Gatorland

Saturday, April 19

Gatorland

Orlando, FL

After the cousins left, Sean skulked around the house for a bit and said, "All I feel like doing is walking around doing nothing now that the Reed's went home."  Well we couldn't have that.  So after some time in the pool and some lunch, we decided to go check out Gatorland.  

Gatorland is a zoo of sorts, with lots of animals including some crocs, and TONS of gators.  They have big open swamp areas with gators, that all get along, and smaller areas with rare kinds of gators, and exhibits with mean and cranky gators that can't hang out with the other ones because they are too mean and cranky.  They also have a famous TV star gator that has been in documentaries and one gator who lived in a small bachelor pad because he developed a nasty habit of knocking baby birds out of the trees and eating them in front of the horrified Gatorland patrons.  Luckily we didn't see him exhibit that behavior.   They also have a zipline that goes right over their big gator breeding swamp (wonder how much they paid to insure THAT attraction!)  

There are also a few fun shows.  We caught the Gator Jumparoo show where they put out dead chickens on lines over the water and the gators jump out of the water to snap them off the line.  The other show we saw was the Gator Wrestling show where a guy gets up close and personal with a gator and actually does some pretty cool tricks with him.

The kids' favorite parts were the exhibits that were interactive.  Daphne paid $5 of her own money to feed a giant tortoise.  She was allowed to bring one other person into the exhibit with her, and Hayden was the one who got to go.  Sean said "I'm not spending 5 bucks to feed a giant turtle."  Which I thought was a great lesson in how everybody values things differently.  What is totally worth $5 to one kid is definitely NOT worth $5 to another kid.   

There was a petting zoo with lots of goats that made Bennett laugh and Sydney's favorite part was the aviary where they could feed the birds.  She and Daphne would have stayed there all day if they'd been allowed!  She still talks about feeding those birds with a stick.  

When we first got there, Hayden said, "What?  The alligators are behind fences?  I thought we were going to some random swamp to find wild alligators!  I like a little danger."  Unfortunately, we didn't know where any random swamps were, but despite his disappointment I think we all had a pretty fun afternoon!