Visiting Universal Orlando Resort

Orlando, September 2016

As I wrote in a previous post, despite the main goal of this trip to Florida was to visit de Kennedy Space Center, I spared two extra days to go to the beach. Why wouldn't I do that after an transatlantic crossing heading to Florida?

But... my friend had other ideas and convinced me going to the Universal theme parks. It took a long time to persuade me since I was not attracted, in my idea, to those kind of parks.

We bought tickets to the two contiguous parks of the Universal Orlando Resort: the Universal Studios Florida and the Universal Islands of Adventure.

Although the parks entrance are paid, you can explore the Universal CityWalk for free - there are shops, restaurants and entertainment areas.

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Universal Studios Florida

We started exploring the Universal Studios Florida first. I didn't take many photos since I was more committed to have fun and enjoy the parks, which was totally a new experience for me. The park was crowded and we only had standard tickets without privileges to priority lanes. So we had to wait in line and make some choices of what we would like to see/experience.

I kept a record of the Rides we were taking but I'm not sure I wrote down them all:

• Transformers: The Ride 3-D
• Revenge of the Mummy
• Harry Potter: Escape from Gringotts
• Men in Black: Alien Attack
• Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem
  
• E.T. Adventure

E.T. Adventure is clearly the oldest ride and you can feel that. Anyway I enjoyed the peacefulness and nostalgy feeling of this ride.

I must confess that before this visit I never took much attention on the Harry Potter saga of felt attracted to it - neither had read the books nor had seen all the movies. But I think that started to change in this moment.

The Diagon Alley sure is impressive:

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Hogwarts Express

The way to get to the other park - Universal Islands of Adventure - is to catch the Hogwarts Express, a mover for people with Park-to-Park tickets, which was our case.

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Universal Islands of Adventure

So this was the second park to be visited. Contrary to what happened with Harry Potter, I was always drawn to the Jurassic Park saga. So I couldn't miss it:

... a couple of photos of "Poseidon's Fury" attraction:

It seems that this attraction is now permanently closed.

Now a final photo of the Hogwarts Castle:

I must confess that Harry Potter: Forbidden Journey ended up being my favorite ride of all I experienced in these theme parks. You really get the feeling of being truly flying on a broomstick. It was me that insisted to being a second time on the line to repeat this ride.

This is the list of the rides/attractions we experienced in this park:

• Jurassic Park: River Adventure
• Skull Island: Reign of Kong
• Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man
• Poseidon's Fury
• Harry Potter: Forbidden Journey

All in all, and contrary to my expectations, I ended up totally enjoyed the experience of visiting theme parks.

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Return flight

But soon it was time to return back to Lisboa, and the very same A330 that took us to Florida, would fly us again home: CS-TOH "Nuno Gonçalves".

It was nice to see the Eastern Airlines retro colors on this 737.

Crossing the Atlantic eastwards...

... and finally back in Lisbon...

Kennedy Space Center: Apollo/Saturn V Center

Merritt Island, September 2016

Saturn V was the rocket that sent humans to the Moon. There are only three surplus Saturn V rockets on display that were left over at the end of the Apollo program.

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Saturn V

Saturn V was a three-stage rocket. The first stage (S-I) was powered by five massive F-1 engines;

the second stage (S-II) was powered by five J-2 engines. This type of engine also powered the second stage of the Saturn IB rocket shown on a previous post;

the J-2 engine also powered the third and last stage (S-IVB, which was also the second stage on the Saturn IB). On this stage, only one engine was required;

and finally the very top of the rocket with the Apollo spacecraft including the Command Module (CM), Service Module (SM) and Lunar Module (LM):

I visited Kennedy Space Center again in 2019.

Kennedy Space Center: Space Shuttle Atlantis

Merritt Island, September 2016

This is the second part of the the visit to the Kennedy Space Center.

