Spirit Airlines is now part of history and for many people it offered cheap transportation to their favorite theme parks. However, did you know there once was a Spirit Airlines attraction at a theme park? Spirit Airlines was part of Wannado City, a career-focused theme park that opened in 2004 inside the Sawgrass Mills mall in Sunrise, Florida. Guests could explore a plane fuselage painted in Spirit colors/logo (the older gray/black scheme as opposed to the later iconic yellow planes). The attraction was called Spirit Airlines Flight Academy and was interactive allowing guest to operate a flight simulator!

The concept of Wannado City was that it was a place “where kids can do what they wanna do”. Ii was a child-sized city where children could try different careers and adult activities and had its own money system. Spirit Airlines Flight Academy itself was pretty simple . Children could explore aviation careers in a real Spirit Airlines fuselage acting as pilots with flight simulators or serving as flight attendants. Wannado City had financial problems and closed in 2011, but it was a pretty cool concept that I’ve often now seen emulated in several children’s museums.

Spirit Airlines Flight Academy was by no means the first airline themed ride at a theme park. In fact, one of the most famous was “Delta Dreamflight” in Tomorrowland at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The ride was an omnimover dark ride which showcased the history of flight using sets, projections and some animatronics. It existed from 1989-1998, but it replaced an attraction called “If You Had Wings”, sponsored by Eastern Air Lines. The ride actually went through a couple of iterations without sponsorship as contracts would lapse that would require minor retheming to change the branding. Delta ended its sponsorship in 1996 and the ride would close 2 years later in 1998. Today it operates as the interactive dark ride Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin.

Spirit won’t be remembered for a theme park ride, that will just be a footnote, but it did play a huge part in the theme park industry. Just one look at the former flight map below will tell you Spirit shuttled people from all over the Western hemisphere into Florida and all over the country into Orlando. Even if you didn’t fly Spirit, their mere presence probably helped lower your fare on another carrier. It’s likely your next flight to Orlando will cost more because Spirit is gone.

There were airline themed rides before Spirit Airlines Flight Academy at Wannado City and there will no doubt be more after. Dreams of flying are as old as time when humans would look at birds with jealousy. Many ride themes play off the idea of flight from flying theaters like Soarin’ at Epcot or Emmet’s Triple Decker Flying Couch at LEGOLAD to thrill coasters like Afterburr at Carowinds or AreiForce One at Fun Spot Atlanta. There’s even a whole class of roller coasters called “flying” coasters to mimic the feeling of flight and many kids flat rides also have a plane theme. The idea of flying and thrills are intertwined.

Travel too is a consistent dream for many allowing us to explore other lands. Disney created World Showcase at Epcot with this in mind. This makes airline travel a logical fit. People also often need airline travel to get to parks. Therefore airlines and theme parks make logical partners. Although Spirit’s theme park involvement is just a footnote in its story, like a lot of history it’ll probably be repeated by someone else in the future. Like Spirit Airlines, Wannado City is history, but it’s fun to think that there are at least a few current pilots who visited it and might have been inspired by it.