NCL's Kennedy Space Center Tours

[garnet115]

I am looking at the tours that NCL runs to Kennedy Space Center. They have the Space Center tour as well as an "up close tour." Does anyone know which of the KSC tours the "up close tour" ? on the KSC website, there are several different "up close" tours: a mega tour, launch pad tour, assembly building tour, and control center tour. From the description, I think it is the mega tour, but can anyone confirm?

 

Also, if anyone has done a ship tour to KSC and has any advice in general, please share. We will be in port that day from 12 to 9pm.

 

Thanks!

[garnet115]

Oops! Sorry for the duplicate post!!

[ohioNCLcruiser]

My friend and I did this tour a few months ago. We read that the "up close" tours were not worth the extra money and were glad we didn't go. With the regular tour you still get a driven tour around the property, go past the launch pad, large rocket assembly building and go to the off side location of the Saturn V rocket.

 

The tour included a private Imax movie at the end of the day. We actually were a little bored towards the end. They provided an extra hour 30 min that we didn't really use and spent it browsing through the gift shops.

[craig-n-carol]

DW and I went on the NCL KSC Up Close tour in April 2012. It was a great shore excursion. It went to all 3 places listed in your post, but we didn't go inside the VAB on the NCL tour. Not sure if that specific tour direct from the KSC site goes inside the building or not. We did go into the control center, that was a neat experience where they simulated a launch from the control room perspective.

 

When you get to the KSC, you will see it is laid out pretty much like a college campus, it is very large and buses are there to transport you to the various areas on the tour.

 

The up close portion of the tour was the first half of the excursion. The tour is all by bus, but they are big and comfortable and the guides are former astronaut candidates and they really seem to know their stuff. We stopped a few times to see the various historical areas of KSC from Apollo and Space Shuttle launches and what not. Lots of photo ops on the whole tour, so bring your good camera.

 

After that we were dropped off at the Saturn 5 rocket area, which IMHO, is the highlight of the tour.

 

The shuttle launch simulator was pretty cool too, I think it was an extra $5pp but to me was worth it. There are also a couple of IMAX movies, I believe they were included in the tour price with NCL.

 

Bring some extra $$ to eat in the cafeteria, as the tour is long and lunch is not included. The food there is only so-so, but is better than going all day without eating something.

[garnet115]

Thanks for the information!

[johnnypiano]

One thing I would recommend is renting a car and buying your own ticket instead of buying NCL's excursion. NCL charges $89 for admission and transfer (for the general ticket, not up close). At the gate the ticket is $50. So for a party of four you are paying $356 to do it with NCL as opposed to $240 to do it on your own (assuming a rental car is $40 for the day). As a bonus, you have more time if you do it on your own, since (at least when we did it), we wasted a lot of time waiting for our group, getting on the bus, etc.

Edited November 25, 2013 by johnnypiano

[cssc123]

Also if the trip is in the next 6months, contact all of your congresspersons. It used to be that each congress rep/sen got so many tickets out to give to constituents for free. I think the cap was like 4 or 5 tickets. The only catch is you can't order them longer than 6 months in advance.

 

I'm not sure if this is still the case since shuttle launches has been scrapped but I would suspect its still a viable option since it is federally funded still.

 

We're going to be down there next december and we planned on contacting both our senators and our rep about 7 months in advance to get the ball rolling.

 

In the end a rental car for 2 would be FAR cheaper than the NCL price.