Gatorland

For our 17th anniversary we really didn't have a clue what to do, so we just went with the flow. We ended up at Gatorland Zoo which I would say is the 1st Orlando Tourist Attraction. It was opened in 1949 as a Snake Show by the late Owen Godwin. Snakes didn't really excited people, so the man who owned it decided gators would be a better fit. He even had a huge alligator that he took all the way up the eastern coast to drum up business. Gatorland Zoo is still owned by the Godwin family.
This is Hut standing inside the World Famous Gator Jaws. Gatorland had a HUGE fire in 2006 that destroyed most of the main buildings that this was attached to. Thank God for the quick thinking of firefighters to save this historical monument.
Here I am. No one was around at the time that could take a picture of us together. Oh well, we knew we were there together, lol.
This cute little guy greeted us when we first got there. Trust me they don't stay that cute for long. And his teeth still will put a hurting on you.

Look at all these guys waiting for something to eat. You could buy some turkey hot dogs to feed the gators. I had some pictures of gator wrestling but everytime I would go to post it, they would delete. Since I'm at work, I have no way to retrieve them, so when I get home I will add some pictures to this post. So come on back and check those out.

This is a WHITE alligator. Not an albino. This alligator doesn't have pink eyes. There is another term for this alligator, but I don't remember it. There are only 12 of these gators in existence.
Four of them reside at Gator Land. They are all male. Gator Land believes they have some females that carry the gene for this color of gator, so in a few months they are doing to try to breed them. I also had some pictures of the gator jumping show that I want to share, but once again the computer didn't cooperate. So I will add those too when I get home. The biggest alligators they have at the Zoo are used for this show and they are HUGE! One looked like the gator from the movie "Lake Placid".
Finally got the pictures to upload right. Here is the gator wrestling. Joey is pulling a gator out of the pond.

Here is Joey being brave. All of a gator's strenght is in snapping his jaws shut. Once they are shut, you can hold them shut with just your hands. They have no strength to open them.Joey demonstrates how week gators are when it comes to opening their mouths, but holding this gator's mouth shut with just his chin.

They have a gator Jump A Roo show where they get gators to jump out of the water. They use raw chicken for this. Although this picture is blurring, it shows how fast the gator will go to get the chicken. There were probably a dozen or so gators in this gator pond. These are the biggest alligators they have on property.

This final photo shows you just how BIG those gators are. You can see how big the gator's head is compared to the man's hand. I couldn't believe they were brave enough to hold the chicken in their hands.