Our park is 90% undercover. We are open rain or shine. A little rain will just cool us off! Reservations Open August 1. Follow up on Facebook for up to the minute status reports!
Late August means Alligator Hatching at Gatorama and you're invited! You can witness thousands of young, chirping alligators emerge from their shells. From the moment they are born, these 7 to 9-inch 'gators do everything their parents and bigger brothers and sisters do, just on a much smaller scale.
Mark your calendars: August 18th to August 27th, 2012. Don't miss this opportunity of a lifetime. Beat the rush of visitors and arrive early. Weekday we'll be open at 10am. WEEKENDS we open at 9am. See you soon or take a look at our Hatching Festival FAQ page for more information.
New born alligators are fun to watch and you can even hatch a live alligator egg in your very own hands*. It's a memory of a lifetime that will delight both children and adults.
A little bit about where Alligators come from:
They come from mamma and papa 'gators of course! Oh, silly me, you want the long answer.
Most of our eggs are collected in the wild. It's requires special licensing and Gatorama is proud to work with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, who manages the egg collection program and supervises egg collection. We pay the State of Florida $5.00 for every egg.
- As eggs are collected, we carefully mark and pack them, making sure they are kept top up. You see, alligator embryos attach to the top of the eggs and it's just better (and safer for the gators) to keep them pointed the right direction.
- The eggs come home to Gatorama and go straight into an incubator.
- The incubation process starts. We keep the temperature around 90 degrees Fahrenheit. It's dark, warm and moist. Just the way baby alligators like it.
- Now comes the hard part. Waiting for the eggs to hatch. It takes approximately 65 days before we get the first chirps and grunts. That's where you come in; when the eggs are ready come on down and help us hatch some baby gators!
- After you get your photo with a baby alligator, it is moved to a special facility used to help them grow from the tiny 7-inch babies to adulthood. Now you know where some of the big boys and gals you see in Gatorama's lakes come from!
*$10.00 additional charge per person for holding and hatching an alligator egg.
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