Family * Travel * Food

Alligator Adventure Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Review

A week ago, we took our son to Alligator Adventure in Myrtle Beach, SC, to celebrate his 9th birthday. He had been wanting to go for a while, so we figured it would be the great place for some birthday fun. William is a big animal lover and enjoys learning as much as he can about them. Alligators and crocodiles are in his top 5 favorites, so we knew Alligator Adventure would be the perfect choice. It was actually quite chilly when we went, but that didn't stop us!


They have a massive parking area, but since we were there in more of the off-season,  we were able to park in front of the main entrance. You are greeting by a pond full of turtles basking in the sun. We paid for entrance at the ticket booth and were pleased to find out that at the end of our visit, we could get our receipt endorsed to return within 7 days. So basically it's like a buy-one-get-one free deal. This explained why I wasn't able to find any discounts or coupons anywhere. It's actually a really good deal. Admission was around $66 for two adults and one child.


The minute we entered the park, I could hear William squeal and almost yell out, "Alligators!" Of course, we had a quick talk about rules beforehand to remind him not to be loud so he would not scare any of the animals. Trust me though, the parents had to hold back their excitement, too. πŸ˜ƒ


The first exhibit was the Juvenile American Alligators habitat. It's actually very overwhelming to see so many alligators piled up all over each other. Although I grew up in Florida, I can truly say that I have never seen this many alligators at once. It's absolutely amazing to see! William was in absolute gator heaven.


The whole park is filled with so many amazing creatures and they have show times where you can gets hands-on with a few of them. It was really cool to learn some animal facts as well as get to actually touch them. Again, William was in heaven! At the end of each animal handling session, the zoo keeper would ask if anyone had any questions. Leave it to my kid to be the only one with his hand raised high!



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I don't want to bombard you with 100 photos, but I do have to mention that the reptile house/Serpentarium was so impressive and had so many snakes species in beautiful habitats. Some of the snakes were enormous! It was really a lot to take in.


The crocodile area was one of my personal favorite places and had a great variety of species from all over the world. William fell in love with one particular croc that you would not have expected. It wasn't the largest croc on earth weighing 2,000 pounds or the rare albino ones, it was a lonely one named Bob who was born without a tail. She would not have been able to survive in the wild without it and Alligator Adventure took her in and gave her a wonderful home. William talked about Bob for days after we got home.


Alligator Adventure is an absolutely beautiful place to visit if you are an animal or nature lover. We really enjoyed the Nature Walk and feeding the ducks along the way. It was really great that William was able to stop at each exhibit and read all about the animals and the habitats.



We utilized our free second visit the following day (which we highly recommend) and discovered spots we missed during the first visit. This was one of our most favorite trips and if you have ever considered visiting Alligator Adventure, I don't think you would be disappointed. I actually read a lot of reviews before we made the trip and they were mixed. We give it two thumbs up! I am going to make William a photobook with all of the animal pictures to remember how much fun we all had.

You can get more information about Alligator Adventure here. This was not a hosted event. We had such a great time that we wanted to share our thoughts with you guys. Thanks for stopping by today. πŸ˜€
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Save the turtles-- please share!

I wanted to pass along this information...

Please help to save a turtle's life and perhaps even your child's.

In August, your children will be enjoying another edition of the extremely popular, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. This will include a whole new generation of kids who missed the 2007 animated film. It's fun and great entertainment.

But, your help is needed. Since the first movie was released in 1990, hundreds of thousands of live turtles, mostly water turtles called red eared sliders, were purchased for between $10 and $25 after each ninja movie was released. The result? Many, if not most, were dumped and even deliberately killed or flushed down the toilet. Remember people buying thousands of dogs that ended up in shelters after 101 Dalmatians came me out? Same problem.

Unfortunately, children do not realize that real turtles do not fly, perform stunts or do any of the exciting moves fictional movie turtles do. Parents, trying to please their children, purchased live turtles which ended up languishing in tanks. Or, when the kids realized after a few weeks that these were not ninja turtles, the turtles were dumped illegally into rivers and lakes as well as dumpsters, flushed down toilets or relinquished to shelters and overcrowded rescues. It's estimated that 90 percent died. Additionally, zoos do not take turtles.

Turtles have been around for 200 million years and outlived the dinosaur. Is this the way we want to treat our precious wildlife? Most of these turtles are taken out of the wild and sold to pet stores, breeders and mercados for profit.
Here's the bigger problem. Turtles carry salmonella which can make a child very, very sick and can even kill them. That's why turtles less than four inches were banned from sale in the U.S. in 1974 and still are...tiny turtles easily fit into a child's mouth. Children also tend to touch the water and don't wash their hands. It's an ugly problem. A nine month old baby in Los Angeles got salmonella meningitis from a turtle after its parents touched it and then held the baby. We do not recommend live turtles or tortoises for children under 13 because of salmonella exposure and because the kids lose interest almost immediately.

What can you do to help? Buy Ninja Turtles action figures and toys instead of live turtles and save a turtle's life, and perhaps even your child's.
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