2014-04 An interesting morning at Gatorama

From Sebring, we took a morning trip to Gatorama (thank you Stuart and Kathy for the recommendation!). Definitely worthwhile and would be really fun for kids. Not only alligators and crocodiles, but also bobcats, panthers, peacocks, turtles and tortoises...we were told you really need to buy the food ($3) so you can watch the feeding frenzy, so we went ahead and paid the extra $7 for me to go "bareback" on a gator; this included the food bag plus photo op on an alligator (ie., only cost me $4 over the cost of the food alone). For kids, I highly recommend the "Catch a Gator" experience where you climb in a pool with lots of little gators and catch them (their mouths are taped, of course) - the kids all seemed to have a blast.

I was impressed with the cleanliness of the pens, all seemed clean and well maintained, and other than poor Goliath's sunburn (yes, they do sunburn!), did not see any critters which looked wanting....well except for the crocs which all looked a bit too eager to meet us.

The boardwalk starts by crossing the lagoons where the big guys are



They do a feeding of these big guys twice a day



Bobcat



One of several wandering peafowl

Watched a handler put his hand in this 15ft croc's mouth

The end of the boarwalk crosses a large lagoon with "problem alligators"
removed from various locations across Florida

 



 

Their marketing pictures show a 1970's era picture of a woman on a huge 10-foot gator...guess they may have had issues with big gators being so strong that it was truly dangerous. So...notice my gator's a bit smaller...it growled at me...can you blame it? This little guy was very strong and it was really worth the four bucks just to feel the rumble of his growl! Cool Experience!