anyone been to Florida to see a NASA or SpaceX launch at KSC? What is it like and are there things to do (or things to avoid? ) I live about 10 hrs drive away. Might take Amtrak.
About 20 years ago, my wife and I were visiting her dad in Florida, and we made a day trip to KSC (he lived about 3 hours south of the Cape), though not with the intention of seeing a launch. When we got there, we discovered that there was, in fact, a satellite launch scheduled for that evening, and tickets were available. So, we got tickets, and decided to stay later, and see the launch (which would be after sunset).
After the main visitor center closed, we took a bus to the viewing area, which was basically a gravel road along the coast, several miles away from the visitor center. The area was well-lit (imagine parking lot lights), and there was a PA system which featured fairly constant updates and chatter from launch control. There were zero other amenities there (other than, maybe, porta-potties).
The launch countdown was stopped twice (delaying the launch), due to technical issues, before the launch was finally scrubbed for the night, sometime close to midnight.
Plan it for the start of a week or two-week vacation, with other, flexible, things to do for the rest of the time, so that you’re (maybe) covered if the launch gets delayed.
Assume the launch will be delayed, possibly multiple days. You can do the tour at the space center but that’s about 3-4 hours. There is nothing particularly special about Cocoa Beach; it is your basic touristy beach down but it is pretty quiet outside of spring break. Daytona Beach is a tourist nightmare. Orlando is Disney and Universal and overpriced restaurants (but some good Vietnamese and Thai food if you know where to look for it). Central Florida is to be avoided at all costs.
I may be terminally jaded, and I’ve already spent every moment of my life that I ever plan to spend in Florida and then some, but frankly if you are going to the Cape just for the launch it isn’t really worth it. The general public viewing area is so distant that it isn’t all that impressive and you can expect to be eaten by bugs for your efforts. If I were going to go for a viewing I’d go to Vandenberg SFB and watch a launch from there, and then hit the Hitching Post or Jockos for dinner on the way out; or else up to NASA Wallops FF to catch a (rare) launch out of there and go get a bowl of excellent bouillabaisse at AJs.
Stranger
I was a member of the Press for the first launch of the Space Shuttle.
Nailed it.
For what it’s worth, I did get to see a Space Shuttle launch once, while in Orlando.
I was there for some work meetings, around 1995; there was a launch scheduled for around 4am. The staff at our hotel told us that the launches were visible from there, especially if one went up onto the top of their parking ramp.
So, several of my colleagues and I met in the lobby in the middle of the night, then went up to the parking garage. We had no way to know if there had been a delay or a scrub (given that this years before smartphones), but a few minutes after the original launch time, the eastern sky lit up with orange light. While we couldn’t actually see the Shuttle itself (we were like 60 miles away, after all), we could easily see the engines’ flames, and we watched for several minutes. It was really cool. 
Thirding Vandenberg. I saw @Pork_Rind at a launch there several years ago. Didn’t stay for dinner, though.
The late evening launches are the best, IMO–just after sunset. It’s dark, but when the rocket reaches a high enough altitude, the entire plume illuminates in the sun, making for an amazing rainbow nebula. You can also easily see the pulses from the maneuvering thrusters (for SpaceX launches). Either way, you get a pretty good sound experience. The cracking sound from a rocket is really unmatched.
Avoid early morning launches, at least for significant parts of the year. It fogs in easily.
I’ve failed to see launches in Kauai and Wallops Island. For the former, I got a nice ~1 week vacation out of it. For Wallops Island, we flew back during a layover in Chicago. Lame.
We lived in Largo, FL, (just south of Clearwater) for a while and even though we were 150 miles away, we could see a Shuttle launch from our back yard (to be clear, we saw the exhaust and smoke for quite a while.) What a hoot!
Wallops is good because even though they are usually much smaller vehicles it is easy to get a good view even if you aren’t on island. (Do not kayak out thinking that you’ll get a front row seat; all you’ll get is a fine for delaying the launch.) However, because of its location WFF gets a lot of lightning storms and hence a lot of delays, and you are basically four hours from anywhere so once you’ve eaten at the few good local restaurants, taken in whatever film they are showing at Island Theatre, and hiked around Assateague looking for the wild horses but only running into obnoxious raccoons you’ve done everything that there is to do.
Kauai is almost all rail-launched targets. I mean, they’re rockets but just barely (I kid…in some ways they are more difficult than space missions but they aren’t very impressive to watch). The only space launch I can recall out of Kauai was ORS-4 on the Super Strypi vehicle, which is dumb name for a not very clever rocket that failed spectacularly because Sandia steadfastly refused to seek help in designing a good rocket launch vehicle.
Stranger
That was the one! But it failed after around 10 one-day delays, and I couldn’t stick around that long.
At least it reached a high enough altitude that the cremains on board got a decent scattering.
They plan to launch the new moon rocket SLS /Artemis without a crew in August . The plan is to circle the moon and return.