Long before Uncle Walt decided to make Central Florida home to the East Coast answer to Disneyland, Owen Godwin Sr. looked across the miles and mile of wetlands and saw opportunity. This is where he would construct his dream. And with that, Gatorland became the first tourist destination in Central Florida.
The park gets billed as Florida’s best half-day attraction. I’m not arguing with this bold claim. It’s a great place to spend a few hours and get more that your fill of alligators.
None of the pictures I took with the SLR on this trip came out.
The price of admission gets you into a couple of shows. We took a look at the gator wrestling program as well as the gator feeding. Something I learned, contrary to popular belief, if you are ever chased by a gator, you should run in a straight line, not zigzag.
For ten extra dollars, we got the chance to feed horsemeat to the alligators. I didn’t even realize that was on my to-do list, but now I get to cross it off. These are some well-fed alligators. They actually seemed pretty docile when we threw them the meat.
While the name of the place is Gatorland, it could have just as easily been called Birdland. There were just as many birds here as there were alligators.
