Florida: NASA and Cape Canaveral

Bright sunshine and clear skies greeted us this morning and it was a scorcher. Perfect! Today was the day for Cape Canaveral, NASA and a rocket launch. From Kissammee, it takes about an hour to drive direct to the Cape, but be prepared to be nickled and dimed by tolls. The toll road definitely can be tricky. It is direct but the tolls certainly slow you down. Nonetheless, the drive was over and you were marshaled into the parking lot. On arrival, be prepared for lines for tickets, including web ticket conversions into tour tickets, and lines for security, and lines for buses.

 However, once inside the Kennedy Space Center, you are directed to lockers to leave your lunches etc. and can play to your hearts content. We started with the early years of the Space Program exhibition and then got totally sidetracked by the Angry Birds exhibition. I think we spent over 45 minutes there before heading to Atlantis. This exhibition hall was incredible. Lots of inter actives engaged the children, while the adults could read and admire the displays to their hearts content. But, we had a tour booked and had to cut the visit short. The reason was I had prebooked the Launch Pad Tour. This was so worth the money. We were able to get up close and personal with Launch Pad 39A where the space shuttle used to launch from. The guide, John, was very informative and was able to inject enough humour to keep the children engaged. We saw wildlife like the bald eagle and alligators snoozing in the ditches. The landscape was lovely and the tour took us around the launching area with in depth descriptions on the whys.

We were dropped at Apollo visitor center to end the tour. Because time was short, we quickly hopped a shuttle bus back to Atlantis. Back at Atlantis, we went through the gift shop and back into the facility to try and finish. We did the space shuttle experience and felt the G's of having our faces pinned back. Awesome. Then, we explored the kitchen, bedroom and living area of the shuttle. There just wasn't enough time.

Notes to the visitor:
* Arrive when it opens. Don't wait. In fact be early.
* If you can spend two days, you really need it.
* Book a tour, as the guide will give you so much more than just going it alone.
* Pack a lunch, the food on site is expensive, especially if traveling with children.
* Beware the gift shop...there are many fabulous things that want to come home with you.

The main reason that we chose this day to visit was because there was a rocket launch scheduled for 8:40 p.m. So after closing the park down 1 hour and 10 minutes after it officially closed...again...I am surprised they let me back in with engineer (s) in tow...(I had three today but two were very time efficient on the closing time, while one was time efficient on the opening time), we wandered into Titusville for dinner.

 Dinner was at Portofino Italian Grill. This place should be remembered for amazing food, but even better service. We had a large group (16) and they were able to seat us, feed us, bill us in time for the launch at 8:40. They did it in under 90 minutes. We walked out the door and through the park to the boardwalk where we were in time to watch the launch. Which didn't happen on time. So the kids ran amok in the park and we waited. And then it happened. 90 seconds of fire, lift off and then the sound waves and the rocket curved into the night sky and disappeared. AWESOME.

I got to see a rocket launch.

Fantastic.

Cape Canaveral on Dwellable