Gatorland Zoo

Gatorland Zoo

Orlando, Florida

Alligator Capital of the World!

Date of Visit: Saturday, June 26, 2011

For times and ticket information, Check out their site!

So its been awhile since a real review post! My bad-- have a lot going on with Noland on the job search and I am possibly starting grad school! But about a month a go, we went to Gatorland! I loved it! I've never seen so many gators and I got some GREAT pictures! Noland got bored after a while because he said, "its just gators, when you've seen one, you've seen them all." But, I was just amazed at the huge ones. So on that note, here are the Highlights!

Highlights: When you first walk in they have an area full of baby-ish (probably 2 or 3 year old) gators! There are tons of them! That was really cool! We immediately went to the Gator-wrestlin' show! The guys who put on the show were really funny and I almost feel like I could wrestle a gator after watching them -- they made it look a lot easier than it probably is. After the show, we headed towards the trail which took you to all the crocs! I never knew the difference between crocs vs gators but now I do... the snout/nose is a lot skinnier on crocodiles! The Nile crocodiles were huge and fascinating, I could watch those things sit still all day, they were soo big! They had huge tortoises too, they were neat to look at! I really liked the gator feeding area but was a little afraid for my life there because you are able to get so close to the gators. And finally the white alligators were really cool too.

Pictures:

gator wrestlin show

gator feeding! 

This was something you don't see often-- crocodie and a gator hanging out. Who knew they were friends?

This gator was so big and fat -- the picture doesn't do him justice 

One of the white alligators. It was not albino but some other rare type of alligator which is white with blue eyes.

baby gators 

This is "Chester" the Big Dog Eater! He loved eating dogs in Tampa, FL. At 13 1/2 feet long and 1,000 lbs he could put away some "hounds". Gatorland saved him from the trappers who wanted to make a suitcase out of him. He doesn't get a long with other gators, so he gets his own cool bachelor pad with a private pool. 

The Nile Crocs! They were massive! You can only tell that one of them is massive here but all of them were HUGE. 

Another Croc-- kept staring at me. 

giant tortoise!

parrots.

Gatorland also had a petting zoo area with goats etc for kids and this cool area with parrots. All in all, it was a great half day experience.

Disappointments: Well this would be obvious. There is NOT a lot of *variety* of animals at Gatorland. Its pretty much gators -- but then again, what do you expect? It is called "Gator"land. Its really affordable and a fun day for kids who have never/rarely seen an alligator. I loved it because even though, I'm from Florida, there were great picture opportunities and the gators were so close, you could almost touch them, but you couldn't. The variety was really the only disappointment. All of the cages were well maintained and I felt very safe. Just after about an hour or so, you are kinda like, "oh, theres another gator" haha. but it was a great time and I will probably plan on going back there with my future children!

We gave this place a 3 out of 5 elephants!!

It was a great day! You should check it out!

Signing off ♥jen

Friends of the National Zoo Membership

Noland and I just signed up for the "FONS (Friends of the National Zoo)" membership! If you are interested in signing up here is some MORE FONZ info!

The cool thing about FONZ is that you get discounts into zoos all over the country! And some of them, you even get in for free! Here is a list of the reciprocation zoos: Reciprocating Zoos and Aquariums - National Zoo| FONZ

We just went to the Atlanta zoo, which we will be posting information on in the coming weeks and got an awesome discount by using our FONZ membership! A final great thing about being a member of FONZ is that you recieve zoo news like, for example, a new baby Asian elephant was born at the St. Louis zoo!

Anyways, if you have any questions, post them below and we can definitely look it up for you.

Since I am out of town right now and on a family computer, I am unable to do a real zoozooreview post but I googled some funny animal pictures! Have a Happy Monday and enjoy!

I think someone photoshopped...? but the Lion King is great! Truly, a Disney Classic & everyone's fave!

Signing off -jenn

South Carolina Aquarium

Hey Everyone! We are really trying to spread the news about our blog but this past week I've been very busy running errands for the wedding planning and working a lot. Tomorrow we leave to head towards VA for the week. If you like our blog, Please click follow over there on the Right of the page! We would love to have more followers!

Location: 100 Aquarium Wharf,

Charleston, South Carolina 29401

Date of our Visit: Saturday, June 4, 2011

Cost: For the regular Value Pass including Planet Earth or Dora & Diego:

Adults $24.95

Seniors (62+) $23.95

Child (2-11) $17.95

Toddler (0-1) FREE

For more ticket info, Check out their website here

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Side story: My dad lives in South Carolina and we went to visit for my little brother's high school graduation. On the way to their house we passed some buffalo. Noland & I were really excited because you don't see a lot of buffalo in Florida so we pulled over and took some pictures. Here they are:

And there were baby buffalo! How cool is that. They were so cute!

Ok now back to Zoozooreview!

SC Aquarium Overall Review: Ok, so lets get straight to the point. The coolest part about the South Carolina acquarium was the awesome bald eagle that they had. The best thing about the bald eagle was that you were able to get so close to it. Neither of us have seen a bald eagle that close. It was almost as if you could reach out and touch it.. but you might not want to do that, it has some huge and very sharp talons.

 They also had a huge tank with sharks, other types of fish and one large sea turtle (who was difficult to spot). They had an albino alligator, which they claim to be pretty rare. It was really neat but it didn't really move at all. Also, it was difficult to see and capture a picture of because the exhibit was dark and murky. For a few minutes, we thought it was fake and then came back and it had moved a few feet.

 I would definitely say that this acquarium would be cool for little kids but for us, it was a one time thing. We've now seen it and while it was really cool, it was expensive and not all that spectacular for the price. It was a small aquarium and took about an hour to go through the whole thing even though, I was taking pictures and taking my time in each exhibit.

Picture time:

This is the view of the harbor from the aquarium. so beautiful! 

Snakes! 

Heron. It was so close. 

This is the head of an Eel. The rest of it was inside that rock-like cave.

The Bald Eage.

School of Fish. I just thought this was a neat picture 

Jelly Fish! 

Interesting Story: They had multiple sharks in the large aquarium but it was so hard to take pictues because the glass was at a slant. This shark has the shark-version of scoliosis. At first, we thought it was a tumor but then we went to the scuba show and were fully informed.

We give this one 2 out of 5 rating because:

It was pretty pricey for an aquarium that you can walk through in an hour. We finished so quickly that we just sat at one tank for 30 to 45 minutes to kill time before the scuba show started. It does have some neat animals and is not completely worthless. This is the rating that means, "I'm glad we went, but we probably won't go back.."

Signing off ♥ jen & no