Question about planning a quick side trip to Kennedy Space Center

[ohman]

Dear all, just wondering whether anyone here had any experience about this before..

On the last day of our trip (the cruise will come back on 7/24 @ 6:30am, and I expect that we could be really got off the ship at around 8am based on other people's reports), I'm thinking about having a quick side trip to Kennedy Space Center (about 30 mins drive from Port Canaveral) and our flight will depart at 5pm. As it's a domestic flight, I guess if we arrive at the MCO airport at around 4pm that should be fine, giving the Kennedy Center is around 1 hour drive from MCO airport, so that give us maybe from 9am to 2:30pm couple of hours to tour around @ Kennedy Center. Couple of questions:

1. Do we really need to buy "admission" tickets to go into Kennedy Center? Would we still be able to see rockets, etc. without buying the tickets? It seems that the tickets are quite expensive, and we really don't have a lot of time at the center

2. Other then Kennedy Center, for a day drip (from 9am to 2pm), is there any other options near Port Canaveral?

We are a group of 5, with one 76 yrs old (my dad), my mom (67 yrs), my wife, me, and my daughter (6 yrs old)... Would they enjoy Kennedy center as much as I would? (I'm a big space fan)

Thanks!

 

[Feckless]

I recall from our trip in 2009 that you had to pay admission to get in to see anything. The "rocket garden" was inside the gates.

That being said, my DH is a big space fan too and it was his absolute favorite part of our entire trip. You really have to go... You won't be able to do all the tours, but there is plenty to see and do. It really was worth it.

 

[huffjoann]

you can see the rocket garden from the road a bit but it just doesn't do it justice. Then the other thing that really tripped us up coming back from there last month was the blasted draw bridge,, held us up both ways, argh,,

 

[heatherwillmom]

We went to Kennedy Space Center on a school field trip to Florida once. We really enjoyed it. We actually like just wandering around looking at everything more than the tours & films anyway

 

[mattmommy]

I'm not as much of a space nut as dh, but I think I enjoyed it more. It's a bit crowded getting off the ship, but you'll be fine.

I think you should really be at the airport two hours prior to departure. Do you have a rental car to return? Security lines are quite daunting at MCO.