Florida 02/26 – Kennedy Space Center

Final day was a welcome change of pace. All of our ticket validity, and general enthusiasm, had run dry and there was a sizeable hole to fill before an evening flight home.

Day 9 – Kennedy Space Center

Which felt like a good opportunity to come here.

After some poor communication at the Houston equivalent, we made sure our first priority was getting on one of the coach tours that drives around to various points of interest. There was almost no queue in the end so, following a brief green screen photo opportunity, we were quickly on board.

First stop on the tour was a viewing platform with a couple of exhibits built into it.

From here you could see the launch pad that Artemis II was sitting at. Having now seen several of the amazing photos we got from that mission, makes this feel even more special.

If you’re into anything space, go check them out. I think it’s a shame how little I’ve heard the whole thing talked about since.

Here’s the ridiculously huge building in which they put rockets together, and the chunky vehicle that moves them to the launch pads.

And a pretend engine that simulated being vaporised by the loudest thing on earth, by means of some light misting.

Back on the coach again, next stop was a place that contained a standing cinema pre-show about the history of launches, into a seated cinema bit about what launch days are like, complete with old-fashioned mission control setup.

Exiting that led to the classic big warehouse with rocket, lengthways. Also at Houston.

Coach took us back to base, where it was dark ride time, ish.

This building contains one of the attractions. Spaceport KSC is a collection of 4 small flying theatres with only two rows stacked vertically, but they were only running one deck of each on this occasion.

Each one has a different film, a simple choice of destination – they all simulate getting on a shuttle and visiting somewhere in space.

Due to the limited capacity it took about half an hour just to do the one, the Mars one, which we got the general gist from and called it a day. It was alright.

Foolishly we had completely walked past the building that contains the OG simulator here, so backtracked to that, right next to the coach drop off.

From seeing a ‘POV’ of the Shuttle Launch Experience, many moons ago, this ride held the most anticipation. It’s several minutes of people screaming and slightly jiggling in a box, which seemed like entertainment of the highest form to me.

Anyway the pre-show was very good, recorded by real astronaut folk on robot arm screens with a good sense of humour. Then we moved to a loading area much like a giant star tours. Again there were multiple simulators but they were running a limited capacity so had quite a wait here.

Then we strapped in to feel the Gs. It was funny, quite impressive and somewhat intense. Obviously nowhere near the real deal but enough to give the average person a sense of ‘this isn’t for the average person’.

Closed the day out in the ‘worlds largest nasa gift shop’, such an American thing to say. Had a great day here overall, would recommend it over the Houston equivalent and to break up the travesty that is Orlando these days.


Apologies for the delays and negativity overall, as you can probably tell I wasn’t particularly thrilled by Florida this time around and I do quickly burn out on reporting revisits when there’s no new experiences to talk about. Stardust Racers is amazing when it works, very glad to have ‘done’ Epic Universe, but it wasn’t all that. Excited for the future of B&M stand-ups. Not excited for the future of Busch Gardens.

A quiet trip to Orlando now seems impossible, the baseline entry price to simply ‘suffer’ through it is very high and you have to up-charge well over the odds to actually make a half decent attempt. I dread to think how difficult it would have been had we needed to experience every attraction this time around, though I do recognise that most often the challenge in that is the fun for me, the true driving force that was lacking here immediately after the very first day.
That’s about everything I learnt!