Skydiving vs Bungee Jumping

Skydiving vs bungee jumping – which is better? We know your fourth-grade teacher talked a lot about how there are no dumb questions. But ya know what? It’s a dumb question. Skydiving and bungee jumping are both awesome sports in their own right, and totally, completely, entirely, 100%, unmistakably different. If you’re an adventurous soul, you owe it to yourself to try both!

Both are sports

Bungee jumping and skydiving are both sports. They’re also adventure “taster” activities. That means you can approach both activities in two ways: as a one-time, boundary-pushing photo opportunity, or an actual-factual athletic pursuit that requires training and dedication. How much dedication? Well: sports skydivers often count their jumps in the thousands. Often, sport bungee jumpers will, too.

Both have regulatory bodies of oversight checking on operators

As adventurous as they are, bungee jumping and skydiving are both very safety-first when organized by a reputable operation. It’s fair to say that both sports fight unjustly-held reputations for recklessness. But both have managed to survive as legal sporting pursuits because of the efforts of smart, ethical practitioners who simply want to keep doing what they love.

Both are global, but skydiving is the larger industry of the two, so its regulatory organizations are distributed all over the globe. These — like the United States Parachute Association in the US, the British Parachute Association in the UK, the Fédération Française de Parachutisme in France, and dozens more around the world — set high standards for training, equipment, and procedures that have been exactingly designed to keep skydivers as safe as possible. (The statistical safety of skydiving has long surpassed the safety of driving in a car.)

Bungee jumping has the North America Bungee Association here in the USA, as well as a few other organizations, generally located in countries where the sport has the biggest active populations and bungee jumping sites (such as New Zealand, South Africa, China, and Switzerland).

Both have the potential to be life-changing positive experiences

It doesn’t matter if you’re standing on the edge of a platform poking out from a bridge or you’re getting your first mouthfuls of 14,000′ wind: your brain is full of chemicals that are very, very good for you. Both of those views are mind-blowing — and both experiences are sure to leave you with lasting daydream fodder.

At Skydive Long Island, we tend to prefer our jaw-dropping skyline, but HECK NAW do we flatly turn down the view from a nice, tall crane every once in a while.

Both are vibrant communities full of flat-out amazing people

Skydiving? Bungee jumping? People who dig this stuff are a fun pack of folks indeed! If you get into one sport, the other or both, you’ll find that you’ll be plugged into a multinational, thriving community of many thousands of cool humans. (Note that sport bungee jumping is a significantly smaller community, but by no means an absent one!)

Wherever in the world gravity-hungry athletes go, they’ll connect with others who love the same heart-pounding stuff — whether that’s jumping out of an airplane, or jumping off things with an elastic cord clasped to their ankles. Communities around sports like ours are tight, supportive, affectionate and really fun to be around.

So: You’ll know what to say the next time someone asks “What’s better, skydiving or bungee jumping?” You’ll be savvy! Both are great, and it’s entirely a matter of preference which you start with. Once you’ve done both, we want to hear your opinion. So reserve your jump at Skydive Long Island and let’s get started!