Kennedy Space Center: Tips for planning your visit in 2024
Among the many family friendly tourist attractions in Florida, I can’t help reserving a special soft spot for Kennedy Space Center. Maybe because I grew up in the heart of the Apollo era moon missions in full astronaut fangirl mode, it just brings out the kid in me.
But whether you are a space junkie or not, Kennedy Space Center offers something unique: it’s real. Not a theme park or museum - though the Visitor Complex does a great job creating that kind of experience for guests - Kennedy Space Center is an active NASA launch facility and the center for the agency’s space activities. There is a dizzying amount of progress going on right now in the fields of interplanetary science and human spaceflight, making Kennedy Space Center a very busy place. It just might be the most active time for space exploration since those early Space Race days.
Since a lot of things are scheduled at specific times at Kennedy Space Center, and some attractions require a good amount of time to explore, it is helpful to do a little pre-planning to best make use of your time.
There is a ton of information on their website, including the all important Event Calendar, but I’m going to attempt to distill it down a little with some hopefully good suggestions, based on our own several trips there, to get you started on your way to a memorable visit.
Table of Contents
A Brief history of Kennedy Space Center
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established in 1958 with the mission to perform civilian research related to space flight and aeronautics. 1961, when President Kennedy famously threw down the Cold War challenge of landing on the moon before the end of the decade, the Apollo Lunar Landing Program was born.
To support the Program, NASA purchased land on Merritt Island, a marshland on the east coast of Florida, as a launch center. This was the early beginnings of what would become known as “the Space Coast” - businesses, attractions and facilities popped up in and around this beachy community to support the center and the growing excitement around space travel. The location was chosen so rockets could be safely launched to the east over the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean. If an issue with the rocket occurred after liftoff, flight operators could safely put it down in the Atlantic Ocean without endangering the public.
After Kennedy’s death, President Johnson issued an executive order to rename what was previously known as NASA Launch Operations Center to Kennedy Space Center.
KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) and sometimes there is a little confusion about the name of the space center, as the two entities work very closely together, share resources and operate facilities on each other's property. But “Kennedy Space Center” specifically refers to the launch facility and its operations.
Apollo Command Module on display at the Kennedy Space Center.
Since its establishment, KSC has been the launch facility for the Mercury, Gemini & Apollo moon missions, as well as Skylab and Space Shuttle Programs. Our International Space Station missions don’t launch from here - when the Space Shuttles were retired in 2012, American astronauts started hitching rides with the Russian cosmonauts at Baikonur Cosmodrome. But new launch vehicles are in development.
Most recently, with the expanding commercialization of the space industry, NASA is leasing some of the launch properties to companies developing rockets and space vehicles like SpaceX and Boeing. Though I have mixed feelings about this trend, the involvement of private industry in space has always been inevitable - one government agency can’t shoulder all the costs, research and development forever. And perhaps it’s a tribute to NASA’s success that the whole field has grown so much. I just hope responsible behavior will always guide these endeavors.
There are roughly 700 facilities and buildings throughout the center's 144,000 acres. Perhaps the most impressive is the 525-foot tall Vehicle Assembly Building, used for stacking NASA's largest rockets. You can see the massive facility up close - from the outside anyway - on one of the bus tours.
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Center as we know it today was established to offer the public an opportunity to learn about NASA’s efforts in human space flight. It is a constantly developing attraction, as the real work of space flight is constantly in motion.
Interestingly, even though launch pads and heavy equipment are the order of the day at KSC, Merritt Island is actually a Nature Preserve and a wildlife sanctuary. This is because only 9% of the land is developed, thus making the rest a great place for local wildlife to run freely. On our bus tour, the driver had to stop for loggerhead turtles to go by, since they are a protected species. Even the massive crawlers that bring rocket stacks to the launchpads have to stop for these precious animals. Nature wins! :)
How much time do I need to see the Kennedy Space Center and what ticket should I buy?
To make the most of your visit, you will need a full day at Kennedy Space Center. Count on a full 8+ hour day.
The ticket situation can be a little confusing. Included in your admission ticket are a lot of great attractions.. But there are also offered “add-ons” that can be purchased along with your ticket.
Are the add-ons worth it? Well, that really depends on your level of interest and how much you want to spend.
