Day 4 - NASA - Kennedy Space Centre - 25th September
This place is the reason we changed the number of nights
we were staying in Orlando from 5 to 6.
Our original plan left no time at all to visit KSC and as
he loves it here and this was T's special birthday celebration we had no option
but to amend our silly, not thought out properly at all, stupid, original plan...........and I'm extremely glad we did.
Our first OMG moment was finding out that after 24 years
of driving here & parking for free..... there's now a $10
charge. What! 😳
Once we'd bought our entrance tickets (T is now on senior
rates 😂) and walked inside, we realised why we had to hand over those $10.......a
lot of changes have been made & the parking fees were apparently helping to
pay for them.
The entrance is completely different, the rocket garden
has been revamped, there's a new JFK memorial fountain, they're in the process
of moving the old Astronaut Hall of Fame to a new 'on-site' location (it used
to be a couple of miles away) and there's now a building dedicated to the
history of the Space Shuttle.
Visiting that was our second OMG moment.........
..........We walked into a massive building and waited at
the top of the queue for the next 'show'.
Once it started, we found ourselves in a huge room
watching a fascinating drama about how the idea of the shuttle came about, the
first designs, the problems they had to overcome and everything else in
between.
We then moved into another huge room with a load of special
effect screens and, with the drama continuing, we learnt about the work that
was carried out by the shuttles, specifically Atlantis.
It was all marvellous (and coming from someone who is
usually bored stiff at KSC, that's praise indeed). At the end a special, special effect brought a
picture of the Atlantis onto the screen........except it wasn't a special
effect at all - it was a mesh curtain and it wasn't a picture.... it was THE
Atlantis.
There, in all its glory, right in front of us.
The real thing.
A space shuttle.
A. Space. Shuttle.
The Atlantis.
Wow and wow and all kinds of other wows and when you've
finished imagining all that wowing.........start again.
We couldn't believe our eyes, it was a total surprise - again,
because we've been there so many times, we didn't think we needed to read the
bumph so hadn't known that this was the grand finale of the show.
I'm so pleased we didn't know about it beforehand - it
made the big reveal so much better for us.
I was really happy for T - his face lit up (I wish I had a
photo of it, he looked like a kid who'd been let loose in a toy shop) and I was
pretty damn pleased too.
We'd been lucky enough to watch a live shuttle launch in
1995 (Discovery) which was truly sensational and now, we were seeing a live shuttle
up close & personal........another smash hit memory for us.
Once I'd taken a few pics, I left T to walk around the shuttle
exhibits and made my way downstairs (I think there's the equivalent of about 4
floors inside that building) to wait for him.
I had a quick look round the gift store in case there was a drinking mug
there that T might like (there wasn't) and then I sat & messed about on my
phone for a while (I was getting "where am I?" quiz pics ready to
send to my twitter pals).
When he'd finished looking at everything there was to see
upstairs, T came down & went on the new simulator ride....the Shuttle
Launch Experience (not for me, I felt queasy at the thought of it).
We both felt a tad hungry after that so we went to get some lunch.
The food was really yummy (Sea World, take note - fast food can be scrumptious) and we
filled up on burger/fries (T), pulled pork/fries (me).
There was no sauce with the pork (you got
your own from the selection at the salad bar) so I combined some Cattlemen's
bbq sauce (which I've never had before) with some tomato sauce and it was
delish. (I even took a pic of the
Cattlemen's bottle so I could look for somewhere that sells it in the UK when
we get back home.)
We did our usual thing after that - which was to visit
the Saturn V centre. I sat outside (as
usual) while T walked around all the exhibits (as usual) and we both had a
thoroughly enjoyable 45 minutes (as usual).
(I'm really annoyed at myself because I completely forgot
to take some pics while we were there - not that we haven't got loads, but it
would have been nice to have a few 2016 versions!)
We got the bus back to the Visitor Complex, had a look
around the gift shop (bought nothing) and then made our way to the car and
began the one hour drive back to Westwood Boulevard.
We made the most of getting back early and started to
pack away all the stuff we knew wouldn't need for the remainder of our stay - I got
clothes ready for the next few days and then we got ourselves ready to go
out.
Our itinerary showed that we were due at Universal City
Walks for dinner but neither of us were in the mood for it (for those of you
who don't know, it's a huge open air plaza adjacent to both Universal Studios
& Islands of Adventure and is full of clubs, bars, restaurants & shops)
so we chose to go to Pointe Orlando on International Drive and try one of the
restaurants there instead.
Again, a lot of changes have been made in our 5 year
absence. The top level looked deserted
and that used to be the liveliest area - T & I have had many a good laugh
and a few lovely meals up there but from what we could see now, there was
nothing open.
The ground floor, however, was buzzing. Loads of new places have opened up (or
changed hands/names) and we were a bit spoilt for choice.
Our first stop was "The Pub".
From the name, I'm sure you can imagine what it was
like. There was a ton of British paraphernalia
on the walls & ceiling and the decor was like something out of the late
19th/early 20th centuries (imagine pubs in old b/w films from Gainsborough or
Ealing Studios). To be honest, I think they'd tried too hard.....there was no real pub atmosphere there (or any
atmosphere really) so we left after one drink to hunt out somewhere with a bit
more of a "we want you here" feeling.
That's how come we found ourselves at Marlowe's Tavern and even though it
was just as busy as the pub, the bar staff (Elise & Chris) were very
friendly and made an effort to make us feel really welcome. Thankfully, there was no gimmicky decor, no
one wearing kilts and no pictures of prince Charles!!!!
We had a light dinner and a few drinks & found
ourselves liking Marlowe's so much, we stayed until we felt tired enough to go
home.
Taxi !.................