In perhaps an unintended degree of verisimilitude to the actual shuttle launch experience, a lot of the time on the Shuttle Launch Experience ride is spent waiting. As you wait on the gantry, monitors show a video where former astronauts describe what it was like for them to fly on the shuttle.
The galaxy we live in, called the Milky Way Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy composed of at least 100 billion stars. It is approximately 100,000 light years across and about 1000 light years thick. It has a central bulge that is about 10,000 light years in diameter.
The Milky Way is itself a galaxy. It does not belong to a galaxy, but to a galaxy cluster known as the Local Group. The Local Group is composed of over 30 galaxies including the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy and several dwarf and irregular galaxies.