An Unbelievable Day at The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

“We choose to go to the moon.”

John F. Kennedy, Rice University
September 12, 1962

The Kennedy Space Center is the base for all NASA’s Space Shuttle launch and landing operations. Every crewed mission to space has departed from the Kennedy Space Center.

Located in Merritt Island, Florida, The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is a perfect addition to a trip’s itinerary if you are vacationing in Orlando (a little over 50 miles away), leaving for a cruise out of Port Canaveral, or visiting one of the many beaches located on Florida’s east coast.

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One word comes to mind while visiting the center: unbelievable. The advancements in technology and the genius of the citizens who built our space program are awe-inspiring. The sheer size of the rockets and spacecraft located at the visitor complex is almost hard to comprehend, even while standing under them in person.

Basic Information for Visiting the Center:

Hours, Pricing, Itineraries, & Dining

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is open daily, excluding Thanksgiving and Christmas, from 9:00 am to 5:00/6:00 pm, depending on the time of year. The parking lot opens at 8:30 am, and complex entry ends one hour prior to closing.

There are multiple admission options including a 1-day & 2-day admission ticket.

(Pricing as of August 1, 2023)

1-Day Ticket
-Adult (12 and older) $75
-Child (ages 3-11) $65
-Senior (55 and older) $70

2-Day Ticket
-Adult (12 and older) $85
-Child (ages 3-11) $79
-Senior (55 and older) $84

Active duty military members receive a discount on both adult and child tickets.

There are also various add-ons offered, such as Chat with an Astronaut, Land and Drive On Mars Training Stage, Microgravity Training Stage, and Astronaut Training Experience.

Parking is $10.

The website for the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers a variety of suggested itineraries for both one-day and two-day visits, including visiting with children under 10, visiting with children over 10, visiting adults/couples/groups, and visiting as a space enthusiast.

There are multiple dining options located throughout the complex, as well as vending machines for water and other beverages. You are permitted to bring in your own food and drinks. See their FAQ for more specifics.

Click here for a downloadable map of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

Our Visit:

We visited the complex as part of a family vacation in which we stayed on the Space Coast and at Disney World during the month of July.

We arrived around 9:30 in the morning after driving from the Orlando International Airport, which is approximately 44 miles away and took us about 45 minutes to drive. By this time, the line for parking was quite long, adding an additional 15 minutes to our travel time.

We finally entered the complex at 9:50. While we were tempted to stop and explore the massive Rocket Garden, we continued walking to the entrance for the Behind the Gates Kennedy Space Center Bus Tour to Apollo/Saturn V Center. I recommend doing this first, as the lines for the bus progressively get longer throughout the day.

The bus ride takes approximately 15 minutes to get to the Apollo/Saturn V Center. When getting on the bus, sit on the left side as you walk down the aisle (what will be the right side of the bus when you are sitting). This will give you a better view of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), which has been used since 1960 to house Saturn V rockets, the space shuttle launch configuration, and is currently being outfitted to support the Space Launch System.

While traveling to the Apollo/Saturn V Center, a video plays, which is an informational tour of the restricted areas you are traveling through, including launch sites and operational space flight facilities. This is a working spaceflight facility where Americans launched to the moon and where NASA plans to send astronauts into deep space.

We arrived at the Apollo/Saturn V Center around 10:15 and waited about 10 minutes until we were allowed into the first viewing area. The initial portion of the center is a series of viewing rooms to help control the flow of visitors, including the Apollo 8 Firing Room Theater. Here, we experienced the countdown of Apollo 8, which was the first crewed NASA mission to orbit the moon in 1968, all while facing the actual consoles used during the Apollo launches.

The tour then becomes self-guided with access to various interactive experiences and artifacts, such as a Saturn V rocket, which is the largest rocket ever flown, a massive 363ft long. It is one of only three left in the United States. A total of 13 Saturn V rockets were launched between 1967-1972.

Other experiences include:

• The Apollo Treasures Gallery (a Smithsonian-affiliated exhibit), which showcases artifacts such as Alan Shepard’s Moon dust-covered spacesuit, and the Apollo 14 crew capsule.
• The Lunar Theater, which recreates the events of the July 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing. 
• The Apollo 1 Tribute to honor the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. 

While at the Apollo/Saturn V Center, we ate lunch at the Moon Rock Cafe to avoid the lunch rush. This cafeteria-style grab-and-go restaurant has options such as salads, pizza, burgers, hot dogs, chicken tenders, and fries. The food was what you would expect from this type of dining option.

After a quick stop at the gift shop, we boarded the bus for a 10-minute trip back to the main campus.

We then visited the Space Shuttle Atlantis Exhibit. This exhibit houses the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which is displayed at a rotated angle of 43.21 degrees with the payload doors open and Canadarm extended as if just undocked from the International Space Station. This is one of three space-flown shuttles that are displayed in the United States.

There is also a replica of the Hubble Space Telescope, a tribute to the crews of Challenger and Columbia, which includes personal items from each astronaut and recovered hardware from both orbiters, Astronaut Training Simulators, a Shuttle Launch Experience, and the International Space Station Triumph of Technology in which you can experience what life in space aboard the International Space Station would be like.

After finishing up at the Space Shuttle Atlantis Exhibit, we headed back to the front of the complex to visit the Rocket Garden and Heroes & Legends Exhibit. Along the way, we passed dining options, a gift shop, and other attractions such as Planet Play, which is a multistory play experience designed for kids ages 2-12 that houses an indoor interactive area such as; map a constellation, climb a wormhole, walk on Saturn’s rings, and slide through an asteroid field. Next door to Planet Play is the IMAX Theater that shows space-themed films. To catch a screening, check the schedule for show times when you arrive.

The Rocket Garden is outside the Heroes & Legends Exhibit. The garden displays real but never flown in space rockets, including Delta II, Juno 1, Delta, Mercury Redstone, Mercury-Atlas, Atlas-Agena, Gemini-Titan II, Juno II, and Saturn 1B. The Heroes & Legends Exhibit showcases the stories of the earliest space missions and NASA’s space pioneers, houses artifacts, including a Redstone rocket, Sigma 7 capsule, and Gemini 9 capsule, and is the location of the US Astronaut Hall of Fame.

Neither of my kids are huge space fans, so they were ready to leave by that point. We spent about 5 hours and didn’t see everything. If you enjoy space or have a space-obsessed kid, you could easily spend an entire day or more experiencing everything.

Do your kids love to read about space? Click here to see my recommendations for children’s books about space.

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