In April 2014, Kermit Weeks closed his museum to the public and over the past year has been thinking about what Fantasy of Flight was always meant to be: using the history of aviation as a self-discovery tool that is both interactive and hands-on.
“We will not open full-time until we open the new place,” said Weeks. “All great stories come in three acts. I opened the Weeks Air Museum in 1985. Act one ended when Hurricane Andrew hit. Act two began with Fantasy of Flight in 1995. Act two ended in April 2014. Everyone go take a nap and grab a drink because act three is about to begin.”
Right now, Weeks is in the beginning stages of this new venture, which he says is three to five years away. He wants to re-brand Fantasy of Flight into a destination that will attract a much wider market of consumers, not just the aviation enthusiasts, which Weeks said is a very specific target market.
Kermit Weeks, owner, stands in front of the first airplane he ever built at Fantasy of Flight in Polk City. The plane a Der JŠger D.IX was Weeks first homebuilt aircraft. The aircraft is on display at the Fantasy of Flight.
“What I was led to come up with was realizing that Fantasy of Flight in the long run really wasn’t about airplanes but more about what the metaphor of flight symbolizes,” Weeks said. “Eventually, at the end of my first two years with the museum, I was like, ‘OK, this is not working.’ There are not airplane enthusiasts out there or not enough people who want to come see my planes. People would drive by and think it’s an airplane museum so I’m not interested. We started calling ourselves an airplane attraction but no one knew what that was because we were the only one on the planet.”
Weeks wants to use the metaphor of flight as a way to tell stories and allow people to experience something they have not experienced.
“I realized at that point that this was the key to where Fantasy of Flight needed to go,” Weeks said. “In the long run, where airplanes will never be a successful end product, as Fantasy of Flight reopens it won’t be about airplanes but about the airplanes being just the backdrop. They will only be sub dressing to deliver stories about the metaphor of flight. Where we are heading here is not to teach people about the history of planes or how they fly but to use flight as a metaphor and use aviation history as a basis to tell stories that are timeless and everyone can relate to with the human experience.”
Currently, Weeks is envisioning an attraction that will use the different ages of flight to guide visitors through various eras of not just aviation but also social mores.
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