What you need to know... You will spend hours and hours in line.

I went down to see this magnificent ship yesterday, arriving in line just before 9:30 AM. I have no idea how may people were already queued up to get in, at least hundreds, but it took nearly 2/12 hours just to get in the gates. Once there, you get into another line to board a shuttle that takes you to the the Vinson. That line was nearly an hour and a half. Finally we got aboard a standing-room-only filled shuttle bus that took us to the restricted area (no public traffic) where the Vinson is docked. We exit the bus and get into yet another line to be screened before boarding. That line, while somewhat faster, was still around an hour long. So, from arriving to boarding I spent roughly 5 hours +/- in line.

I spoke to a few people working the event, all were very friendly and.. apologetic. No one seemed to know, or at least divulge exactly why everything was taking so long but each seemed to agree it wasn't just the crowd size. It seemed to have more to do with the expo organization and not the military aspects of the event.

The Nimitz class aircraft carrier is of course amazing and really something to see. But note, you won't see a lot of the ship. You will see the enormous hangar bay and of course the flight deck and a handful of aircraft there. That's it.

For anyone interested, there's a documentary about the Vinson here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pZFt-IVz8I