Check out This Zoo Full of Airplanes
The museum is full of carnival rides, flight simulators, and a legendary display of America's military might
Portage — Despite its name, the Air Zoo is not a collection of flying animals. It’s an aircraft museum spanning the entire history of aviation and space exploration, open year-round—especially nice when the weather is terrible.
Apart from the amusement rides that whir constantly, the focus is on the engineering masterpieces, the machines that launched men into the air and beyond. It’s a must-stop location for young ones with their eyes on the sky.
The museum was founded over 45 years ago by pilots Suzanne and Pete Parish, who started purchasing aircraft that would begin the collection, including the pink P-40 Flying Tiger that hangs in the atrium.
Someone offered them a plane on the condition they opened a museum, which they did. They called it the Air Zoo because of the names of the planes: Wildcats, Bearcats, Flying Tigers—oh my!
I grew up going to the Air Zoo. My siblings and I were homeschooled. When we saw buses in the parking, we’d turn around and come the next day so we had the place to ourselves.
There are two hot-air balloon rides, one that is like a Ferris wheel and another that spins around like a hardier version of the chain swing ride at the fair. There’s also a mini paratrooper tower ride that lifts kids up to drop them and a plane ride where kids spin round and round.
For really little kids, there’s a special toddler room. For older kids, superhero exhibits dot the museum.
Older kids and adults with strong stomachs will also enjoy the aircraft simulators. Pretend you are in a propeller-driven war plane on a World War II mission by diving and turning and flipping and pulling Gs while shooting at the enemy.
On the same wall, an interactive theater plays a short movie about the B-17 Flying Fortress called the Kalamazoo Gal, which has to drop bombs over Germany.
My neighbor growing up, Bob, was one of the kind docents that help guests navigate the museum. He told us how he flew on a B-24 as the tail gunner. One day, his buddies didn’t hear from him, so they went back to check on him. He was standing on his oxygen line and had blacked out.
They saved his life. History is made real when you can see the planes and hear these stories.
Through a door on that same wall as the theater is the entrance to the museum’s space exhibit, which features a hunk of genuine moon rock—unless you don’t believe that kind of thing.
To reinforce the importance of the moon landing, they have a 1960s living room where you can rewatch the big event on the little black and white screen. It’s truly a marvel. We’ve come so far with video quality.
There are space shuttle suits and relics from the MIR space station, including special cans of Coke designed not to let the liquid float all over. There are also V2 rockets and Gemini landing systems. There’s a life-size replica of the alien from the movie “Predator.”
Then there’s an entire other room filled with World War II planes of all types and colors. They have a glider and Navy training planes that are bright yellow. Thousands of pilots died in training. Some of the WWII planes in the Air Zoo were hauled out of the Great Lakes and restored.
When I visited, the Air Zoo had an open cockpit day where you could sit in some of the aircraft. The massive P-47 Thunderbolt was open to visitors, and it’s an amazing experience to sit behind the controls. It’s impossible to see the ground over the nose. Someone would have to ride on the wing to help pilots find the runway.
The SR-71 Blackbird also had an open cockpit, but not for sitting in, obviously. The Cold War-era recon jet is the best of the Air Zoo’s large collection. The $33 million sky arrow made up of 13 million pieces has a top speed of 2,193 miles per hour, three times the speed of sound.
The Air Zoo has the only two-cockpit training model of the aircraft. Underneath it, the Blackbird’s massive rotary camera is also on display. With its constantly rotating lens, it could take pictures of 100,000 square miles in an hour—the size of Wyoming.
That meant lots of helpful intel about the Soviets. It’s still a potent display of U.S. air superiority: the fastest and highest-flying conventional jet.
The whole family will enjoy seeing the various stages of technology mankind has used to soar through air and space, in war and in peace, both real and fictional. It’s worth a road trip. Drive in and fly away.
