I couldn’t believe it when I read the Orlando Sentinel online this morning, but Gatorland is pretty much gutted from fire early this morning.
Although I haven’t been to this place in years, it’s kind of an icon around here. You enter this place by walking inside the gaping jaws of a gator. This morning, those blinding white teeth are charred and black. The roof caved in, and it was bad enough that the firefighters had to retreat and continue the fight outside. We don’t know the fate of the animals at the place yet, but the news article estimates that the few inside the building are gone.
This place built the big gator jaw entrance in 1963. It’s the kind of place where I went during Kindergarten and elementary school. For a kid, it was kind of cool to ride the train around the park and see tons of gators in the water below. They also had a plethora of snakes, but I could do without those.
At my last job, one of my co-workers was a former gator wrestler from Gatorland. He had some photos of him doing his act there. There’s no way in hell I’d pull a gator by its tail, but I guess he knew what he was doing. His hands were still attached on his arms.
It’s good to know that Gatorland plans to rebuild. It’ll be interesting to see how it’s going to look next. Just saw long as they have gaping gator jaws at the entrance.