Your full gator experience awaits.
The recently opened entertainment park, GatorWorld Parks of Florida, enables visitors to see, hold and feed alligators. Founder Don Buckner wanted to provide a quick and convenient way for Florida visitors to have a complete gator experience, while also providing a place of refuge for these reptiles. The park’s gators were acquired from farms and trappers who would have euthanized them otherwise, and now there are approximately 400 of the reptiles at the park.
Buckner’s drive-through course allows visitors to stay in the comfort of their vehicles and enjoy a gator-spotting journey into the rest of the park. Of the top three things the Orlando Tourism Division found that tourists want to do while in Florida, seeing an alligator is No. 3.
“We wanted an ideal location, we wanted it to take under an hour and we wanted it to be inexpensive,” Buckner says. “If we can give tourists back their time, they can check seeing an alligator off their list, and that actually helps other businesses in the tourism industry, too.”
A raised platform at the end of the course gives guests the opportunity to feed the alligators swimming in the water below. Guests can use fishing poles to dangle hotdogs over the platform’s railing and watch as the reptiles gobble them up.
Other activities include learning to safely hold an alligator and meeting the park’s massive rare, 13-foot one, Big Al, who is available for photos. More hands-on fun continues in the park’s petting zoo full of small and cuddly animals. Miniature cows and goats are happy to meet visitors, along with adorable bunnies in the ‘Bunny Barn’ that children are welcome to hold.
Learn more › GatorWorld Parks of Florida › 1 mile west of I-75 (exit 329), 492 W SR 44 in Wildwood › (352) 462-9500 › GatorWorldParks.com
