in Chicago, and one in St. Louis three years ago. The rest of them are concentrated in Europe and the Middle East.

But the Branson Aerodium is the first time a permanent outdoor installation has been established in America, Schenk said.

Fritz's will open up the Aerodium seasonally, along with its indoor adventure park, which is open year round.

They're hopeful it will draw people from the local region and beyond, Schenk said.

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It costs $65 to take a flight in the Aerodium, so it seems less a mass entertainment than a vacationer's novelty.

Do I recommend it, you ask?

Put it this way: I'm writing this column 90 minutes after I put my feet back on the ground. And it still feels a bit like I'm flying.

Greg's tips to make the most of Fritz's Aerodium

Say it with me now: Aer-o-DEE-um.

If you're going to spring for it, fly first class. It costs a minimum of $65 to hop into the Aerodium for the two-minute Maverick flight package. If you can afford it, shell out an additional Jackson for the $85 Top Gun flight package. It offers you a pair of two-minute flights in the Aerodium. I think that's what made my second flight a thrill. Booking information is at fritzsadventure.com. Groups of 10 or more can get special pricing. Inquire at 417-320-6138, ext. 112.

Really pay attention during "flight school," i.e., a training video you watch after you check in and sign your waivers. Flyers must learn four hand signals that your flight instructor will use to help you improve your experience. When my fellow flyers or I had problems, it seemed like mostly we weren't keeping our legs straight.

Just breathe. In the middle of the roaring vortex of air, I had this weird temptation to hold my breath. Breathe like everything is normal, and it will be (as normal as flying above a gigantic fan can be).

Past puberty? Pack deodorant. One-thousand percent not kidding. Your loved ones will thank you once you get out of your purplish flight suit. They're lightweight, but the sun is hot during Branson's high season, and you will sweat.

Where's the best place to watch your kids fly? Fritz's just laid down a field of emerald-green sod that they hope you won't walk all over, according to a bevy of signs posted at the edges of their front lawn. Thus, the best place to watch family members fly is probably the nearby outdoor patio of the attraction's cafe. Which has the added benefit of umbrella-topped tables for shade.

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