Exploration Tower

Exploration Tower

Exploration Tower, as seen from the parking lot

Exploration Tower
670 Dave Nisbet Dr
Cape Canaveral, FL 32920

321-394-3408

www.explorationtower.com

AT A GLANCE:  Exploration Tower
Date of Visit:	Saturday, May 13, 2017
Parking	Plentiful, onsite parking
Amount of time needed to peruse exhibits:	90 – 120 minutes
Amount of time needed for gift shop	45 – 60 minutes
The “must have” souvenir	A colorful and fun refrigerator magnet
Online shopping	No.  If you see something you like, buy it
Kid friendly shopping	Yes
Kid friendly	Yes
Dress code	Cruise ship folks tended to do a matchy, matchy capris and tops.  My advice is that if you want to look like tourists, it’s not up to me to stop you.
Be sure to…..	Try and dock an interactive cargo ship at Port Canaveral.
Nearby/other establishments to visit	Port Canaveral
Walkability, general downtown area / amount of traffic	A car is needed.
Safety, in terms of type and number of crimes committed in general area	The parking lot and the surrounding areas seemed safe.  I would like to remind everybody to store valuables out of sight and lock your car.  It doesn’t hurt to be aware of surroundings, either.

On our weekly gift shop visits, we from time to time come across a museum / garden / zoo that we question if they have the right to even exist.  This isn’t a bad thing, because we think a change in location is all a business needs.  This week’s example, Exploration Tower” took us back to that conversation.  Please know that I didn’t mean that in a bad way.  We took the advice of the docent who recommended that we begin our tour on the seventh floor and work our way down from there.  The seventh floor has a great and expansive view, so walk around a few times to take everything in.  I saw two cruise ships docked in Cape Canaveral and thought of my social media friends that like to take a yearly cruise.  The incoming cargo ships were coming into port, too.  I couldn’t see anything much to the north, being as close as we were to Kennedy Space Center. 

 

I had issues with the dolphin coming out of the floor

Anyway, we walked around the seventh floor and happened upon sea creature replications of alligator, turtle, and a porpoise.  The bird silhouettes on the wall had us trying to guess the species before matching it to the nearby bird id wall when it happened.  Had we come full-circle already?  Yes, there was no more on the seventh floor.  Why not just go to the Brevard Zoo if really wanting to see birds?  We chatted about that while walking down the steps to the sixth floor.  We entered the sixth floor and were greeted by a display of NASA, astronauts, and sending spaceships to the moon.  This time we wondered aloud:  Why not visit Kennedy Space Center to get an in-depth view of the same thing?

The fifth floor is dedicated to “Navigating Port Canaveral.”  Again, why not visit the St. Lucie County Aquarium / Smithsonian Research Center in Ft. Pierce?  They had an interesting hands-on display regarding the cargo ships.  Using the attached steering wheel and levers, the users feel like they our actually steering the large ship into port as an interactive screen displays the progress.  We thought it would be fun, but had to abandon our cargo ship dreams when we waiting a healthy amount of time for the current “sea captain” had finished docking.  Then he did it again.  We didn’t have the pleasure of time that day, so we trudged down another flights of steps.

A conference center occupies the entire fourth floor, which gave us time to finish the conversation we started in the stairwell of the seventh floor.  Then we discovered the “why” to our recurring question of if the Exploration Tower had a reason to exist.  I mentioned that I felt as if I were taking a stroll through the area’s “greatest hits.”  While we decided that other museum have more in-depth exhibits, the Exploration Tower’s strength is its location.  I mentioned cruise ships in my opening paragraph, and it started me thinking of time in a different way.  Instinctively I knew that cruising folks are a different breed when it comes to time.  I think it’s common to arrive several hours earlier, “just in case.”  

 

Cruise ships are easily visible from the gift shop

 The Exploration Tower takes an hour to two hours, depending on individual preferences, and it’s in sight of the cruise ship that people will board later that day.  It’s an effort to ease visitor boredom, to communicate regional history, and to sell souvenirs in the gift shop.  The brand (personality, vibe) of Exploration Tower is its close location to Port Canaveral.  Everyone knows that location is the highest determining factor when dealing with real estate, and it seems that the Exploration Tower took the advice to heart.  After returning home, vacationers will probably refer to it as “the one that we went to while waiting to board the ship.”  That’s right; its location.  Not the big binoculars that were free to use, not the interactive game of trying to dock a cargo ship and not the unique sinks in the restroom; they remember the location and the great shopping.  I don’t think any museum would want much more.

Photos from the Exploration Tower:  https://goo.gl/FuBBDX

Gift shop photos:   https://goo.gl/c9NNFG

Speaking of shopping, the Exploration Tower houses a great gift shop geared toward, what else, cruise ship passengers.  The third words that come to mine are:  fun, funky, functional.  Several years ago, a colleague flat out told me that I should stay away from advertising.  I was the one who listed pineapple, profit, and  peaceful  as the three words that come to mind when mentioning Morikami Gardens, in last week’s blog (click here for link to that blog).  It was at that moment that I understood at last what my colleague was telling me.  In my defense, I thought the gift shop at Exploration Tower is a lot of fun.  You can feel the vacation vibe because the vibrant colors are practically jumping off the merchandise, whether it be funky tote bags or bird baths.  Selecting media, size and function is the only decision needed. 

The Exploration Tower gift shop had the best refrigerator magnets.

 

Did you know that there’s no charge to shop in most gift shops?  The admission fee is for the exhibits elsewhere.  Browsing and shopping the Exploration Tower gift shop starts putting visitors in a festive mood, acting as if they are already in the middle of their cruise.   It’s worth mentioning again that it is their physical location that marks the brand of the Tower.  Once inside, the gift shop overlooks the water basin that semi-surrounds the building.  You can easily see the cruise ships from here.  Take your time; no one is going to hurry you through the shop.  Do yourself a favor, and come to browse and shop.

We noticed a café which was located across the entryway from the gift shop.  In true Florida style, souvenirs are displayed in the glass counters near the cash register.  If possible, save your appetite for the Preacher Bar, this week’s lunch destination.  It’s situated in a mini mall just off Highway A1A and is less than five minutes from Exploration Tower.  Once we settled in and I sipped my complimentary Bloody Mary, we tried to catch on to what the three TVs over the bar were showing.  We laughed and shrugged our shoulder once we realized that the Preacher Bar had soccer, surfing, and a deep sea documentary.  Where else but Florida?  I snapped a few pics, but visit the Preacher Bar’s website: preacherbar.com for much betters photos than I could take. 

 

Entrance to the Preacher Bar

Photos from the Exploration Tower:  https://goo.gl/FuBBDX 

Gift shop photos:   https://goo.gl/c9NNFG

I hope I answered the question of the Exploration Tower’s right or purpose.  We felt out of sorts on the top three floors, but skipping the floor gave us time to talk and figure things out.  Visiting the Exploration Tower gave us an incredible experience.