Chris: Wednesday morning, woke by the alarm on the cell phone at 6:45… Shower, start to get dressed, and call AT&T to turn off international roaming. Was told that international roaming was already turned off (but something is different – it doesn’t say cellular at sea anymore, it now says no usable signal and SOS only), and that no charges have been applied to the account apart from the $60. That’s a good thing. Need to look at the bill the next time it comes in just to have final closure.
Heather: I’ve heard horror stories about multi-hundred dollar cell phone bills because of the Cellular at Sea charges – it’s something like $2.95/minute on top of the regular cell phone charges. So when we still had a signal for hours after we left port, I was worried, apparently for no reason. But that’s ok – better to be a little paranoid than a lot surprised when we got home.
Go up to the Lido for breakfast, hopefully the last time to have breakfast up there. It’s ok, but it’s the same thing every day, and the same relatively boring buffet line. Eat that quickly, and go to exit the ship. My sail and sign didn’t work, so I had to get a new one. That only took a minute, so I exited the terminal, and got on the bus to go to KSC.
H: Our Sail and Sign cards didn’t work either when we went to exit the ship (hours later than Chris did) but we didn’t end up with new cards. They were finally able to reprogram them before we left. (Goodness knows I wasn’t getting off the ship until they worked!)
The tour guide, whose name was a variation on Lydia, seemed to be fairly knowledgeable. She explained some things about KSC and a few tidbits in general. Arrived at the visitor’s center, with intent to see an IMAX movie. There was supposed to be a launch at just before 9AM, but it was scrubbed due to weather. Maybe it can be seen from the sun deck on Thursday morning, if the weather permits it. Oh well, go in to see the IMAX. It was a fairly impressive movie, done in 3D. Mostly about the Apollo program, narrated by Tom Hanks.
The “up close” tour then went on a bus tour to go see the various buildings on the campus from a set of visitor’s bleachers, to see the buildings all at once. Drove around to see the launch pads relatively closely, which basically meant that we drove by the launch pads and just stopped briefly for photos. Saw 39A (shuttle launch pad) and 39B (others), and the crawler itself. Saw a bunker, which was intended to protect diesel generators used to power cameras during a launch, to ensure that power was available. Saw one of the static detectors near that bunker, which was one of many detectors used to track the possibility of lightning. Stopped near the vehicle assembly building, and took a few more pictures. Also saw an Osprey nest, and took pictures of the bald eagle nest.
Watched a countdown simulator about one of the Apollo missions, which used the actual consoles from one of the Apollo missions, maybe from the program itself. After that, went into the Saturn V holding area, where the one remaining intact rocket from Apollo 18/19/20 is on display. That’s a very impressive piece of hardware. After that, wandered around to see the Robot somethingorother animatronic-assisted tour, but it was a little dated, a bit too anthropomorphized, and didn’t really go into much detail, except to call out most of the robot programs from the 70’s and the Hubble, including a mock-up of the rover that went with the Viking. No mention of the rovers currently on Mars. Eh, anyway, went to the Rocket Garden to see the various rockets on display, including the rocket used to launch TelStar. Picked up some requisite freeze-dried ice cream, and a pen for myself.
H: Freeze-dried ice cream! Yays! Problem is, he only bought two packs, and there are three of us. I mean, come on, the kids and I excused ourselves from going to Kennedy so he could enjoy himself, the least he could have done was to get us each a bag of double-frozen goodness.
C: Ran into someone I know now as Al, who didn’t know when or where we were supposed to meet. I couldn’t either, and said I’d ask. Wandered some more, and ran into Al again at the front gate, where he asked me to take a picture for him. Went off again, and finally ended up at the bus to come back to the ship. It was mostly full, except for one seat open next to Al, so I sat down, said “we’ve got to stop meeting like this”, and introduced myself. He’s from York, too, a transplant from Watertown. We chatted for most of the trip back to the ship.
Came back on the ship, got a little lunch, and took a nap.
H: Meanwhile, the kids and I got up, took our time to gather our things, and made our way off the ship before lunchtime. This was one of the places I goofed up – for some reason, we didn’t take our swimsuits with us off the ship – but really, I was uncomfortable with it just being the three of us, since that meant that our stuff would be sitting on the beach unattended if we all went in the water.
Port Canaveral, like Baltimore and Freeport, is really an industrial port that has cruise ship berths added on. So there isn’t really anything to do right at the port – and therefore, there has to be a way for people to get away from the port to do something interesting. Since Chris was off to Kennedy by himself, and the kids and I had no interest in Disney for a multitude of reasons, I knew that Cocoa Beach was our destination.
Now Carnival has a “Cocoa Beach Shuttle” that, for $12.95 per adult, you can take to the giant Ron Jon shop in Cocoa Beach, a tourist destination in its own right. It’s a single round trip deal – once to Ron Jon and then back to the ship. Or, you can go right outside the terminal and choose from either TraveLynx or Cocoa Beach Shuttle, both of which will drive you all over the place for $10 per person. For the whole day. Want to swing by WalMart for some pop or water? Either of those shuttles will take you there!
