Dreaming Away plus Kennedy - the Lurker returns

[lklasing 16]

As always, the hardest part of any trip report is getting started. But, as always, you’ve got to start somewhere so I guess I’ll just start talking.

This report will have some familiar faces to those who have read any of my reports before, but will definitely have at least one brand new face – Grandmother, a.k.a. “Grandmother Fabulous”. Grandmother is my mom. Y’all have met Buddy before, who is another one of my girls’ grandmothers (my step-mom). Buddy is a retired teacher, who loves nothing more than being a kid with her grandkids. Grandmother is a different story – she loves being a grandmother and loves all her grandkids, but she’s a little more, let’s say, “formal” than Buddy. She doesn’t do matching shirts. She definitely doesn’t camp. She kind of reminds us of Charlie and Allen’s mom on “Two and a Half Men”, other than the excessive drinking part. But, she is quite fabulous and loves fabulous things, thus the “Grandmother Fabulous” name.

Anyway, Ray, Danielle, Jody and I all went on a cruise a couple of years ago with Grandmother Fabulous in Greece and Turkey. It was on a high end cruise line (Seabourn) and when we were back from that trip, I thought I’d never be able to cruise again on any line other than Seabourn. It was a fabulous trip. We all had a really great time. It was especially great traveling with my mom again as we haven’t traveled any real distances together since I was in college.

After that trip, my mom decided that she wanted to go on a trip with my brother Tiger and his kids Evan and Elise. She batted around several ideas and finally shocked the stew out of me when she said she had decided on a DCL cruise. DCL? Really? That seemed totally out of character for her, but several of her fabulous friends had taken their grandkids on DCL and had a great time, so that was that.

Of course, I couldn’t let that happen – my mom, brother, niece and nephew go on DCL without me when I had never been before and had been dying to for years. So, I just declared that my family would be going too. :partytwo:

Grandmother and I had many planning meetings at Starbucks over the course of about a year. Tiger and Ray really just didn’t tune in too much until time to go. The kids were all so excited, my girls so because they knew how great cruising can be and Tiger’s because they had no idea what it would be like.

I guess that’s enough background for now. Here’s our crew this time:

Ray and me – we’re having our 20^th anniversary in February! (You’ll see a lot of self portraits in this report of us):

Danielle – now 16 and driving!

Jody, whose all-time favorite pastime is making new friends:

Tiger, Evan the superstar of sports and school, and Elise the perfect princess:

And finally, Grandmother Fabulous!

Next up – Travel to Port Canaveral, then a day at Kennedy Space Center

[DaveInTN 3,247]

Alright! I've been waiting for this one.

[Nicki aka Rebelstand 272]

i'm in!!

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

Me too!

[rdancemom... Pam 113]

:jumpforjoy I'm here too. Present and accounted for...

[Southern Blessings 4]

Yay! Another DCL TR! Can't wait to read more!

[BigTom 76]

I am in.

[mouseketab.....Carol 1,261]

Cool!! Can't get enough of the cruise reports!

[Grumpy and Grandma 740]

:pc: :beer: I'm ready.

[Disneyzombie-Brenda 10]

In!

[Gots2pitt.. Jeff 64]

I'm in! And Kennedy rocks (even my not so nerdy wife thought it was cool).

[lklasing 16]

Thanks, guys! :wave1: It's good to be back at FF after being away far too long. It took just about all my free time to learn far too much getting ready for the cruise, but now that it's over, I'm looking forward to being back here among friends fiends!

[lklasing 16]

Monday, July 30, 2012:

Finally, it was time to go! After over a year of planning, I couldn’t believe we got to go now. Shortly after starting to plan the trip, I decided that Ray and I, and the girls if they wanted, would go down an extra day early and spend the day at Kennedy Space Center. Ray is a huge space geek and we had always wanted to go to Kennedy but never been able to make it happen on any of our WDW trips. We let each girl decide whether they wanted to go or not, with the express agreement that if they came for the Kennedy trip, they would have to hang in there all day with us and be pleasant and smiling the whole time, not tired and ready to go, ever. So, they decided to wait a day and come down the next day with Grandmother Fabulous, Tiger and his kids, which meant that we got to go down all by ourselves! :partythree:

Our flight down was uneventful, just the way you want it.

We left later in the afternoon and didn’t arrive until after 8:00, so we had Sunray (which we use for all WDW trips) take us to the Publix for some fried chicken and wine and then headed to the Country Inn and Suites in Port Canaveral. I had originally booked a regular room for us but rebooked it for a suite, which somehow was $4 less than the regular room. :cheers: We enjoyed a picnic in the room of fried chicken, deviled eggs, cold baked beans, chips and wine while watching Olympics (the men’s gymnastics team didn’t do as well as we all had hoped).