A general 1-Day Admission ticket is pretty expensive at $75 per adult and $65 per child under 12. But it includes a lot of great attractions and for most visitors, this is comprehensive enough.
The Space Shuttle Atlantis on display.
The 1-Day Admission ticket at the Kennedy Space Center includes the following:
Gateway™: The Deep Space Launch Complex featuring Spaceport KSC
Space Shuttle Atlantis® and the Shuttle Launch Experience®
Kennedy Space Center Bus Tour
Apollo/Saturn V Center
Heroes and Legends featuring the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame®
Astronaut Encounter
Planet Play - an immersive, multi-story indoor playground for ages 2-12
Rocket Garden guided tours
Journey to Mars
3D Space Films in the IMAX theater
LEGO® Build to Launch
Character Appearances
Other scheduled presentations and films
Multi-day tickets and even annual passes are also available. We opted for the two-day admission ticket, as we were staying in the area particularly to see KSC and wanted to do one of the extended bus tours, which does take a good part of the day. The 2-day pass gives you a significant discount on the second day’s admission and you actually have 6 months to use it.
With the 2-day pass, you’ll have more of an opportunity, time-wise, to take advantage of Add-ons. Here are some popular ones:
Chat with an Astronaut (includes snacks & beverages)
Special Interest Tours (extended bus tours)
Astronaut Training Experience®
Astronaut Training Experience Training Stages
Our favorite attractions at Kennedy Space Center
Rocket Garden
One of the oldest exhibits at KSC but truly an iconic one, the Rocket Garden features some of the most famous and historic rocket designs of the Space Race, creating a sort of skyline that is one of the first things you’ll see as you enter the park. Definitely take a walk through it and admire the impressive scale. Most of these rockets are real but unlaunched - remember NASA wasn’t yet able to recover booster rockets in the early days of spaceflight.
Astronaut Encounter
We really enjoyed this casual talk and presentation by a shuttle veteran. He showed slides of amazing scenes from his shuttle voyage and answered visitors’ questions. This is included in your ticket, and takes about 40 minutes. The Astronaut of the Day also meets guests and signs autographs at the Space Shop.
If you are even more interested in this kind of personal experience, you can schedule an Astronaut Chat over snacks in a small group setting as an “add-on” or a Fly With an Astronaut Experience, which includes a catered lunch with the Astronaut of the Day followed by a private tour of the Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit with the astronaut as your tour guide.
Kennedy Space Center Bus Tour
The bus tour that is included with your ticket is the only way to get to the Apollo/Saturn V Center - and trust me, you really want to go there. Also, the bus tour is in itself a great attraction, taking you behind the scenes through a video presentation in a comfortable, air-conditioned coach and past NASA’s real launch pads and official facilities. It takes 40 minutes. Once you get to the Apollo/Saturn V Center, you can tour it at your own pace and get back on the bus to the Visitor’s Center at your leisure.
The buses leave from inside the visitor complex entrance and run continuously throughout the day. Lines could be long on busy days, but it is really worth doing to make your visit complete.
Explore Tour
For an additional “add-on” fee ($25 for adults & $19 for children 3-11), we took this extended bus tour, guided by a “space expert”. The tour makes several stops for photo opportunities of numerous spaceflight icons like the Vehicle Assembly Building and historic Launch Complex 39, where visitors can disembark along the way to the Apollo/Saturn V Center. Once there, you can take the regular bus back to the Visitor Center whenever you wish. It is recommended that you allow two hours for this experience.
The massive Saturn V Center.
Apollo/Saturn V Center
This is a really impressive exhibit that focuses on the Apollo missions to the moon. Of course I loved it! The center attraction is the giant Saturn V rocket suspended horizontally above you - at 363 feet long, it is just impossibly huge. It was the largest rocket ever flown (until recently), as it needed the power to get a human crew to the moon. (SpaceX’s Starship rocket is larger, but didn’t survive its first test flight so that’s still pending!)
There are lots of interactive displays and real artifacts, like the Apollo 14 Command Module, and the Apollo 8 Firing Room and Apollo 11 landing simulations.
Space Shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center.