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OV-104

As I told you in the previous post, the Space Shuttle Atlantis is probably the main highlight in the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. All STS missions were launched from Cape Canaveral using either pads LC-39A or LC-39B (LC for Launch Complex). So it makes sense that KSC kept one Space Shuttle for display. The Atlantis (OV-104) also flown the very last STS mission in July 2011.

The Space Shuttle program was mainly used to build the ISS space station and also to deploy (and also to repair) the Hubble telescope.

The way the Atlantis is revealed in front of the visitors is absolutely brilliant and it will keep you in awe for long seconds.

The shuttle's thermal tiles and engines...

... and also a mock-up of the flight deck.

A total of 6 Space Shuttles were built. The Enterprise, the prototype, which is on display in the Intrepid Museum in NY, only flew atmospheric flights, after being launched from a Boeing 747; Challenger was lost in 1986 during launch; Columbia was lost in 2003 upon reentry; Discovery is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center; Endeavour will be displayed by California Science Center in the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space center, still awaiting its grand opening to the public.

Endeavour is the only one I haven't seen yet on display.

Kennedy Space Center: Rocket Garden & Bus Tour

Merritt Island, September 2016

This was a very much unexpected visit to Florida during one of my holiday periods for which I didn't plan anything but enjoy the comfort and peacefulness of my home. But a friend of mine suggested to go to Orlando and visit the Kennedy Space Center. His idea was to spend just two nights in Florida. I complained and fought that idea... I was not going to cross the Atlantic just to spend only a whole day in Florida - that was my day-to-day reality at work. So a couple of days more were added with the initial purpose of using them for sunbathing.

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Lisboa - Miami

The outbound flight was operated by the Airbus A330-223 with tail number CS-TOH, with the Star Alliance livery. This was an old aircraft, acquired second-hand from Austrian Airlines. Next to our aircraft was the Airbus A330-202 with special titles "#OlympicEmbrace/Together we are stronger" for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics.

The entertainment system of this aircraft (now phased-out) was still a VHS based one, with movies running on a loop.

But our ex-Austrian A330s were the only ones to the date having a special feature: a camera installed in the landing gear providing interesting views during take-off and landing (I can't remember exactly but I think it was in the nose landing gear). But the camera's resolution was not that spectacular.

During the last minutes of our approach, while watching the camera view, I thought we were still pointing to the ocean and waiting to turn back to the final approach because the blurry and grey image didn't show any particular feature on the ground. But I was very wrong, the airport was just in front of us! A massive thunderstorm was just hovering over the airport of Miami! We were the last aircraft to land, as soon as we vacated the runway, the airport operations were shutdown for the safety of every ramp agent. We were stuck in the taxiway for 45 minutes with one engine running while the aircraft was periodically shaken by strong lightening and heavy rain showers. When everything cleared we had to wait a few more minutes because our stand was a mess with lots of ramp equipment that was displaced during the storm.

First night we slept at Fort Lauderdale and the next day we were on the road northbound via I-95 route.

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Rocket Garden

Kennedy Space Center's Visitor Complex is home to the Space Shuttle "Atlantis", its main highlight. However I will cover it on a next post.

The first open space you see after passing the entrance of the complex is the Rocket Garden, a display of rockets. All the programs that contributed to the epic journey to the Moon are represented in this "garden" - Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.

The rocket above displayed on the horizontal is Saturn IB, from the Apollo program.

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KSC Bus Tour

Our tickets included a bus tour to the Kennedy Space Center, so we could see, from distance, the main launch platforms.

First, a glimpse on SpaceX's 39A hangar...

Apollo Program & Space Shuttle launches and respective patches...

Vehicle Assembly Building...

Vision of space by John F Kennedy...

In 2016, the first launch was scheduled for 2018, but Artemis I was only launched in November, 2022!

The launch abort system of the SLS:

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Touch the Moon

Inside the Apollo/Saturn V Center, you can touch an actual Moon rock:

But before entering the Saturn V complex, we can feel the awe of being inside the Firing Room of the Apollo 8 mission, the first crewd mission that went to the Moon (but didn't land on it) - an immersive experience with lots of shaking!

To be continued...