Our day trip to the Kennedy Space Center started with a pleasant drive from Davenport in lovely weather, following highways and quieter countryside roads across Central Florida.
Along the way we passed through the small town of Christmas, Florida. True to its name, the town leans heavily into the festive theme — it even has its own post office where people send letters and postcards to be postmarked “Christmas, FL”, especially popular around December.
We didn’t stop, but it was one of those uniquely American places that makes road trips interesting.
Arriving at Kennedy Space Center
The Kennedy Space Center, located on Merritt Island, has been at the heart of America’s space programme since the early 1960s. It’s where many of NASA’s most historic missions launched from, including the Apollo moon missions and the Space Shuttle programme.
As places go, it feels less like a theme park and more like a working monument to engineering, science and human ambition.
The Bus Tour: A Bit of a Letdown
The only real disappointment of the day was the field tour by bus.
Now, this may just have been bad luck, but our bus had fairly small windows, which meant you couldn’t see the tops of buildings. If you were sitting on the wrong side, you barely saw anything at all.
What should have been a fascinating tour of launch complexes and historic buildings ended up feeling like a slow drive through an industrial estate, punctuated occasionally by a NASA logo.
We did pass some of the massive buildings used to house rockets including the Vehicle Assembly Building, which famously has some of the largest sliding doors in the world — but overall, it didn’t quite live up to expectations.
The Museums and Exhibits
Thankfully, everything else more than made up for it.
The museums and indoor exhibits were genuinely excellent, well laid out, informative and engaging without feeling overly “theme park”.
Saturn V: The Moon Rocket
Seeing the Saturn V rocket up close was an absolute highlight.
Used in the Apollo missions, including the 1969 moon landing, Saturn V remains the most powerful rocket ever successfully flown. Standing beneath it, you really get a sense of its sheer scale and the mind-boggling engineering involved.
As the Inspiral Carpets once sang, “It really was the greatest sight” — and in this case, that lyric feels entirely justified.
The accompanying exhibits detailing the Apollo missions and the control room from the 1969 moon landing were fascinating, bringing home just how much was achieved with what now feels like incredibly limited technology.
Space Shuttle Atlantis
The Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit was another standout.
Being able to get up close to an actual shuttle, displayed as if it were in orbit, was impressive. Atlantis completed 33 missions between 1985 and 2011, playing a key role in building the International Space Station.
It’s an exhibit that works just as well for casual visitors as it does for anyone with even a passing interest in space.
Final Thoughts
Overall, it was a really good day out.
If you’re travelling all the way from the UK to Florida, it would be a real shame to miss the Kennedy Space Center — especially if the alternative is another day with Mickey Mouse.
This is a place where real explorers, engineers and heroes worked, pushed boundaries and changed history. For us, that made it far more memorable than any theme park ride.
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