National Space Centre - Leicester

National Space Centre - Leicester 

For the second stop on our road trip we booked to visit the National Space centre in Leicester. With both of us having a love and interest in Space we knew it was the perfect place to spend the day looking round. 

We pre booked our tickets online before arrival on the National Space Centre Website National Space Centre bookings

The process is very easy and straight forward. It takes you through page by page all aspects of the booking from adding guidebooks to add ons for shows inside the planetarium. We booked to see the Night Sky Tour during our visit. 

On arrival by car there are two big car parks within walking distance of the entrance. You will need to get a ticket to cover your parking for the day before entering. 

Picking up our tickets at the front desk was quick and they were also turned into annual passes as well for return visits. 

One thing to remember for your visit if you go during the week in term time is to expect a lot of school groups. This made the centre busy and noisy but it didn't affect our visit. 

There are a lot of different exhibitions and exhibits to see and took us up until closing time to get round. You do have the opportunity if something is busy to come back to it later in your visit. 

Before we went to watch our show in the planetarium we stopped for food in the cafe. There is a wide range of food on offer and the staff are happy to cater for all allergies including Gluten free as well. Even sitting in the cafe you had space memorabilia to look at from early space missions. 

The show in the Planetarium lasted about 25 minutes and was very well put together. The staff looking after the show knew what they were talking about and were on hand to answer any questions that we had. 

After the show we heading to some of the exhibits that had been busy before which had great displays of all the Apollo moon mission badges and historic items from the flights. I've always loved the history of the missions so I found this really interesting. 

We then headed up to the display areas around the rocket ship which you can see from outside before you enter. 

This area has some great exhibitions including the moon landing and a timeline of things that have happened in the space era.

As we were getting near to closing time we decided it was time for a visit to the gift shop. There is a wide range of things for younger children but it was a bit disappointing to see that there wasn't as much for adults. 

We had a great visit and are looking forward to a return one with our annual passes very soon.