While not Disney quality, we were happy to have this guy greet us in the bathroom:

We didn’t bother unpacking much since we were only going to be there a short time and headed to bed excited about Kennedy Space Center tomorrow. :parrot:

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Tuesday morning, we were up around 7:00 and had enough time to catch up on the news and Olympics and grab some breakfast downstairs at the hotel. The food was okay if you will eat all pasteries but if you’re the protein type, it was rough. Nevertheless, we managed to get enough to hold us over for a while and then grabbed a taxi to Kennedy Space Center. Not cheap, but easy enough and we like not driving on vacation. :)

Kennedy was great. I mean seriously awesome. We did two different tours – the “Vehicle Assembly Building Tour” (or something like that) and the “Then and Now” Tour. We went to the VAB, to many, many launch pads, including all the ones that you would recognize from footage of the shuttles and the Apollo rockets. We ended with KSC Visitor Center, which had an actual Saturn V rocket in there. I really enjoyed it, but Ray was in heaven. We had a really great time.

Here are far more pictures of KSC than you want or need, but we really had a great time. These are from the VAB tour:

This is us with the Vehicle Assembly Building behind us – we are about 10 miles away from, so you can see how huge it is:

This is Ray in complete heaven:

This picture still doesn’t do justice to the mammothness of this building:

[lklasing 16]

This is where you’ve seen all (or at least most) of the shuttles take off from:

After a very quick lunch, we took the Then and Now tour.

Look – a hidden space shuttle!

These are from Pad 34, where Grissom, White and Chaffee died during a test of the rocket. Ray was blown away, as was I:

Finally, we made it back to the main building, where we saw the real Saturn rocket (at least I think it is real – it certainly is huge!), along with other amazing artifacts from the space program:

It was a really amazing day. Ray, who loves Disney but I know wouldn’t love it as much without me, finally got to share with me something with me that he loves as much as I love WDW. It was an awesome start to this vacation.

When we were done at KSC, we took the same cab service back to the Port, where we had dinner at Fishlips. I hadn’t expected much, but it definitely was much better than I had thought. I had a good salad and Ray had fish and chips. There were no ships in port, but we had fun looking at where the Dream would pull into early the next day. :D

After dinner, we took our last cab for the day back to the hotel to wait on the rest of the gang. They finally showed up around 9:30, pretty tired and relatively strung out from a day of work, play and travel. Regardless, they made it, we checked everyone in, scored some snacks for the kids from the snack area downstairs and finally all hit the hay. While what we thought had been Ray’s best part of the trip happened today, I hoped that mine was still in front of us – our first DCL cruise! :banana:

[PureTcrazy...rita 380]

Awesome start on this TR! I can't wait to hear more!

[DaveInTN 3,247]

I love KSC...although it's been years since I've been. Loved the pics.

Looking forward to the cruise!

[Retired & Tired (Judy) 90]

I have never been to the KSC and after reading this and seeing the fabulous pictures I think I will have to go. Can't wait for more on the DCL Cruise.

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

I haven't been to the KSC in years either. Looks like they have so much more to see there now! Thanks for the pics. Eagerly awaiting your report on the cruise.

[Nicki aka Rebelstand 272]

Going to make sure to add KSC to our must do list. We all like space related stops but DS will be like Ray... in heaven.

[mouseketab.....Carol 1,261]

Very nice pics of KSC!!! Since the Saturn was laying on its' side in pieces it was most likely a real one. We have a real one laying on it's side here in Huntsville, and a replica that is standing. They wanted to stand up the real one, but believe it or not, had to build a replica because of the SALT II treaty. I wish the funding had held out. They were also going to build a mock launch pad, with a restaurant up top, that would have been so cool.

We have a lot of the same displays around here, but obviously don't have the launch pads, that is really cool!!

[ajcjmom 8]

I'm in!

[Hotmamac aka Misty 11]

Can't wait to read more! Between TCD and this report, I know a cruise is going to have to be in my VERY near future!!

[fortpartyof4 108]

We almost stopped at the Canaveral Seashore today on our way home from the fort so my boys could get their National Park Passports stamped there. Decided to wait and see if we can catch the Atlas rocket launch next week instead (secretly hoping it gets scrubbed and moved to the weekend so we can go)!

Living here, my kids have been on school field trips to KSC, but the coolest thing was once for a Cub Scout trip. It was called the overnight adventure, and they spent the night - in sleeping bags, underneath that Apollo rocket! Also got to do a meet and greet with an astronaut. Just an amazing opportunity for them that I hope they'll always remember.

[stefa70 205]

I'm here too!

I've never been to Kennedy, even though I live so close. May have to venture over there.

I like "Grandmother Fabulous"

Can't wait to hear more about your trip.

[lklasing 16]

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting! For those who have never been to Kennedy but live close, you have to go! It was a really fun day not just for space geek Ray but for me too. Definitely take a tour or two when you go - I think we got so much more out of it than we would have otherwise.

Fortpartyof4, that is such a cool story! Sleeping under that rocket would be the neatest thing!