Port day in Pt Canaveral - Renting a car - activity suggestions?

As the title says, we are in Port Canaveral from 7A to 6PM on our upcoming cruise.

I've booked a rental through Enterprise and have read up on the shuttle routine, etc etc. We will plan to be off the ship fairly early after arrival and are aiming to have the car and be off and running by 9AM or so.

So..what to do. Kennedy Space Center, as nice as it would be to do, is outside the budget given the number of people in our group, and I've heard that you really need multiple days to really take it all in anyways - I'd be frustrated trying to jam it into basically 6 hours.

We are looking at the following:

- Checkout Cocoa Beach and the pier, etc.

- The US Air Force Space & Missile Museum just east of the cruise port. Looks like it's free and well regarded.

- Rest of the fam wants to drive up to Merrit Island National Wildlife Reserve to see everything there, including (hopefully) the manatees. Looks like easily 2-4 hours here from what I can gather?

Looking for other suggestions on what we may be missing within a 30 minute drive of the cruise port. Obviously we can't jam a million things into an 11 hour day (especially since we need to budget probably 3 hours of our overall port time out of the math for rental car pickup and return/shuttle/etc) but just looking for thoughts.

Thanks in advance all.

You may want to search or ask this question on one of the major cruise line's forums that stop at PC. I have seen this topic discussed often on Royal Caribbean's forum.

If you are on NCL, it is one of the times that it benefits you to book the ship excursion to Kennedy space centre. That is because they keep it open an extra hour only for NCL clients (or they did, about 2 years ago when I went) and then you get to see almost "all" of it (we only missed one major building). You get on the bus at the end, get back to the ship, and sail away. Again, I am not a fan of the ship excursion, but this one was so well organized, and you can't beat that 'bonus" half hour. I know you're renting a car, but since you expressed interest in KSC, I thought I'd throw that in.

If you are on NCL, it is one of the times that it benefits you to book the ship excursion to Kennedy space centre. That is because they keep it open an extra hour only for NCL clients

We are on Carnival (not sure how I feel about that quite yet after sailing exclusively with RCI in the past, but that's another story ;)), and last I checked, we are the only ship in port that day.

The other reason I'm leaning away from KSC is the fact that my wife has zero interest, so she isn't even interested in going....so I'm leaning towards things that all of us can do instead of leaving her behind.

When are you going on your cruise? A few years ago we stopped at pc and went to kennedy space center. I got a hold of my state representative and received 4 free passes for is. All we had to pay for is the rental car and two more tickets for my parents. My wife wasn't interested in going either but afterwards said it was one of the coolest tours we've done.

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When are you going on your cruise? A few years ago we stopped at pc and went to kennedy space center. I got a hold of my state representative and received 4 free passes for is.

We leave Sunday. And we are from Canada, and don't know anyone from FL, so no free passes for us. ;)

As much as I'd LOVE to do KSC, it's just not in the cards this time - wife completely disinterested, not enough time that I wouldn't leave feeling frustrated having rushed through and/or not seeing everything, and after transportation, tickets, lunch, and our 25% exchange rate, also a quite expensive day for the 3 of us that would be going.

the tickets thru your congress person died a couple of years ago

as I understand two factors contributed:

word about it exploded on the web and # of requests went WAY up ... each rep had only so many free tickets and in the end there were too many unhappy requestors

and the private management of the visitor center changed at about the same time - which came first?

Does anyone know if there is free beach access at the cruise port?? I don't want to pay for something I don't have to :) We're on RCI.

Does anyone know if there is free beach access at the cruise port?? I don't want to pay for something I don't have to :) We're on RCI.

Lots of public access at Cocoa Beach. Right at the pier itself I've read that there may be a modest parking fee, but there's lots of other free options I've read.

I’d look at the Brevard County Zoo...it’s a nice small zoo about 45 minutes to the south. Also Cocoa Village is nice walkable area with shops and cafes. I am sure lots of info if you google them.

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the tickets thru your congress person died a couple of years ago

 

as I understand two factors contributed:

 

word about it exploded on the web and # of requests went WAY up ... each rep had only so many free tickets and in the end there were too many unhappy requestors

 

and the private management of the visitor center changed at about the same time - which came first?

Sent from my SM-G930V using Forums mobile app

Thanks for the Cocoa Village suggestion, KNB - that actually looks like a neat little area, the photos reminded me of a quant little village called Niagara On The Lake, north of Niagara Falls Canada. Very historical and very picturesque little town.

I think it'll be on our list of things to do if we have time!