{"id":9771,"date":"2025-07-20T06:34:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T06:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/9771\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T06:34:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T06:34:14","slug":"my-daughter-is-obsessed-with-space-so-i-took-her-to-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/9771\/","title":{"rendered":"My daughter is obsessed with space \u2014 so I took her to Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re living in a galactic golden era. While my space enthusiast dad \u2014 who was 21 at the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing \u2014 had to wait years between televised missions, his similarly star-obsessed granddaughter can witness two to three rocket launches per week on her smartphone. Whatever you think of Elon Musk, the founder of Space X, or Jeff Bezos, the owner of the aerospace company Blue Origin, these are exciting times for space exploration.<\/p>\n

My 12-year-old is so space-obsessed it became the theme of our most recent family holiday \u2014 a 4,500-mile transatlantic adventure to Florida. It\u2019s no wonder she and so many of Gen Alpha are agog. In the month leading up to our trip, two astronauts made global headlines when they returned to Earth having lived in the International Space Station for nine months. Then Katy Perry \u2014 along with an all-female crew, including Bezos\u2019s wife Lauren S\u00e1nchez \u2014 made history (and punchlines) flying to the edge of space in the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket.<\/p>\n

Our holiday had to start in Kennedy Space Center, Nasa\u2019s primary spaceport, in Cape Canaveral outside Orlando (entry from \u00a356pp, \u00a348 per child; kennedyspacecenter.com). Its Visitor Complex, once an educational centre, has such brilliant new rides and attractions it could now classify as a theme park. On our packed return flight I counted as many Nasa T-shirts as Mickey Mouse baseball caps.<\/p>\n

Its two newest experiences are Gateway: Deep Space Launch Complex and Hyperdeck VR. In the former you access the \u201cride\u201d via an extraordinary collection of space stuff \u2014 modern-day astronaut suits, a replica of the Blue Origin New Shepard capsule (in which Perry flew) and a mock-up of a \u201chabitat\u201d orbiting the moon \u2014 so that children learn as they go. The ride \u2014 Spaceport KSC \u2014 then takes you on one of four immersive journeys through the solar system (we chose Mars). It\u2019s no white-knuckle rollercoaster but it\u2019s very cool that the attractions are based in reality \u2014 thus we encountered a Mars dust storm \u2014 and the queues are a fraction of those in Florida\u2019s big-thrill parks.<\/p>\n

\"Six<\/p>\n

From left: Lauren S\u00e1nchez, Katy Perry and the all-female crew who flew to the edge of space in the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket<\/p>\n

THE MEGA AGENCY<\/p>\n

For Hyperdeck, meanwhile, we wore VR headsets to become astronauts collecting lunar materials on the moon\u2019s surface. And new for this summer (it opened on July 8), the Gantry at LC-39 enables visitors to stand beneath a rocket booster during a simulated launch, including countdown, thunderous noise and air blasts. It\u2019s included on what turned out to be my favourite bit: the Kennedy Space Center bus tours. The Behind the Gates tours travel through restricted areas, right alongside that vast Vehicle Assembly Building, made famous in many movies (it\u2019s so massive that the blue portion of the painted American flag is as big as a basketball court). As we drove along, we saw a Space X rocket being transported to its launchpad just metres away. Such moments beat even the most high-tech attractions.<\/p>\n

We stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Center. It\u2019s the nearest hotel to Kennedy Space Center, with a Space Bar rooftop restaurant for front-row launch viewings \u2014 perfect if it\u2019s 4am and you\u2019re in your PJs. For kids there\u2019s galactic wallpaper, a space light in every room that projects constellations onto the ceiling, as well as a room service robot. Of course, we ordered \u201cforgotten\u201d toothpaste to our room just for fun, then watched in awe as the robot set off again.<\/p>\n

Next stop on our space tour was Star Wars: Galaxy\u2019s Edge, the latest land to open at Walt Disney World Orlando. If your children are into space exploration then I\u2019ll bet you a billion galactic credits they\u2019re into Star Wars, so you need to include it in the mix. The rides are out of this world, of course, but it\u2019s the attention to detail that impressed me. My daughter was able to build her own working robot at the Droid Depot, while on the Star Wars Datapad app she could map her way around the park and solve complex problems.<\/p>\n

\"Apollo-Saturn<\/p>\n

Nasa\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida has recently added two new experiences to their Visitor Complex<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

Beyond Galaxy\u2019s Edge \u2014 which is just one land in one of four Disney parks (you\u2019ll need a week at least) \u2014 we rode the new space-themed Tron and Guardians of the Galaxy rollercoasters. There\u2019s also the attraction Mission: Space, which was opened by genuine Nasa astronauts, who deemed it the \u201cclosest thing civilians will feel to space travel\u201d. We heard that so many early riders felt sick afterwards, Disney introduced a less intense Green mission in addition to the original Orange version. So, it\u2019s not only Kennedy Space Center that offers an authentic experience.<\/p>\n

Spaced out, I insisted the last few days of our family trip be spent on the coast. We chose laid-back New Smyrna Beach, where we knew we could spot dolphins \u2014 another Florida must-see for my daughter, who had watched them swimming around the splashed-down space capsule containing those two delayed ISS astronauts. We swam, we surfed, we cycled along boardwalks through the sand dunes and generally stuck to earthly pleasures.<\/p>\n

But at 10.24pm on the last night our phones buzzed in unison with a space launch alert. We were to have a final out-of-this-world moment before leaving the US. Even 40 miles away on New Smyrna Beach, we could clearly see the orange blasters soar into the night sky from Kennedy Space Center. We watched in astounded silence from the sand.
Katie Bowman was a guest of Tui Airways, which has Gatwick-Orlando returns from \u00a3296 (tui.co.uk<\/a>); Visit Orlando (visitorlando.com<\/a>); Four Seasons Orlando, which has room-only doubles from \u00a3990 (fourseasons.com<\/a>); Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Center, which has room-only doubles from \u00a3127 (marriott.com<\/a>); Casago New Smyrna Beach, which has seven nights\u2019 self-catering for four from \u00a31,490 (casagonsb.com<\/a>); Kennedy Space Center, which has adult entry from \u00a356, children \u00a348 (kennedyspacecenter.com<\/a>); and Walt Disney World, which has a 14-day entry ticket from \u00a3459pp (disneyholidays.co.uk<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re living in a galactic golden era. While my space enthusiast dad \u2014 who was 21 at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-9771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}