December 26th..............its Gator Day!
All week long, the weatherman had been threatening rain for today......not huge amounts, but rain nonetheless. We were surprised and delighted, then, when we opened our eyes and the sun was working hard to make an entrance as daylight broke. What had supposed to be a grey, dreary morning turned out to be really quite spectacular. It was also very warm.....sticky, almost......and Jakes allergies reared their ugly head, necessitating a trip to CVS before we headed down Orange Blossom Trail to our first stop of the day: GATORLAND!
Disclaimer: I have a weird fascination with alligators. I think they are super cool in a creepy sort of way. I have always wanted to make Gatorland an attraction to visit when in Florida, but for whatever reason, it just never seemed to materialize. So when we started planning this Christmas trip, I vowed THIS would be the vacation we finally get there. So I was excited. But thats nothing new.....for heavens sake, dont feed me chocolate!!!
We arrived about 10 minutes to park opening. We werent expecting any crowds here......Gatorland actually advertises that its a place to go for a good time and to avoid the crowds.......which is why we thought it would be a great place to spend some time during the super busy Christmas week. While our SeaWorld Christmas Day was very much bearable and enjoyable crowd-wise, and Aquatica was darn near deserted, we had been hearing rumours that those folks at the Disney parks were not nearly as fortunate. The staff at the Residence Inns front desk kept us up-to-date on crowd reports as we passed by them in the mornings to grab our morning meal in the breakfast room.
So....we are at Gatorland, and there are maybe a dozen others in line waiting for the gates to be opened. We had pre-purchased our tickets online prior to the trip, so we flashed our vouchers, the lady welcomed us warmly and gave us our grunt package cards (entitling us to admission, gator food, and the opportunity to sit on a live gator prior to one of the shows) and send us on our way. Of course, when she found out we were from Canada, she (like almost everyone we encounterd who was born and raised in the south) we had a small chat about the snow back home. We talked alot about snow ib this trip!!!
This place was really a fun, wholesome, old-Florida kind of attraction. No flash, no fluff, just gators. Hundreds of em. Maybe thousands. They were everywhere. Big ones. Small ones. Skinny ones. Fat ones (really, really fat.....I think they must feed them small children......or maybe whole goats.......they were HUGE!). White ones. Black ones. Ones I thought were dead (or fake) but were really just lazy. And the humour here was abundant throughout the park.....in a corny, slap-stick, cant-help-but-groan kind of way. From their silly signs (which despite the humour, usually carried an important message) to their answering machine message (call them sometime, just to hear it), it kind of has a red-neck feel (but not in a bad way........and I mean no offense to anyone by the term, I am just not sure how else to describe it!). For the first while, we spent the time just gawking at the sheer number of some of the gators in the various areas. And we had to get a few of these corny vacation photos.......cause you know I couldnt resist (for the record.....this was the only fake gator we found in the park):
We grabbed our gator food (large hot dog wieners) then made our way deeper into the park. We toured the Aviary:
And went through the White Gator Swamp:
They were really neat looking. Never seen a white gator before. Very cool. Very different.
We did the full tour of the Swamp Walk (a boardwalk through a basically untouched swamp land) which was very interesting. Lots of little interesting tidbits on funny signs along the way. It was so natural and untouched, I was quite worried we would encounter something frightful like a snake (in fact, they warned you multiple times on those humorous signs not pick one up as they might be poisonous.....oye!) but luckily, we were the only swamp beasts to be found (or the only ones who made themselves known, anyway).
After the Swamp Walk, we moved on to the Breeding Marsh. This is where the lucky gators go, apparently. We laughed, because these were the big, chubby gators in most cases.....not the ones you would think of being the ..... uh..... park studs. However, they all seemed happy. And content. So life must be good. Nuff said.
While poor Jake was mortified at the prospect of it, he good-naturedly agreed for a ride on the train. And this is why I so love that child. What a good boy.
Don't go away.............more Gatorland coming up in the next post!