Kennedy Space Center
By traveltripz on Jul 11, 2007 in NASA, USA
Once we parked the car we made our way to the entrance and found that there are two types of tickets to choose from - one a Kennedy Space Center Tour and the other the NASA Up-Close Tour. Since we had arrived quite late we decided on the first tour as there wasn’t much time left to look around. The cost of the ticket was $38. Wanda also bought a Kennedy Space Center Guide.
Once inside the gate we headed immediately for the bus tour as the lady at the ticket counter told us that the last bus would head out at 3.15pm. We waited for about 20 minutes and then got on the bus and headed out passed the Vehicle Assembly Building. This is where they hold the shuttles and it is said to be the biggest one storey building in the world.
The bus took us to the Observation Gantry where we got off to view the different launch pads.
At this point we were hungry so climbed down the steps from the observation tower and headed to the little café at the bottom to buy a couple of hotdogs. Well that was a mistake. For $4.99 each plus tax we were left with a hot dog about the size of your finger. Well maybe that’s a bit of and exaggeration but they weren’t very big and we were still hungry after having eaten it.
We then queued up for the bus again and once on headed to the next stop which was the Apollo/Saturn V Center. This is a giant hall that holds amongst other things a huge 363 foot moon rocket.
We decided to miss the third stop as we were running out of time and so instead hopped on the bus again to head back to the visitor complex. Here we got on the Shuttle Launch Experience ride which simulates an actual space shuttle launch. We were expecting something really scary as they kept providing warnings for people with heart problems, high blood pressure and the like but we actually found it to be quite tame.
In the park there is also a full-scale replica of the Explorer shuttle which you
go inside to see how the astronauts live while they are in space.
At this point we were really running out of time as we still had to drive to Orlando so at about 7pm we decided to head on out and make our way back to the car. We really didn’t know which way to go but once we asked directions from a couple of the NASA workers we found Highway 95 and headed on to Orlando.
If you are looking for souveniers, we found NASA to have the best priced items available the clothing such as this NASA Rocket Scientist Youth T-Shirt is good quality.
