Super Family Fun Weekend 2010 pt 2

The view from our hotel room...Orange Co Jail ;)

Let's see...the recap...

Great football game

Great Fireworks (x2!!)

Found a penny..heads up...

And then we found our hotel...lol

I really cannot complain about this place. It was clean...didn't smell like "cheap hotel room". Even the bathroom floor was clean. Of course, though, we were on the 4th floor & didn't see the elevator til AFTER we were already upstairs. And we had such a lovely view of the jail...lol

Needless to say, I think we all slept in our clothes. I had friends that were also headed to see the Shuttle take off, so we were meeting up with everyone. I figured we could sleep til they made it to Lakeland. My wake up call was at 1:47am....

With everyone super-excited...we left about 2:15ish. Driving thru Downtown Orlando was neat. Would have loved to have found a 24-hr Starbucks! We drove thru Christmas, Fl...and boy did they capitalize on the name. The Ft Christmas Museum had lights & decorations up (& ON at 3am!!). They even had Rudolph's Restaurant! About an hour into the trip, I get a text from my Disney-Sis telling me that the launch is only a 30% GO. *Ugh* Only 30% is not good. I followed @NASA on Twitter the whole way. They really provided very timely updates...which was very helpful when driving across the state on the road to nowhere.

We finally got to Titusville....can you say LOTS of people?? We met up with our friends in a parking lot and waited!! At 4:10am, NASA gave the GREEN/GO for weather...only 20 minutes left. We were kept busy getting cameras ready, tripods, blankets (it was VERY cold that night)...and in about 10 minutes it went RED again. Within a few minutes, they were GREEN again. And then it was RED....

We were on pins & needles waiting for this. It was the first launch of the year..the last night launch of the shuttles. It was one to be remembered. And at T-9 minutes, it was scrubbed. :( We looked out across the water & saw the launch pad. The lights. The beams of light that stretched from the launch pad to the sky. I wanted them to at least see something.

Oh...and I gave Disney Sis one of the pennies I found. They say if you find a penny heads up, you must pass it along to someone else within 24 hours to keep the good luck going!! A friend of mine made a great observation, so I will quote her..

"Shuttle launches aren't like Disney shows. Disney shows always go on time"