Port Canaveral: 2 days of fun + hotel & car (June 2012)

[Artemis]

We spent two full days in the Port Canaveral area before our Freedom OTS voyage June 24-July 1, 2012. Here’s what we liked a lot:

 

• Sailing lesson off Merritt Island right next to cruise port (my tacking target was Monarch OTS!) – Nice folks, easy going instruction and they use really sweet 23’ Hunter sailboats. – Beachside Sailing ($75pp for 4 hours, can also arrange bareboat rental or certification lessons if you have more time)

 

• WWII open cockpit biplane ride with acrobatics and smoke trail over Cocoa Beach and ocean (we put on a show for a departing Carnival ship!) - This was a blast! We were very impressed with their friendliness, accommodating arrangements and attention to safety. – Florida Biplanes & Helicopter Rides ($250 for 15 min. flight for two, can increase flight time and add more acrobatics, they’ll happily apply a $10 coupon from the local tourist map)

 

• Kennedy Space Center – We spent 5 hours there and still didn’t see it all—it was much more engaging than we anticipated and brought back a lot of space memories unique to those of us old enough to remember all the firsts! The shuttle Atlantis will be on display summer 2013. Be sure to check the website for any rocket launches (one pre-cruise years ago, we got the whole family up in the wee hours and went out to the beach to see a rocket launch—it was thrilling!).

 

• Historic Cocoa Village – charming restaurant/retail area, some nightlife – we can highly recommend Ossorio Bakery & Café

 

• The new Florida Key Lime Pie shop by Cocoa Village – I imagine Floridians will laugh at this one, as I now see it’s a big outfit that sells pies to restaurants and retail stores all over Florida, but oh my gosh! that slice of key lime pie was mighty fine to this Texan. ;)

 

As for hotel, we aren’t big fans of the choices in the near-port area and think they are overpriced for what you get. So we Pricelined an inland hotel and were content with the Holiday Inn Express in Cocoa at $60/night before taxes and fees. (It is very basic but clean and the rate includes complimentary wifi and breakfast of a caliber it will whet your appetite for the cruise ship buffet! We saw some cruisers leave their car and take a taxi to the port, so the hotel must offer free or low cost cruise parking.)

 

Our pre-cruise car rental was a one-way Avis from Palm Beach (where our trip began with a conference). It was easy to return and included port drop-off shuttle. Post-cruise, we used Enterprise for the one-way trip to the airport in Orlando. They do port pick-ups with a big bus shared with Alamo and National. Priceline didn't support either rental (although they do allow bidding on some one-ways now), but I shopped around all the usual companies, Googled for discount codes and found some pretty low rates with no one-way drop charges. Enterprise even honored a rate drop we found online between the time we booked and disembarkation morning. So that one-way between port and MCO for a couple of hours was $42.02 total (which sounds high, but the going rate for that trip was around $60--don't know if that's common or if pricing was influenced by the fact it was the Sunday before July 4th).

 

Hope this helps someone with their planning. Happy cruising! :)

[queenL]

How far would you say the Holiday Inn was from the pier? What star and zone did you bid?

[Artemis]

The HI Express is about 20 minutes from the port--see map. Clearly, there are two main routes from hotel to port. The default northern one Google shows is pure highway driving. If you take the Merritt Island causeway, it's stop-and-go with traffic lights, but you'll pass all kinds of retail if you need to pick up anything and be better situated to drop off a rental car if you want to do that before you get to the port.

 

Sorry, I can't recall our Priceline bidding strategy--see the comments I made in the stickied Priceline thread here.