While we were in visiting Shreveport, we had to stop at Gators & Friends before we left. After all, these northerners couldn’t turn down an opportunity to see a gator up close and personal! 
When you arrive at G&F, you go in through the gift shop;
there you purchase tickets, and you can buy cups of animal food that you can feed to the domesticated animals.
When you go out the back door of the gift shop, there are restrooms right there, and a snack bar with seating. They also have a couple of rooms that are available for things like birthday parties. There are several of little kiddie rides also.
Right outside the gift shop are enclosed yards full of gators!
They are grouped by size so they don’t prey on each other!
I loved how the park did their animal feed! The kids each got a cup of feed; it’s in a large drink cup with a hot beverage lid – the kids opened up the drink spouts, then they would have to shake out the feed into their hands. It helped portion the food so that the experience lasted longer for the kids! (and no-one could drop and spill all of theirs at once)
There were pens of domesticated animals that the kids could feed. The goats were the favorites…
They were such beggars, and they would line up and wait for the kids to feed them…
There were several little baby goats too.
They were the absolute cutest things!
The park has other farm animals too.
This guy was one of my favs…
Peanut and Beth liked the ponies. There were a couple of ponies that Savanna really liked…they would eat out of her hand, and then, when she would pull it back empty, they would worry that she was finished feeding them…they would take a front hoof and hook the fence with it, making it clang. They were demanding more food. Peanut thought it was pretty funny… and it worked – she fed them the remainder of her feed!
Off to the side of the gift shop building is a big pen of gators. 
There were dozens of big gators in there!
The pen extends far beyond what is in the above picutre, and some of the gators were swimming while others were lazing around on the bank. Here there are walkways that extend out over the alligator waterways so you can see them up close.
There is a stage that the park uses for shows…made for a great touristy photo op for us! LOL!
The park also has a series of zip line towers! The zip line can be bought in individual or group lines (sections), or the whole thing for a discount; they go right over some of the animal enclosures – including the big gator pen! That looked incredibly fun!
The park has kangaroos; these were one of Molly’s favs. There were a couple right up by the fence, and she was so excited that she forgot what they were called and said, “Mom! MOM! Look at those hopper things!” 
Some of the kids had feed left after we had done the whole petting zoo loop (seriously. love the cup idea!), so it was back to the goats for us! (the girls picked)
After we had toured the park, the nice young man working in the gift shop brought out ‘George’! George is a young alligator who is about 4 years old. He is roughly 4 feet long. Gator’s growth is determined by how well they eat, so the more plentiful the food, the longer in length they grow each year – anywhere from a foot to 1.5 feet per year until they are about 6yo, then their growth slows.
George was a trooper to tolerate all of us!!! Every one of the kids held him!
Oh, except Caleb. This is the look the guy got when he tried to encourage Caleb to hold George. Not sure how much of it was not wanting to leave his cool Jeep kiddie ride, and how much was that he was NOT going to touch that gator!
While George didn’t seem to protest our holding him, he did try to escape the first chance he got! LOL!
The kids loved Gator & Friends! You can check out their gator feeding schedule on their Gatorandfriends.com website if you would like to be there when they feed the alligators.
They are open Tu-Sun during the winter month, and seven days a week May thru August.
This was the perfect stop for us northerners (we are tickled that we can now say we held a real alligator!), and the perfect wrap-up to a lovely visit to Shreveport! <3
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