"Orlando's worlds" - Kennedy Space Center

The best  in Orlando is undoubtedly the visit of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. This is a must do. The special guided tour took us to the main launching pad. This pad is where most space rockets to the moon and space shuttles took of. As the guide said it, this is the only place where humans left earth to land on another heavenly object. Quite impressive!

The shape and details of the pad are very specific - nothing is left to chance. There is even a complex system involving lots of water meant to stop the noise from making the platform shake! There is liquid hydrogen, if I remember well, to fill the huge tanks at the side of the shuttle.

We even got to go below the launching pad... We see the two holes through which most of the fuel is evacuated upon lift off. The ground there is completely burnt. It also gives an even better sense of the sheer size of the pad.

This is the hangar where the shuttles and rockets are prepared, before being dragged to the launching pad. NASA likes to say that it is the largest single-store building in the world! On the right is the command room. This is where the countdown is done.

At the Kennedy Space Center, one gets a good sense of the different rockets and space crafts. Usefully, the Christmas tree helps with the dimensions.

On the contrary, the capsule of Apollo XIV is rather small. With the building of the International Space Station, there is now more space in space for astronauts to move around. The movie about life on board the Station was revealing, but it certainly did not motivate me to become a space walker. Afraid of heights, try walking in space with the whole earth moving below you...

The tour also took us to a reconstructed control room.

Lastly, I had to put a picture of a sample of moon's soil. Next objective: planet mars ?

"Orlando's worlds" - Island of Adventures

Island of Adventures is a huge adventure park with water rides, scary rides, a Jurassic park, and a whole lot of other fun activities. Yet, THE main attraction starts behind these gates: the Harry Potter world.

The entrance of Hogsmeade clearly states that you must respect the spell limit. It must indeed be powerful spells that make snow stay on the rooftops, even when exposed to the Florida sun! So you enter the village and find many houses and shops as described in Harry Potter. You can find all sorts of funny, scary, noisy, smelly goods, the most important one being the magic wand - but they are all made in China...

The post office is also worth a visit. There you can of course send a parcel via "owl" post. It is certainly an overnight service... 

There is also the restaurant (called the three broomsticks), but there the chefs certainly do not know the right spells to make your fish and chips tasty. And this spell must not be the most difficult one to master... It is now time to ride the Hogwarts Express...

...to get to Hogwarts. And there the magic is obviously even more amazing.

Opening the doors, the corridors recreate the ambiance of the story so well. The paintings look so real, yet like in the book (and the movie) the portraits move and talk to each other. Very impressive.

And then it was time to meet Dumbledore! Or was it his hologram - to this day, I am still not sure... A little bit further we got to meet with Harry, Hermione and Ron.

One of the most important "object" in the Harry Potter saga is the sorting hat. There it was probably determining who could proceed further inside Hogwarts.

The path leads finally to the Fat Lady, the portrait which guards the door to Gryffindor, or rather in our case, the door to the magical ride. We get to sit on our broomstick and off we fly and follow Harry Potter for a magical tour. The combination of 3D effects and "real" scary effects (the roaring dragon and the spitting spiders) makes this ride an unforgettable moment. Well done!