Betty, Keira, and I went last year... we'd saved our pennies for a trip to RatLand, and then we went to KSC/CCAFS for several days... Plan on at LEAST two days if you can if you really want to see stuff... they have some FANTASTIC tours... BUT, they're bus tours and basically you can't do two in one day due to the timing of them. We went out to KSC/CCAFS from Orlando 4 days... we took the "Cape Canaveral: Then and Now" bus tour, which is EXCELLENT... they take you through Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and show you the historic hangars, the SRB segment storage bunkers, and then off the bus at the CCAFS rocket garden, pad 5 from which they launched Al Shepard on his Mercury Redstone, Freedom 7, back in April 1961, including the blockhouse tour and you can press the button that launched him (okay one just like it, but it's on the same panel-- the original button was removed and given to the launch director as a gift). It's REALLY interesting to see the stuff in there... plus, they have some displays in there about the monkey flights prior to Mercury done from CCAFS, and women in space... plus the gift shop (if you get to the CCAFS gift shop, they sell Dr. Zooch Rockets in there-- PLEASE take a pic of the two Dr. Zooch Rockets I built for Wes at Dr. Zooch to be displayed in the case there with his kits... Right after I got back I was contacted by Wes asking me to build a Dr. Zooch Explorer I Jupiter C and a Delta IV-Heavy/Orion Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) kit to be displayed at the Cape in their museum... I'd LOVE to have pics of them on display!) Heck if you're like me, you could spend a couple hours in the rocket garden... unfortunately, you only get about an hour... Be sure your camera batteries are charged! Then you go back on the bus and go around past the Delta II pads from which many of our deep-space probes were launched... then along the 'back road" through CCAFS past the entrance to the old Atlas pads from which John Glenn and the other orbital Mercury Atlas flights flew, then out past the Gemini pads from which the Gemini-Titan flights lifted off, and then finally out to Pad 34, where the Apollo I fire took place in January of 1967, killing Grissom, White, and Chaffee... the pad was scrapped years ago and the tower scrapped, but the concrete hardstand for the rocket to sit on remains as a memorial, and the steel blast deflectors which were never scrapped for whatever reason... it's very moving being there... the sheer history of the place, with the ocean visible just yards away...
We also took the VAB tour, which I HIGHLY recommend... they just started doing those again with the end of the shuttle program, as they couldn't do them due to safety restrictions with the SRB segments during the shuttle program... they were actually filming the tour for NASA TV the day we went through, as we were one of the first tour groups back in there since shuttle began back in '81... It was very interesting...
We also did the Pad tour, which is pretty neat... they actually take the bus inside the fence at Pad 39A and disembark on the service road... you can't go up to the actual pad (too many hazards) but it's as close as you'll ever get (hundred yards away or so) without actually working at NASA. After a photo op, the bus reboards and makes the circle around the pad itself, past the water tower, hydrogen and oxygen storage tanks, past the blast tunnel, and back around over the crawlerway at the foot of the ramp up to the pad... very interesting. The bus then hits the road to a viewing area between 39A and B, and then past 39B which has been razed into a "clean pad" for Ares I/V (before they were cancelled, now SLS) operations...
The only tour we DIDN'T take was the firing room tour... inside the control room at KSC... I've been in the MOCR a dozen times on tours here at nearby JSC, and there's a "mockup" of the firing room at the Saturn V center, where all the bus tours end up anyway... plus at $20+ per tour, the costs were adding up, and SOMETHING had to go, so.... Anyway, the tours end up at the Saturn V center... Be sure your camera batteries are charged, and you have a couple hours or so to spend (okay, half a day if you're like me). They have a full-size Saturn V on display inside the building, spread out into it's component stages, as well as many displays, including a moon buggy, the early "lunar rickshaw" tool carrier pulled by the astronauts on the moon before the buggy became available, the astronaut transfer van from Apollo, a neat "liftoff of Apollo 8" presentation in a viewing gallery where you "relive" the liftoff, in "real-time". There's a neat "lunar landing" presentation as well, in a theater, with a full-size LEM "landing", the lights go down and come back up and there's "Neil" standing on the surface making the "one small step" speech", then the "liftoff" as the upper part of the LEM "takes off" from the moon, leaving the descent stage behind... VERY cool... The Saturn V is capped with a REAL Apollo, and the top segment of the Saturn V launch tower, as well as a Skylab adapter module behind that in the corner. There's also a display of various tools, mockups, a flown Apollo Capsule (Apollo 14 IIRC) and various sundry other items from training and flight to the moon. They also have a good cafeteria out there as well, where you can eat and look at the Saturn V overhead...
The visitor center itself if REALLY good... they were just getting started good on the shuttle display building when we were out there last year (but we got to see Endeavour sitting in the VAB awaiting transfer to the OPF and conversion for flight to California and display, not 50 feet from us, so how cool was that!) and the shuttle display of Atlantis should be just about done. If you get a chance, do the "shuttle launch experience"-- EXTREMELY cool and about as close to spaceflight as most of us will ever get. The museum is also very cool, and their rocket garden is TOP NOTCH... be sure you go to the building on the other side of the rocket garden and see the Soyuz... don't waste time with the "robotic explorers" tour-- it's mostly a "kiddie" thing and not particularly historical like I thought it would be. Their gift shop has TONS of goodies, and even more books upstairs, just really great stuff.
If you have the time and really want to see a lot of historical relics, the "Astronaut Hall of Fame" across the causeway from KSC (you cross a long bridge over to KSC proper-- this is on the west end of it-- they have a full-size shuttle orbiter model out front, you can't miss it) has TONS of uber-cool stuff from the early days of spaceflight... the real deal... including Wally's "Sigma 7" capsule, and stuff all the way up to the shuttle era... VERY cool stuff!
If you want great seafood while your out there, I HIGHLY recommend "Florida's Seafood Bar and Grill" (
www.floridas-seafood.com) at 480 West Cocoa Beach Causeway (on the south side of the road on the entrance to the causeway heading west from Cocoa Beach back across toward the interstate). Their number is 321-784-0892. EXTREMELY good food (especially if you love shrimp as I do, and their fritters are to die for...) We also ate at "Dixie Crossroads" Seafood Restaurant and More, in Titusville... it's supposed to be a big astronaut hangout and they take a lot of NASA-types and politicians and stuff through there so the fellow on the tour told us, and they were good, but honestly the seafood at Florida's Seafood Bar and Grill was better IMHO... you can find them at (
www.DixieCrossroads.com) if you're interested.
There's also a museum down at the south entrance to CCAFS, just behind the cruise ship terminal on the north end of Cocoa Beach... but unfortunately I didn't get to go to that one... I didn't know it was there til after I got home... I thought the museum at Pad 5 was the only one...
Anyway, you'll have a blast... If you POSSIBLY can, I'd schedule AT LEAST two full days just to see stuff out there... we did FOUR days to do all the bus tours, and still didn't see EVERYTHING... since the bus tours end up at the Saturn V building, you can stay there, (we did twice) and the other two times we just jumped buses straight back to the visitor center and did stuff there, and we also spent a half-day in the Astronaut Hall of Fame across the causeway one day after a bus tour... we alternated our days at Disney with days at KSC/CCAFS because you walk yourself to DEATH in Disney, so less walking riding in the bus is a nice break and more enjoyable...
Later and have a blast! OL JR