We randomly chose the Cocoa Beach shuttle, and I gave the lady my $30 for three tickets. (She then gave me $10 in change. Oops.) We then waited on the bus for a good 15 minutes while it filled up with new people. In hindsight, it might have been better to take the TraveLynx bus – even though it was the same price, they had smaller shuttles and seemed to be running more frequently. They were the same price, though, so I really don’t know if one was better than the other.
We got off the shuttle at the Ron Jon stop – which wasn’t really at the Ron Jon store, it was at a 7-11 – and saw the sign for the beach:
So we took a walk over there to check it out. It is a surfing beach – the waves were just enough for the kids to have a good time (and make me a little nervous, since they are pretty much nonswimmers and unused to surf).
After a while we washed off our feet and headed over to the Ron Jon shop to find a gift for our good friend Kurt, who has told us many stories about his surfing exploits. If you have a friend like that, the Ron Jon shop is the place to go! It’s a huge store, with two floors of all kinds of beach items, and a waterfall to boot!
They also have a welcome center right inside one of the doors, where we met Jim, a very nice man who was born in Buffalo but moved with his family down to Florida when he was an infant. (That must have been why he was so nice!) I had a nice conversation with him about how the cruise line charges way too much for their shore excursions, and I told him I would send him an email of the shore excursion list (which I did earlier this week, hope he got it!). He did mention that they sell the Kennedy tickets there at a discount from the gate price, so if you are sailing into Canaveral and are renting a car to go to the space center, stop by Ron Jon and save yourselves a few extra dollars.
So we found a gift for Kurt, a giant two person beach towel for ourselves, and a few postcards, and headed down the street to find some lunch. My camera batteries had died and the spare was in the cabin, but luckily there was a Walgreens right across the street, with a McDonalds right next to it. The kids were hungry and a bit cranky, and on top of that Talia was complaining about her legs hurting because of the scavenger hunt she’d done with Camp the day before, so we were about to break down and hear the siren song of the Big Mac when…..down the road…..I saw a beacon of hope! A light in the darkness!
OK, it was a Waffle House. (lol)
What can I say, the closest Waffle House is 3 hours away in Ohio. And I like waffles. So that’s where we went for lunch.
After that, it was over to Walgreens to buy camera batteries, and two gallons of water. Yes, water. For the first time in many, many years, I bought drinking water. Because, as I had read about in reviews that span back at least a few years, there is something horribly, horribly wrong with the water filtration system on the Carnival Pride. If you drink water as a matter of course, bring some with you.
We were at Walgreens when Chris called, but the kids wanted to go back to the beach, so after paying for our batteries and water, we headed back to the beach for a bit.
There’s a rental place right on the beach, where you can rent chairs, umbrellas and other beach stuff.
Eventually I was able to drag the kids out of the ocean, and we headed back to the 7-11 just in time to see the shuttle turn the corner, so we had to wait about 1/2 hour for another shuttle to arrive. There were plenty of other cruising folks to wait with, though, since both shuttles used the same drop off point.
While we were waiting, we were talking with the couple that had been married on the ship – we had seen her inside the port in Baltimore with her family. Apparently there had been some mix-ups with their cabins and the wedding – their cabins had been canceled because of a switched set of numbers in their credit card, which canceled the wedding as well, and by the time they had discovered that they had lost their cabins, someone else had taken them. So they had been moved to one of the coveted aft wrap balconies, which are very desirable because the balconies are the the largest on the ship. The problem was that the entire back part of the ship was vibrating so badly, that they could hardly sleep at night. O_o
So much for those “coveted” aft wrap balconies!
But, they were making the best of it, which really is the best thing to do.
C: Heather and the kids return to the ship, we get changed into dinner wear, Talia heads off to Camp Carnival, and the rest of us go to dinner. Managed to catch the “Welcome Back Carnival Pride” sign on the pier just before the ship was too far to take the picture.
H: The sign said “Welcome Back” because Port Canaveral was the Pride’s first home port.
Came back in and sat back down to finish dinner. I had wanted to try to catch the sunset, but we were still at dinner, so I thought I might have missed it. Uploaded a bunch of pictures to the web, and made a couple of FB updates. Come to find out, the best time for the sunset is around 7:30 or so, just as the sun actually goes down. We learned this while in the cabin, watching from the balcony. The sun was completely set by quarter after 8, when I was able to take the couple of moon pictures with the cheesy tripod we brought that turned out to be very useful when used in conjunction with the VR lens.
Talia came back to the room, and we wandered the ship with the video camera for a bit. Came back, watched TV for a while, and went to get a pizza and some salad, but Talia fell asleep before we got back. Watched more of the Discovery program, about a couple of people in Italy, one a gondolier-in-training, and the other a family that founded a line of designer clothing. Something didn’t quite sit well with Heather, so she’s taken a few ginger tabs. I’m done updating for tonight, and will continue tomorrow. Maybe we can catch the rocket launch in the morning…