Space Shuttle Atlantis
The presentation of the Space Shuttle Atlantis is truly the best singular thing at Kennedy Space Center. The retired shuttle vehicle is suspended dramatically as the centerpiece of this interactive attraction. Without giving too much away, I will say, when I first saw it, it gave me chills.
The entire exhibit is dedicated to Space Shuttle history and science. There is plenty of fun stuff for kiddos to do - like a speedy “landing” slide, a full-size model of the Hubble Space Telescope, flight training simulators and a model of the shuttle “potty” they can sit on.
Truly moving is the “Forever Remembered” exhibit that memorializes the 14 astronauts who perished during the loss of orbiters Challenger and Columbia. Recovered hardware from both orbiters, including a section of Challenger’s fuselage with the American flag on it and a piece of framework of Columbia’s cockpit windows, give you a real physical connection to the dangers of spaceflight. It’s a very well-considered exhibit, and staged in a separate area that you can avoid if you don’t want young children to see it.
It has been a little personal mission of ours to see all four of the retired Space Shuttles that are now exhibited in select air & space museums across the country. So we checked that box for Atlantis here at KSC - a particularly good one! You can read about the exhibits we visited for Endeavor in our LA blogpost, 6 Fun Things to do in Downtown Los Angeles and for Enterprise in our blogpost on Visiting the Intrepid Museum in New York City. One more to go!
Special interest Tours
Because Kennedy Space Center is a working spaceport, the types of tours and add-on features do change, so look for “special things” to become available. A few years ago we took the specialized Apollo history tour and got to walk onto the unused historic launch pads and visit the control bunker. (complete with a vintage “Put your cigarettes out before entering” sign - which feels absurd in today’s culture that anyone would actually consider smoking in there!!) For me and my earlier fancies of flight with Apollo, It was an almost spiritual experience.
Those launch pads are back in use now with all the new commercial alliances with NASA going on today so that particular tour no longer exists, but something exciting is always happening at Kennedy Space Center, and new visitor experiences are added all the time. In 2023, the Center is celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Women in Space. There is also an opportunity to have an astronaut give you a guided tour with Fly With an Astronaut.
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Moon Tree Garden
A recent installation at the Apollo Saturn V Center is the Moon Tree Garden. Surrounding a bronze statue of Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins are 12 sycamore trees planted in a circle. These are second-generation trees that are direct descendants of seeds that were carried to the Moon, and were supplied to KSC by Rosemary Roosa, Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa’s daughter and president and CEO of the Moon Tree Foundation. (Roosa was the astronaut who took those original seeds to the moon.) The 12 trees represent the 12 crewed Apollo missions. It’s a serene spot occupying the lawn by the Banana Creek viewing point and you can only get to it by taking the bus to the Apollo/Saturn V Center.
In our commercial photography business, we photographed an arborist who maintains a garden of historical trees on a local college campus and a Moon Tree was among them. This gave me a particular smile. :)
Gift shops
I wouldn’t normally be such a silly tourist and add a gift shop to a “favorites” list, but I have to say, Kennedy Space Center has some really great gift shops, particularly the enormous Space Shop in the heart of the Visitor Center. It has a lot of fun features - like a selfie station that creates an astronaut version of yourself that floats around the perimeter of the store - so it’s worth a stop in even if you don’t want to buy anything.
T-shirts, space souvenirs, freeze-dried ice cream, toys, books, and mission patches are among the offerings, along with a customization station and luckily, ponchos for those famous Florida sudden downpours. :)
A fun little feature of the Space Shop is the gantry the Apollo 11 crew walked across to enter their spacecraft for their historic flight. (no, it’s not for sale!) This cool artifact used to be in an outdoor area but it has since been moved inside to protect it from the corrosive environment of Florida weather. The Space Shop uses the retro look of the gantry for its new entranceway arches.
Admittedly, I did have to walk across it (when it used to be outside) for “astronaut power”. Full fess up - my favorite Apollo astronaut was Michael Collins, who was the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 11. He didn’t walk on the surface of the moon like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did, but he did write a seminal book about his experiences as a test pilot and astronaut titled Carrying the Fire that I highly recommend to anyone interested in this period. Collins was a modest man and quite a witty writer, chronicling not only the technical aspects of spaceflight in an engaging way, but also relating his human experiences of how flying to the moon impressed him personally. He has written a number of books, but Carrying the Fire is my favorite.
