Friday was the day to leave Orlando and head east to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center
The sun came out….it was an absolutely gorgeous day in Orlando and Central Florida. I think the high temperature might have been 70; bright blue skies as you’ll see below. This is a picture of the hotel complex; our room is behind the playground structure on the first floor
Had a good time at the Kennedy Space Center.
Rockets in the rocket garden; we arrived just in time to hear the last part of the guided tour in this area
The boys in the fake lunar capsule and Kevin walking down the gangway that the Apollo XI crew walked down as they headed towards the moon
Christopher liked the flags (countries who have contributed to the International Space Station)
A two-shot panorama of the vehicle assembly building, with Matthew and Mom entering the last shot
We did the discovery guided bus tour…paid extra to get closer to the shuttle. You’ll note there are no pictures of the shuttle here. Suzanne has a few good ones from the new camera that I’ll post eventually but we ended up getting only as close as the regular tours…
So, our great customer service experience(s) in Florida continue. I didn’t elaborate on how annoying getting the camera was at Costco, but here, we paid extra to get as close to the shuttle as possible and it didn’t happen. And there wasn’t a notice that it wasn’t going to happen. It took us getting back and going up and asking what the difference was to find out that, oh yeah, that area was closed for “construction, or I think the astronauts are here, or, maybe it was hail”. Did get a refund, but, wouldn’t have spend the extra hour for the other parts of the extended tour to start with if we would have known up front….
The bus tour ends at the Apollo/Saturn building and they really did a nice job of talking through the history of the Apollo program and the launch of Apollo VIII. This shot is a two-shot panorama of the mock control room they have set up for the launch
Another panorama during the actual presentation
The engines on the Saturn V rocket…..
Service and Command Module….we’ll be watching the Right Stuff and Apollo 13 in the next month
The Kitty Hawk command module
The last thing we did was this show….we had read it was cheesy and oh my was it cheesy. I proved to Suzanne I am the uber-Trek-geek by mentioning that they had the Enterprise from the new movie and not the one from the series or the old movies on this poster….
Maybe the most shocking development of the day was the end of the show where the Vulcan on-stage gave the “Live Long and Prosper” Vulcan salute. Mom can’t do it; Dad can’t, Fric and Frac can’t. But Kevin can; with both hands. Very strange genetic workings on display here….
Cruise starts TOMORROW. Blog will go dark for seven plus days but I will be composing posts so when we get back to the world of the internet next weekend there should be a bunch of posts appearing very quickly.
