The experience is different because the person in the ISS is simply not close enough to Earth to be subjected to Earth's gravity, in any practical amount.

It sounds like someone still hasn't played KSP! Play it! It's great. You'll learn a lot, and you'll have fun doing it.

Stuff doesn't stay in orbit because there isn't gravity. It stays there because it's moving sideways while it's falling down, so it doesn't hit the thing it's orbiting. Without gravity it'd be able to just sit in space wherever it wants. Rockets mostly don't go up, they go sideways. There wouldn't be a geosyncronus orbit as all orbits would allow you to just sit above any location you want. A geosyncronus orbit is one that the amount it has to move sideways is, in degrees from the center of earth, the same amount the earth rotates.