suggestion for outside the parks

[pixxi]

My hsb and I are going to probably rent a room from Airbnb. We are only staying a couple of days and doing a 5K run, this is the first time we are looking at staying offsite and renting a car. Our past vacations to WDW have always been about the kids and now it's our turn.

I was looking at seeing manatees in the wild, what is a good place? Open to neat experience like swimming, kayaking, etc...

Also looking for something like airboat ride for my hsb, any suggestion for that or anything else that is cool? Anyone went to Old Town?

Also anything beside Disney Springs that we can go for fun?

 

[chicagodisfan]

For airboat rides I highly recommend Wild Florida! It's about 45 minutes to an hour from Orlando in the central Florida Everglades. They have a website with info. We did the 1 hour airboat ride and it was great! We saw several alligators and tons of local birds and the scenery is beautiful. The ticket for the airboat ride includes admission to their animal park where they have an impressive collection of animals, alligator feedings, an aviary and an exotic animal show. The park isn't huge but it's very nice and the animals all seem happy and very well taken care of. For an added treat, book one of their animal encounters! My DS10 and I did the sloth encounter and the porcupine encounter. They are for ages 8 and up but he was the only kid in the group! Our group was full for the sloth encounter where you got to feed and pet the sloth and take pictures with him. We loved the porcupine encounter even more! It was just the two of us and we got to feed the two porcupines a basket of peanuts and pet them while they and the tortoise that shared their habitat climbed in our laps! They were so amazingly friendly! There is a ring tail lemur encounter too that is for ages 12 and up which sounds amazing too. In addition, we fed the alligators in the park and the beautiful birds in the aviary. It was a lot of fun! If you buy tickets in advance, you can save 20% on their website. Have a great trip!

 

[Mr & Mrs DD]

We enjoyed Gator Land. We spent about half a day there. We paid a little extra and got to go inside one of the gates and feed the LARGE alligators. You can also do a zip line there.

 

[janicept]

There is place to kayak in Kissimmee. It's right off 192 not far from Disney. I've been there but scared of alligators so you couldn't pay me to do it. Parking and walking around are free. You can rent kayaks for sure and maybe bikes.