This morning my husband and I headed over to the Space Coast for the Melbourne Airshow. What should have taken about 90 minutes, turned into over 2 hours because of traffic near the airport. Then it was a trip from hell onto the grass lot and $20 just to park the car. We were crammed in tight and not sure if we'd be able to leave early. We were told we could.
The walk to the venue was over a mile away. Not a great idea considering while most folks are still dealing with Winter hanging around, it was about 90 here. Plus it's an airshow, so there were a lot of veterans and some of them were disabled along with being elderly. We saw busses and some golf carts but no one knew anything about how to get to use any of them.
Ok, so it was another $20 a piece to get in. We spent $60 and then another $6 for 2 bottles of water we needed after walking that far in the heat.
They had porta-potties, but you could only get to them after the hike, after the line to pay and after the line to get in. While there were enough of them, the problem was there was nothing provided to clean your hands afterwards. Plenty of food vendors around charging a lot of money for food that didn't seem to appetizing topped off with there was no place to sit other than some tents reserved for special folks.
We saw one pilot stun everyone but by the time he was done, I wanted to leave. The heat had gotten to me and so did everything else.
I felt as I was may pass out, so my husband took both cameras and we headed out. A woman walked right past me and stepped on my foot but just kept walking. At this point I was screaming "get me out of here" in my head. God love my husband!
We got near the exit and my husband asked a guy with a golf cart about getting a ride. He asked where we parked and we pointed near the busses we could barely see. He told us those buses were only for people who parked further away. My husband told him I felt faint and he just didn't say a word.
Well we got to the area where we parked and were really angry when a bus pulled up right where we told the other guy where we parked and he actually picked people up!
All in all, it could have been a great day if we had known what we were getting into and just stayed home.
If you plan on going tomorrow,
Bring a lot of cash! You'll need it just to park.
Leave a lot earlier than you planned on.
Bring chairs and you better bring your own shade.
Don't bring water since they won't let you in the gate with it.
Make sure you find someone with a clue what it going on so you know how to get on the damn bus and won't have to walk over a mile.
Since it will be hot, you'll need to drink a lot and that means, you guessed it, the porta potties, so make sure you have your own hand sanitizers.
Make sure you have sunscreen on since I didn't even think of it.
Remember folks, above all this may have military planes but it is a money maker for the folks putting it on.
The parking lot was still filling up while we were leaving.
Easy to tell from the few pictures I took that I was not having a good time at all!