Collins sadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 90, but during the pandemic, I serendipitously stumbled across his Instagram account, which kept me happily entertained during that challenging time. On it, Collins wrote extensively about many of his recollections of the world tour that he, Neil and Buzz embarked on after their groundbreaking mission, as emissaries for space exploration and America’s proud moment. Good stuff! Just like in his books, his engaging observations from this period are fascinating. His family has left the account up as a memorial if you want to check it out.
Can I view a rocket launch at Kennedy Space Center?
The short answer is yes, but it’s a little more complicated than it may seem.
Firstly, launch schedules can be somewhat fluid. Launches get canceled or postponed for myriad reasons, so even if you’ve carefully planned your visit around a launch, it may not happen and you might be disappointed.
Some launches can be viewed with your regular ticket, with available seating - like the bleachers at the Banana Creek viewing point - on a first-come, first-serve basis. Others may require an additional purchased ticket because they can only be viewed from more restricted areas or they happen outside of the park’s regular operating hours. Launch viewing tickets are available for some — but not all — launches, depending on the date and time of the launch. Contact Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex at (855) 433-4210 for information on purchasing tickets.
You should familiarize yourself with launch scrub policies if you purchase tickets. Not every launch is open to the public. But if you are willing to take a chance, there are a lot of good resources at How to Watch a Rocket Launch at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
You can also sign up for their newsletter to to receive launch alerts.
Lastly, you don’t have to be inside the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to see a launch! There are many spots in the area that are close enough to watch a rocket go up, as we did from Marina Park in Titusville for a satellite launch. NASA offers these location suggestions.
Planning your visit to Kennedy Space Center
How to get to Kennedy Space Center:
Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is located at: Space Commerce Way, Merritt Island, FL 32953
The best way to get to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is to drive. While bus services can take you into Titusville from neighboring towns, there is no direct public transportation option to the facility, so you would have to take a taxi from Titusville.
Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is about an hour's drive from Orlando or Daytona Beach. It is located near Rt. 95 and Rt.1 and is very well-marked. The entrance is on Space Commerce Way and you can see the large Vehicle Assembly Building for miles.
Parking: The Visitor Center Parking lot opens 30 minutes before the park opens.
Motorcycles - $5.00
Automobiles - $10.00
Oversized vehicles, motor homes or RVs - $15.00
Kennedy Space Center Visiting Hours for 2024:
Monday thru Sunday
January 1 - January 7 - 9 AM - 6 PM
January 8 - March 10 - 9 AM - 5 PM
March 11 - April 14 - 9 AM - 6 PM
April 15 - June 23 - 9 AM - 5 PM
June 24 - August 18 - 9 AM - 6 PM
- Hours for dates after August 18 not yet announced
- Entry to the Visitor Complex ends 1 hour prior to closing
- Last bus tour runs 2.5 hours before the complex closure
- Times subject to change based on peak seasons
Can I stay at Kennedy Space Center?
Kennedy Space Center is a government property, so there are no hotel options in the immediate area on Merritt Island. The closest town to the Visitor Center is Titusville. Many visitors choose to stay in Cocoa Beach or Orlando, as part of a broader vacation.
We do suggest you check out Cocoa Beach if you have a hankering for the historic nature of the Space Coast at all, or just because it is one of the nicest beaches in Florida.
You can search for Cocoa Beach Hotels here.
Is there food available at KSC?
Yes, there are several lunch and snack locations at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. They are of the casual variety and space themed (of course!) The Orbit Cafe offers mobile ordering.
Can I bring my own food or beverages to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex?
According to their website, food and beverages packed in small, soft-sided coolers are permitted. Glass bottles or containers are not permitted. Beer is for sale at select locations and no outside alcoholic beverages are permitted.
Kennedy Space Center Official Guide App
You can download the official Guide App through the Apple App Store or Google Play.
This app can help you with a GPS-enabled map, ticket purchasing, event times, and attraction descriptions.
We hope this post helped you learn a little about the exhibits and plan your trip to Kennedy Space Center. We really consider this spot a “must see” while in Florida!
This post was researched and written by Debbie of the Empty Nest Explorers. You can learn more about the Empty Nest Explorers here.
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