I was traveling with my two college-aged children to Florida, and we wanted to see Kennedy Space Center. We bought our tickets weeks in advance as we wanted to make sure we could get one of the specialty tours. The day of we drove in pouring rain from Orlando, somewhat dreading our day. But lo and behold the rain stopped as we approached, and it didn't rain a drop the rest of the day. But lucky for us, the torrential morning rain plus severe gray skies kept everyone, and we mean, everyone away. Seemed like we had the place to ourselves, and we were not complaining! On your GPS make sure to select "kennedy space center VISITOR CENTER" as your destination - any other entries that come up will take you to the wrong entrances. We selected the right one and had no problem finding it.
Believe it or not the first thing we did was eat breakfast - we had hoped to find a place on our drive but didn't, so we were starving. We went to the first snack bar we found (which was right near the Rocket Garden) and got some yogurt parfaits, bagels and fruit. Pretty pricey for what you got but we really didn't have a choice. As we were finishing up, we heard a tour guide at the Rocket Garden calling out the start of a tour in 5 minutes so we went right over. The tour wasn't very long - maybe 20 minutes? - but very informative and we learned way more about the rockets than we would have on our own. We then wandered into the Hall of Heroes and saw the video presentation and had a chance to wander around. We soon discovered that the downside to having no one there was that the air conditioning was cranked in anticipation of cooling hundreds of warm bodies, so inside the buildings we always were freezing!
We came out and started to wander around and literally stumbled on the theater as they were opening the doors for a live presentation with an astronaut. The day we were there it was John Herrington who was a Shuttle commander. His presentation was interesting and humorous, and beyond a doubt the highlight of our whole day. After his presentation (about 45 minutes) he went in the lobby and let everyone get their picture with him too. Next we headed over to the Atlantis exhibit, where the kids did the launch simulator (which got high marks!). It was now 1:30 (amazing how fast time goes here!) and time for our special bus tour that took us out to the launch pads and around the NASA campus. One nice advantage of buying the tour tickets is that we didn't have to wait in line at all for the tour. We really enjoyed our tour guide and the tour - it was pretty amazing to see the launch pads up close. There were multiple stops on the tour where you could get out and take pictures which was nice. That day the crawler that carries the rockets to the pad was out doing a test so we got to see it too which was very cool. The end of the tour leaves you at the Saturn rocket exhibit where the moon rocks are also on display.The Saturn rocket was so enormous - it was really thrilling to walk around it. We then hopped the bus back to the other side, and our tour guide gave us the tip to go into the IMAX theater, and way down on the left hand side (as you enter) there is a great Orion exhibit which was very interesting (and we probably wouldn't have known about without the tip). At this point it was 5pm and we were exhausted so decided to call it a day. I don't know how we would have done everything if we had had to wait in lines - we were so grateful for our easy going day!
Відповідь від хоста
Aug 2018
Hello!
We are more than happy to hear that you had a great time on the Kennedy Space Center Tour. The whole experience at Kennedy Space Center is really great and the tours are very informative. We are glad you got to experience it first hand.If you're ever in Orlando, please don't hesitate to contact us. We would love to have you as returning guests! We hope to see you soon!