We are taking a tour. Yes, I know, it’s shocking. A real, live Celebrity organized tour. We really shouldn’t admit it but….just kidding! We actually had so much cabin credit, that it would be silly not too. We were planning to go to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on our own – had a car booked and everything, but then we looked at the tour, and it cost the same as if we did it on our own. Plus, using the cabin credit, it was free! So – off we go to sit in the theater with all the other tour people (horrors!) and wait for our bus (double-horrors!).
We’re actually off early, which is a shock, and we’re on the first bus (of 9 going to KSC). Our tour guide Karen is a doll, she used to work at KSC as a quality control clerk, now she is a tour guide. So she’s got some inside knowledge which is cool.
The drive over to the facility is quick, only about 20 minutes. On the way we find out that KSC actually built the locks and opened up the waterways between Port Canaveral and Merritt Island, where KSC is located, so they could ship in some of the bigger pieces of equipment and spacecraft. We also learned about the nature preserve KSC maintains as a human buffer, but also to protect the wildlife, which we see in abundance as we drive: Egrets, ospreys, great blue herons, wood ducks and of course alligators.
Once at the center, we get to go directly to the Apollo/Saturn 5 rocket center, passing on the way the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
Once inside the Saturn 5 building, we watch a movie about the creation and launch of the rockets which is pretty interesting – then we go into the actual launch control room where we watch a reenactment of a launch, complete with rumbling and shaking. Neat. 
Next we tour around an actual Saturn 5 rocket. It’s one of the extra rockets that wasn’t ever launched (of course, because once they launch the only thing retrievable is the astronaut capsule). It’s mammoth and amazing to think that these things were launching men into orbit in the 60’s. As Karen repeatedly reminded us, we were going to the moon 30 years before someone figured out we could put wheels on suitcases! Mind-blowing!
Sunny even gets into the act (he’s out of hibernation now that the temperatures are more accommodating!).
We wander through the rocket display and into the “vault” where the actual capsule from Apollo 11 is on display, along with all sorts of space suits, equipment, notes and logs from the lunar landing journey. Cool!
Back out to the bus, we head to the main KSC area to tour the Atlantis Shuttle display. We see a great video about the creation and building of the shuttle, then another video about the launch, then the reveal! It’s brilliantly done so that suddenly the film ends and the screen becomes transparent and there is the shuttle! Talk about capturing the imagination. It’s the real Shuttle – Atlantis! Totally cool. We walk around it, learn about the cargo hold, the space lab, all sorts of stuff.
Then we do the Shuttle Launch experience! I’m chicken, I’ll admit, but Karen assures us all it’s not going to make us sick, so, well, ok. And she was right – no motion sickness – just a really cool experience! You are seated in your chair, buckled in, then turned 90 degrees like you are in the shuttle at launch, watch the countdown, feel the vibrations as the rockets ignite and launch, then shudder and shake your way into orbit. The worst part was once you get to orbit and the engines all fall away, there’s a lurch and your stomach sort of leaves you while you are free floating into space. All in all though, pretty fun!
We break for lunch, which we are figuring will be bad, expensive crap – but we are pleasantly surprised by the Rocket Garden café which has a huge Santa Fe chicken salad with garlic lime vinaigrette for only $8.95. Heck my water cost almost that much!
After lunch we head to the Early Space Exploration display, which is again, just fascinating to think these guys did all this in the 60’s and 70’s. Trusting their lives to these 3 stage fuel burning rockets and little more than a simple computer processor to get them there and back.
On our way out, we wandered through the Rocket Garden and walked across an actual walkway that was attached to the space shuttle – you know that red iron walkway that the astronauts walk across while they wave at you for the last time? Neat!
Then our last visit was to the Imax theatre for the 3D International Space Station movie. 45 minutes of captivating video – the launch, once they are there, how they train, the work they do. It was all great – and the tour commentary was well worth putting up with being on that bus! Actually, it wasn’t really that bad at all. We’ve had way, way worse!
Back to the ship we go for our last evening aboard. We hit the lounge as usual, have our last dinner with Lazaro and Elena, say goodbye to Gabriella, our fabulous dining room hostess, and then go to the lounge again to sadly say goodbye to our boys. We turn in early so we can be up bright and bushy tailed and ready to tackle the madhouse known as the carry off (take your own bags off the ship)disembarkation.
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