Hold A Gator Egg As It Hatches At This FL Attraction

PALMDALE, FL — Those who want to experience a slice of old Florida should make the trip to Gatorama, which is located at the edge of the Everglades in Palmdale.

The roadside attraction, once billed as the world’s largest alligator farm, was founded in 1957 by Cecil Clemons.

“Now, it’s one of the seven remaining original Florida tourist attractions that were here back before Disney,” Patty Register, who now owns Gatorama with her husband, Allen, told Patch.

The destination is in the midst of its busiest time of year — the Hatching Festival.

Now in its 24th year, the Hatching Festival offers guests the chance to hold an alligator egg as it hatches and to come face-to-face with a baby gator during its first moments in the world.

“I love educating people about old Florida and about the importance of alligators in Florida’s environment,” Register said. “Of course, we’re open year-round, but this is just the most opportune time to do it. Both adults and children love [it] when they get to hold an egg that’s moving inside and they can either hold it up to their ear and hear it or hold it in their hands and wait for it to hatch.”

This year, about 4,000 eggs will be hatched at Gatorama during the festival, which started Aug. 16 and runs through Sept. 2 during the peak of hatching season.

The venue no longer farms alligators, instead acting as a contract hatcher for other farmers.

“We do it for other farms that don’t want that daily care time and don’t want to watch their eggs,” Register said.

It takes 65 days of incubation for gators to be ready to hatch.

“We don’t do anything to control when they’re going to hatch,” she said. “We’ve been growing alligators for about 40 years now. With our record, we know when the peak is gonna be.”

There’s a tell-tale sign to know that an egg is about to hatch, she added.

“What we look for before we bring them out is we want to see a little, tiny pink hole,” Register said. “It’s produced by the baby running its egg tooth back and forth on the inside membrane. That’s what pierces through the outside shell.”

They’re so confident that enough eggs will be hatching to accommodate each guest during the festival that they even offer advance reservations.

“A long time ago, we didn’t offer advance reservations and now we do,” Register said. “That’s what gives us gray hair, because we hope they start hatching at just the right time, and so far they have.”

This time of year is like a reunion for Gatorama, she added.

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“It’s almost like a homecoming. There are many families that have come since the inception of the festival,” she said.

Register and her husband have even watched children who have visited the destination grow up, graduate from college, embark on careers and bring their own families to the festival all these years later.

“It’s just a wonderful time of year,” she said.

Her father, David Thielen, a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Korean and Vietnam wars, bought Gatorama from its original owner in 1986. He knew Clemons because they grew up in the same small town, Lakeport.

“That was also the same year that alligators were taken off the endangered species list and Florida started an alligator farming management program,” Register said. “He wanted to get in on the ground floor of that and he did.”

After a couple of years, her father realized that “he bit off more than he could chew,” she said.

At the time, she and her husband, who served in the U.S. Navy, were at a crossroads in their lives. They had school-age children and he was deciding whether he should stay in the military or not.

They decided to join her parents at Gatorama. While her father was interested in gator farming, Register was more drawn to redeveloping the destination as a tourist attraction.

“It had been neglected for a long time,” she said.

The couple bought Gatorama in 2004 after her mother died.

She’s proud of the work they’ve put into the attraction and their involvement in their community and tourism and environmental issues at a state level. Both husband and wife are active with various boards and organizations, including Visit Florida.

Today, visiting Gatorama “is like visiting a slice of Florida in the 1960s,” Register said. “We very much kept the historical flavor of our business. It would be easy to mow it all down, but we keep it.”

At the heart of the business is a focus on education and animal interactions.

“What we’re best known for is our Gator Adventures, which are hands-on experiences that we share with our guests,” she said. “The trend in the animal world is toward no-touch facilities, and Allen and I very much believe that through sharing hands-on encounters in a very safe manner we can create a stronger human-animal bond. When you share a bond with something, you tend to value it more.”

Gatorama is home to a few thousands alligators, a couple hundred crocodiles, eight different crocodilian species, as well as other reptiles, mammals, and birds.