2013 Holiday Day 8 - Kennedy Space Center

So it's a day off from the theme parks today as we head to the coast and to Kennedy Space Center. It's about an hour's drive and we make it with a few minutes to spare before opening. We are hoping to get the bus tour first to Saturn V. Anyway, we queue for tickets which takes ages. Then for bag search... Ages. Then we queue for the bus to the Saturn V exhibit. Well, guess what. It takes ages. There is lots of grumbling in the queue and people are shouting at the staff. Buses are coming in, but taking tour groups away - not general ticket holders like us. Eventually, after 25 minutes, a bus does arrive and we are on our way...

It takes about 15 minutes to ride the bus to the Apollo / Saturn V hall and the driver takes us on a road tour of the Vehicle Assembly Building and the Launch Control Center. Interestingly, last time we were here, the bus stopped at Launch Pad 39A - but this is now a separate tour which costs more money. Glad we did it last time! Upon arrival at the Saturn V hall we watch a movie about how the Apollo missions came about and then watch a simulation of the Apollo 8 launch - which was really, really good. Then it's into the hall - and Saturn V is just about the coolest thing ever... It's massive and beautifully displayed with loads of information. We had a good time wandering around. By now we were a bit peckish, so we stopped in the Moon Rock Cafe for supplies. It was reasonably tasty and filled us up.

We took the bus back to the main centre and headed for the Space Shuttle Atlantis hall. Mrs B had been really looking forward to this. Again, we had a couple of video presentations about the history and flights of the shuttle before entering the hall. It was fabulous, and again, a good job had been done on the information. In addition, there was a life-size section of International Space Station housing that Master and Mrs B crawled through and some exhibits about life on board ISS - such as how the crew go to the toilet. Master B found this fascinating... :-)

Master B had been desperate to do Angry Birds Space Encounter so we headed over there. It was rubbish. Just a few crappy games. Bit pointless really. We had done all the other areas last visit, and it was mid-afternoon now and we had spent a while looking at Saturn V and Atlantis. We decided to head home.

Once back at the hotel, we decided to walk to...

Downtown Disney

...for dinner. We chose a favourite: Raglan Road which is an Irish pub and restaurant. We were seated quickly and ordered sausage and mash for myself, shepherd's pie for Mrs B and fish and chips for Master B. Whilst waiting for our dinners, some delicious soda bread and dip was served. The mains were really rather tasty, but massive portions, so I think we all just about ate half of what was served. We wanted to leave room for pud though. Mrs B had the lemon clouds (a sort-of lemon meringue pie) and I had the apple and strawberry crumble. Lovely! Our server, Katie, was lovely and it was a good meal. We even got to see some Irish dancing and a band too!

After dinner, we went to the shops were Master B bought some more Lego in the Lego store and Mrs B bagged a Tee from the Disney store.

Then it was back home for TV and bed!

A nice pace change today. I don't think we want to do theme parks all the day every day. I think we have seen all that KSC offers now, so we shall have to find something different next visit.