When our Arctic cruise arrived in New Jersey, we quickly caught a flight to Orlando. Jen's parents had rented a timeshare for two weeks and had an extra room for us.
We had no real plans other than to relax, shop, and enjoy the sun. During our first week, we decided to drive down to Cape Canaveral to explore the Kennedy Space Center. We had read some positive reviews, but we had no real idea what to expect. We were pleasantly surprised by the place and the fact that they had all these real spaceships for us to contemplate.
We started with a quick history tour of U.S. space missions in the Rocket Garden. Here, we were quite impressed by how small the capsules were and amazed that these tiny modules had been strapped onto actual missiles.
After the Rocket Garden, we took a bus to see the Apollo V rocket, the rocket that was used to send astronauts to the moon. OMG, it is huge! Here, we learned about the early Apollo missions and the moon landings.
From there, we visited the Shuttle Pavilion, where we saw the Atlantis Shuttle. Once again, it was a lot bigger than we thought. We took a tour and learned interesting facts about the shuttle and its program. For example, the thermal protection blankets covering the shuttle’s belly were hand-sewn by a team of highly skilled women.
After that, we explored a few more exhibits and tried some rides, but they paled in comparison to the first pavilions we visited. We arrived right at opening (9 AM) and stayed until closing (5 PM), having a fantastic time and learning a lot.