The saying “living your best life” comes to mind when I look back at the pictures from Gatorland in Orlando, Florida. My wife and I took our children on a quick trip to Disney World (I am sure that is another blog for another day). We arrived in Orlando in the middle of the day, so we found ourselves looking for something to do. I had remembered seeing billboards for Gatorland the last time I was in Orlando; seems like fun, so why not? Well, fun for some of us. My wife decided to stay back and enjoy the peace and quiet. I think she was thinking the “lull before the storm.” If you have taken your children to Disney World, you understand!

Gatorland is small park, obviously focusing on alligators and crocodiles. They have birds, snakes and other animals as well. There are off-road adventures, boat rides and zip line adventures. Zip lines! Sign me up! The zip lines launche from heights up to 65 feet in the air and range in length from 230 feet to more than 500 feet. Going at speeds near 30 miles per hour, you fly over alligators and crocodiles.

So off we went. We had reservations for 4:30 p.m. on the zip line, so by the time we got into Orlando, checked into the hotel and dropped my wife off, we arrived at Gatorland with just enough time to walk around a little bit and then check ourselves in for our zip line experience.

The three of us were in a group of 10. My son was the youngest, and I am glad to say I was not the oldest (maybe not by much). We were led by two women who clearly have been doing this for a long time. I think they had as much fun as we did. Of course, my son wanted to go first. The first two towers they had a photographer standing on one of the towers taking pictures. There were five different zip lines that we did and a suspension bridge that we crossed. It took us a good hour and a half for the entire group to get across all of them.

The first one was just over land, but the remaining four and the suspension bridge were over alligators and crocodile pits. There was a rare alligator that was yellow-and-black stripped. Sorry, I did not get a picture of her as they didn’t allow us to take our phones with us for fear of us dropping them. I am sure we could have walked around the park and taken a picture, but the park was closing when we got done. The guides said this alligator is worth over $2.5 million because of how rare she is.

I am sure we could have spent a whole day at Gatorland, but we had not planned for it. We were able to see a few snakes and birds, however. They had areas where you could feed the alligators, hold snakes and talk to the parrots. We did a quick walk through as we exited the park. My son was disappointed that we did not have time to do the off-road adventure. Perhaps another trip!

All in all, zipping across alligator and crocodile pits was a lot of fun as we are living our best life!

— Eli R. Shapiro, director of sales