Monday 1 July
I woke everyone with the words “Happy New Year!”, but they weren’t really impressed with an accountant’s joke to start a Monday morning…;)
From our location at Fort Pierce we headed towards the ocean. Morning tea was at Cocoa Beach, where we found a surf shop and bought some goggles and beach towels. There we were given directions to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, so headed north planning to see a spaceship up close if possible before we headed to Orlando.
I cannot emphasise how much I underestimated the Space Centre. We drove a fair way into the area to park, arriving at 11.30am, and at the ticket office found the prices were $50 per adult and $40 per child. Part of me thought it was just too expensive and we should leave, but the kids were excited and we had travelled all that way…so much for the new financial year budget I had been constructing in the RV! 😉
Anyway, there were two IMAX movies to see (about the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope); exhibits on the Hubble, and Mars Rovers, and space exploration then and now, and others; an Angry Birds Space Encounter play area (and gift shop!); a two hour bus tour out to the launch site; a memorial to astronauts that have died on duty (such as the Columbia and Challenger missions); and several jets and rockets to see. One exhibit included meeting an astronaut, but we skipped that because we didn’t know who he was. There was also a new exhibit called ‘Space Shuttle Atlantis’ which only opened on 29 June this year, and it was excellent. It provided background and history to Atlantis’ 26 years and 33 missions, information about the last mission of the space shuttle program in 2011, and we were then able to get up close to the actual shuttle. The bus tour was also excellent, and at one stop took us to the actual command room from which Apollo 11 was organised, and dramatised and replayed parts of that event.
What surprised me more than anything was how much today captured my attention. While I know where I was at the exact time the Challenger disaster occurred in 1986, I have never really followed the space program closely. I was expecting today to do a quick museum stop to see a rocket or two. Instead we were there eight hours and still didn’t get to see everything (we missed a couple of exhibits near the front gate, and only saw them as we were leaving after the 7pm closing time at 7.30pm). It was like another theme park, and we regretted underestimating it and not making an early morning start there to fit everything in. It was very impressive.
And of course the kids were impressed. Not surprisingly, Zac has a new “best day ever”, and spent a lot of the day videoing and narrating on the ipod, Abi told me three different times during the day she wants to go home and research space programs, and Jarrod wants to learn more about the Apollo missions. Sam said the day was “epic”, Tim wants to be an astronaut, and Belle announced loudly during the second IMAX movie that she wants to be a “princess AND a space astronaut”. So I guess they too were impressed and inspired by the day!
I feel it was money well spent and would certainly recommend it, but did find there was a lot of information to take in as I didn’t have a lot of prior knowledge.
Leaving there much later than we had anticipated, it was still another two hours to our accommodation at Orlando (which thankfully I had pre-booked last night). We arrived just before 10pm, set up quickly in the rain, and everyone was in bed promptly knowing tomorrow is going to be full-on. The plan is to go to Universal Studios, to ‘The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’!