During my first week and a half in Florida, Joseph and I stayed at his mom’s house in Merritt Island. It takes about forty minutes to drive to Orlando, Florida and about twenty minutes to get to Kennedy Space Center. It only made sense to also visit KSC on a casual day!
Did you know that Kennedy Space Center has a visitor’s area? It’s more of a theme park, too, and it’s actually pretty big! The nice about visiting during the holiday times is that there are some holiday decorations. I absolutely love this ginormous Christmas tree logo ornament!
We didn’t stay long at the Visitor’s Center because I was just super tired from the previous days’ excitement AND it was raining a bit. But what I was able to see was pretty awesome.
We went a couple of days before the launch of Orion, so there were some attractions that featured that launch. Above is the life-size model of Orion and below, an astronaut was posing with anyone that wanted it. Of course, I did!
I absolutely LOVED the play-on words in the above photo. So much so, I wish I had eaten in Orbit Cafe instead of Rocket Garden Cafe!
One of the coolest new attractions to the park is the Atlantis Space Shuttle building that includes a ton of attraction in that one building. The main attraction is the shuttle liftoff program where you get to experience what a real shuttle liftoff feels like!
Here, we are entering a museum of the Atlantis space shuttle.
I am pretty sure this was meant for kids but TOO COOL! It’s like a McDonald’s PlayPen but with an astronaut feel!
I wish I took a better photo. I was basically walking on a plastic tube two stories high AND YOU CAN SEE THE BOTTOM FLOOR. Scared me so much to walk across XD
WHEEE! This was actually really exhilarating, haha.
This area was SO cool too! It’s basically like playing Angry Birds in real life, haha.
The only sad part is that we went when there was a kids tour happening so when I went inside the building, there were little munchkins EVERYWHERE. I REALLY wanted to play the slingshot game but they kept cutting in front of me and I never got to play. Yes, I am utterly heartbroken over this.
And then, we went back to the Rocket Garden.
Like I said, there were a ton of really cool features in this park that I’m sure anyone who’s interested in space or science would find interesting. They seem to try and make the place really kid-friendly as well, such as with their Angry Birds attraction.
I didn’t photograph it but the park sells quite a lot of space-related souvenirs that were way too cool. Like, there were astronaut suit oven mitts, or a plates with moon graphics, or baby onesies of astronaut gear.
