Florida's Other Air Show This Weekend: Thunderbirds Over Kennedy Space Center, and the Tickets Are Not the Visitor Complex's
Pensacola is not Florida's only air-show address this weekend. On the Space Coast, NASA's MAX POWER show puts the Thunderbirds over Kennedy Space Center on November 7 and 8 - ticketed separately, with general admission reported sold out for both days.
Florida gets two air shows on one weekend, at opposite ends of the state and opposite ends of the ticket line. Pensacola's Blue Angels Homecoming at NAS Pensacola, on November 6 and 7, is free - free admission, free parking. The Space Coast's answer, one day later and a coast away, is NASA's MAX POWER air show at Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, November 7 and Sunday, November 8, headlined by the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds.
The Kennedy show's gates open at 9 a.m. and the flying runs from 1 to 4:30 p.m. each day in a dedicated show park. The detail that matters for anyone driving over: each MAX POWER park requires its own ticket, and a Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex admission is not an air-show ticket - the two do not substitute for each other. The statewide air-show calendar, checked Monday, reports general admission for the show already marked sold out for both days, which makes checking the official ticket position before the drive the whole ballgame for Space Coast readers.
For Florida, the pairing is the story: the Navy's demonstration team closing its season at home in Pensacola on Friday and Saturday, and the Air Force's team over the Space Coast on Saturday and Sunday - two services, two coasts, one weekend, in a state that hosts both. Panhandle readers weighing a road trip against the home show have the honest arithmetic in front of them: the home show is free and at the gate by 8 a.m.; the Space Coast show is ticketed, selling out, and starts its flying at 1. Either way, Florida's November sky is spoken for.
