Group buying a block of time drives down the price a bit, but much like everything else skydiving related; it is expensive.
I've only got about 15 mins of tunnel time logged. I've done ~60 skydives and was lucky enough to be invited to tag along with a friend who had purchased a 30 min block at the skydive AZ tunnel. We'd been jumping together that day and I'd been struggling to fall as slow as other people in our group. They threw me into the tunnel and in the space of the 1st two minutes had taught me how to adjust my fall rate WAY better than I had been doing. Getting instant feedback on your body position dramatically shortens the learning curve. Compared to trying to get coaching during a normal skydive, even when debriefing with video; where you have to repack, manifest for another jump, take the ride to height and then try to implement the adjustments you'd been instructed about some 45 minutes prior.
So yeah, "burning" ~$150 to get 5 mins of tunnel time seems expensive. I hadn't spent any of my own cash on it exactly because I thought it was too rich and I'd rather actually skydive. But now I see that investing that $150 to ensure I didn't waste another 4 or 5 jumps (~$200 including gear hire) learning to fall slower saved me a load of frustration and a bit of money.
That's why I think the tunnel is an amazing learning tool. When you're in the tunnel there is no distractions, you're in there to learn and improve. When I skydive I'm still trying to learn and improve, but mostly I'm doing it for pure enjoyment of the experience of flying bigger formations.
