Gatorland, Orlando Florida

 The boys wanted to go to Gatorland and I wanted to go to Kennedy Space Center.  I was overruled.  I have been to Kennedy before and found that fascinating but that was over 20 years ago and I thought that my son would appreciate it.  Reptiles and boys - I don't understand the fascination? 

If you look closely at the picture on the left you will see the large bird and the bird underneath the big bird is riding an Aligator and there are several alligators in the background.  The birds have a very symbiotic relationship with the Gators.   Now occasionally you will see a bird that is missing a foot and most likely this bird was too slow and lost a foot to a Gator's mouth.

Gatorland is in South Orlando and happened to be very close to where we were staying at the Sheraton Vistana.  We found a coupon for $2.50 USD off each adult.  That brought the price down to $27.50 each. This was completely reasonable for a full day of seeing the sites.  We had a little bit of a line-up into Gatorland and when we got in we were surprised to see so many. 

We were there on the Saturday of the President's Day weekend.  It was pretty busy.

As much as I don't love looking at reptiles, I found myself semi-fascinated by Gatorland.  There are literally a couple of thousand of these things in various sizes.  They are everywhere.  

They all have personal space issues too.  

They are just eating machines.  I am not much of a cold-blooded animal lover at all.  I did not even go and look at the snake exhibit, I draw the line there.  They did have some albino gators and lots of crocodiles from around the world.

There are posters throughout the property providing you with information on the animals.  Whoever writes these has an excellent sense of humour.

There is a Breeding Marsh and these things have tons of acres of land and swamp to live in.  If I was a Gator I would wish to live in Gatorland. 

These large gators swim right under the walkways throughout the Gatorland property which is quite disconcerting at first and then you get used to it.  You can buy these large 2-inch food pellets to throw to the gators and they do swim toward them but their eyesight sucks so it is slightly comical watching them get these things.  Sometimes the birds get to them before the Gators do.  

Gatorland has several shows a day and we managed to see the 3 different ones.  Our favourite was the Gator rangling or wrestling one. It was called Alligators:  Legends of the Swamp. 

My second favourite was the Gator feeding show.  

The third show had a live tarantula and a very large snake in it and all I did was shiver every time I saw it, so this was my least favourite show. 

This poor woman to the right had this gargantuan snake continually trying to wrap itself around her.  I felt sorry for her and she was a fellow Canadian.

There is a baby gator area or nursery that has babies that are all about one foot long.  The boys thought they were cute and I thought that there was nothing cute about them.  I think that they will grow up to be a nice pair of boots someday. 

There are different animals there that are more my style the warm-blooded ones.  They have some cute, fat bobcats, flamingos, raccoons, birds, cows, goats, kookaburras (gosh they are so cute) and the largest rodent in the world the capybara which is surprisingly cute and interested in you. 

Flamingo Pretzel

There is a ride that you can pay extra for and you shouldn't waste your $15.00 USD per person, because it is not worth it.  This was the only part of Gatorland that was very underwhelming.  It is called the Stompin Gator Off-Road Adventure.  If it was $ 5.00 then we would not have felt so ripped off.  The hopped-up off-road vehicle is kind of cool and it is a very bumpy ride.

There is a Swamp Walk where you walk on raised walkways, it is a true swamp and there are wild creatures in there.  My son saw a turtle etc.  This walk was very peaceful and quite lovely to see the flora and fauna native to the Florida Swamp.  It is under a kilometre walk. 

We enjoyed Gatorland, there are so many things to see, do and watch.