Local here. Do not plan a launch as your primary visit to Central Florida. The Kennedy Space Center does have a very cool tour, which will undoubtedly be very crowded surrounding a launch date. There are other attractions in the Central Florida area as well, including beaches, theme parks, reserves, and state parks.

Plan your visit around the launch. Make plenty of time to be there for it. You won't get as close as the TV reporters or VIP spectators do, but you will be close enough. There are plenty of beach and intercostal parks that have very good viewing points for a launch. Leave yourself a lot of buffer time around a launch, as traffic is pretty horrible during those timeframes.

There are no refunds on anything from anybody.

You're not going to be paying KSC to watch the launch. You're most likely going to be in a water side park or even a parking lot.

If you come solely for a launch and it's scrubbed, now you're miserable.

My advice is to come visit Central Florida during a launch window , pack a cooler and head to the coast for it. If it's a clear day, you can see the flames from the boosters from Orlando very easily. On good days, you can watch the SpaceX boosters come back down as well.

If the launch is scrubbed, you're pretty much at the beach, so spend the day there with the family. If it isn't scrubbed, watch the launch and then spend the day at the beach with the family.

It's a long wait for a relatively short window, but it's totally worth it. Just make it a potential highlight of your visit and everything will be fine

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At least there are a lot of launches these days, so you can target dates with some potential. I travel to the Space Coast of FL quite a bit. Best thing to do is to simply be aware of the schedules: https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/

Then plan your dates. Then hope. Last time I was down I really hoped to see the Falcon Heavy launch and two boosters land. It was scheduled for about 3:00 AM and night launches are super cool. Thought I would get to see two booster landings at night. They scrubbed three times in a row.... no luck. While I was there I did see a F9 launch during the day.

FL vacation is not easy or cheap. You can watch from anywhere nearby on the beaches, but Titusville or the Space Center itself is best. Cocoa Beach anywhere at the pier or North is great. Jetty Park is fantastic. You can always stay somewhere between the Cape and Orlando to save on cost, then make some Orland visits to tourism land.

You can see launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara. Try to catch a SpaceX launch when the booster will come back and land. Only thing about Vandenberg is lots of fog. If you want to see a potential piece of history in the making, SpaceX will soon attempt an orbital launch of Starship which is, IMO, the first real spaceship. There will be no firm schedule so you may end up sitting around South Padre Island for a week before it launches.

Traveling to see a NASA launch is tough. They are notoriously scrubbed all of the time. I live in Florida and it took me 13 tries before I got to see a shuttle launch up close and personal.

SpaceX launches are much more reliable for going when they say they are.

Do not stand directly under the rocket. My buddy Joe did that and it didn’t end well for him

Posting because I'd like to know too. Always wanted to see a launch.

I attended one in the early 90s. My dad taught one of the astronauts physics when he was in highschool, so we got to watch from the family and friends platform. It was incredible. Highly recommended.

>Has anyone every traveled to a launch

Yes, many tens of thousands of people have travelled to see launches.
But to make them the focus of the trip is to court disappointment.

Build a trip that has other goals alongside that - see KSC, travel to Key West, explore the coast.

All of these are (depending on where you're flying from) fair reasons to visit Florida - especially if you're currently enduring frigid temperatures.

<I saw an STS launch in the 90s - got a chance to hear Michael Foale, and had a whale of a time>

This past August, my wife and I went on vacation in the Orlando area. While we were there, we checked the NASA website and found that a SpaceX launch was scheduled for that Friday. And we decided to go see it.

We got there before the gates opened. Viewing the launch was included in the admission fee. There’s a bus terminal in the visitor complex that takes you out to the Apollo/Saturn V building; the viewing stands are adjacent to that building.

The launch was impressive and I have a 1:35 video of the launch. Worth every penny we spent.

Now, SLS is built using old Shuttle parts. The Shuttles never seemed to happen on the date and time they were first supposed to go. That’s exactly what happened with Artemis I. So if you’re not living in Florida it’s going to be difficult to see a manned launch since you don’t know if the launch is actually going to happen when NASA says it will.

I know you want to see it up close, but just so you know, most rocket launches are visible from hundreds of miles away. As long as you are in peninsular Florida, you can probably see it when it goes up. I've personally never gotten to see a launch up close, but I've still seen plenty of them from across the state, and while it's probably not AS cool, it's still pretty cool.

Live in Michigan, traveled to Artemis 1 twice. First time in august we got scrubbed twice. We tried planning again in September (the 27th launch date was my birthday!) and got shut down by the hurricane. They finally agreed to go in November so we flew back down and after an hour or so of delays it went off at like 1:42AM. We had passes with KSC to go out to the Saturn V center and we had also brought a nice canon camera for this launch. I do not recommend the traveling experience and if you’re gonna go that far, you have to be ready to do whatever. KSC does not do refunds for the launch experiences and for something like Artemis, they’re not cheap. It is however the absolute best way to do it and watching Artemis 1 was incredible. If you guys are full on ready to do this, go for it! Your son will love it. But you have to be ready to fight for a hotel room, stay up long hours and camp at the park, risk flight delays/pushbacks, or that it’s just not going at all. That’s the unfortunate state of nasa right now. Hope this helps! I’m hoping to go back down for future missions as well :)

Edit: Falcon 9s almost always go on time and can be seen from the Max Brewer Bridge (depending on the pad, this work well for 39A and 39B. Go further down the coast towards cocoa beach for SLC-40 launches) about once a week. They’re fun but nowhere near as impressive

I really want to but it seems like a huge gamble trying to schedule vacation time around such a variable thing.

No, because I don’t really want to wait around days or weeks until it actually launches