Dakota

This new location opened up practically outfront my parent’s home. Naturally they were intrigued and ended up buying myself and my young brother a couple of flights for Christmas (the review is from January). We were both looking forward to the experience and we booked an appointment right away figuring Christmas time would probably be difficult for scheduling. We secured our date and time with a deposit from our gift cards, and all left was to wait.

Come the date of our flight, we arrived at iFly 15 minutes early and were quickly informed that there was no appointment, and that there were no available slots. Naturally we were upset. I myself live in Canada, and I see my family a single time each year. Our appointment was scheduled for the last day before my flight returning home, and all they were willing to offer was a reschedule.

The supervisor at the time was Caleb, a very rude, egotistical, and narsossistic employee at this location. He informed me that there was no record of our appointment and there was nothing to be done but reschedule. I figured there wasn’t much that could be done, so before leaving I decided to check the balance on my gift cards, as this is where the deposit was supposed to be pulled from for the appointment. The balance on all three gift cards was wiped, and we essentially were left without a flight, and no credit to use at a future date. I asked Caleb to pull up the date of the transaction, and I was able to match it with my phone records for booking the appointment. It turned out he was the one to book our appointment and he never followed through with reserving our timeframe, and only chargerd our cards.

Now, he was still only offering to reschedule for a week in the future after I’ve explained numerous times that I would be flying home in a matter of hours. When I was tired of listening to Caleb try to work himself out of his situation I informed him that I would be calling the BBB to report potentially fraudulent activity. The deposit for our reservation should be held as unearned revenue, but instead it was processed as a payment for services rendered and in fact these services were not provided.

After hearing this, Caleb took a minute or two to ask other employees a couple question and was “able to slip us in”. What this really meant was that we were required to be thrown into a training video, as we were no behind schedule, while we changed into our suits, and we would be thrown into the wind tunnel a couple time.

At the time I thought it was cool of him to make an effort, but when everything was said and done I personally felt robbed of my experience. I couldn’t focus of the training video while I was getting dressed, and another flight instructor came in during the video to give us ear plugs he wanted us to put in on the spot. I left the training room with absolutely no knowledge of what I should do when I’m actually in the tunnel. My brother and I were then placed in line for the tunnel, next in line actually. Neither of us knew what to do so the entire time we’re crashing into the walls, instructors couldn’t keep us in the air longer than a second or two, and they’re holding up hand signals that I honestly didn’t know the meaning too. After the first flight nobody attempted to teach us what should be done, nobody cared. We were put at the end of the line again where we repeated the disaster.

To be “generous” the instructors gave us a free video of our flight, which we never redeemed. Because who really wants a video of them flying face first into a glass wall?

At the end of our visit I honestly felt like shit displaying any sort of dissatisfaction towards my parents who bought the tickets, but they already knew it wasn’t a quality experience. My mom actually cried leaving.

Thanks Caleb.

Oh, and to make matters worse, I expressed my dissatisfaction with an instructor who told me that if I pay attention more, then I would do better next time.