When we last left this road trip story, we’d all been sweating inside of Valiant Air Command’s hangers and checking out some great aircraft. Once The Terror Team was all successfully coaxed back into the air conditioned van, MLGB pointed out that we were only a few miles from Kennedy Space Center, and it would be a shame to have come all this way and not gone there at all.
And so we did. Now, to be fair, if we had planned this segment of the trip in advance, we would have been forewarned about the cost, and potentially budgeted for a package deal of some sort. However, as this was a spur of the moment add-on to our day’s excursion, I had done zero advance prep. My only thought was that this might be something like visiting the Udvar-Hazy Center in Washington D.C., where parking sets you back $15, but actual museum admission is FREE. You folks who are more familiar with Orlando, FL prices, feel free to laugh at me for a bit before continuing on to the next paragraph.
Which was how, after parting with a Hamilton just for the privilege of parking our people hauler in the massive KSC lot, we found out that admission to the KSC Visitor Complex would cost us another $350 or so, plus the add-on fees should we desire to take a bus tour of the launch complex, or several other things. Yikes! Particularly with the tour upgrade, that would have been approaching a day at Disney World level money, which, if we had been able to throw that kind of cash around, we would have done instead. Yes, as much as I love space and aviation, that’s going to lose out to taking my kids to their first ever trip to Disney World every time.
So we took a few family pictures in the free area, and left. There was still the massive open-air shopping mall mouse trap of Disney Springs to visit, and The Queen’s first ever Rainforest Café meal to be had.
The nice thing about Disney Springs is that, aside from what you spend in the shops, it’s free. Don’t get me wrong, The Terror Team had been saving their allowances all year for this part of the trip, and rather quickly blew all their cash at the LEGO store, the Star Wars store, and the Disney store. Which was fine. We took more photos, had our most expensive meal of the trip, and eventually retired back to our hotel base. The next day would see us back on the road, first to visit some friends, and then making a very long run across almost all of Florida to Pensacola.