Due to the recent severe heat warnings we have been having in Florida the last few weeks my family has been avoiding the theme parks for other options. Primarily focusing on things we can do where we are surrounded by sweet refreshing air conditioning.

Just this past weekend we headed down to Kenansville Florida about an hour south of Walt Disney World property to experience the Wild Florida drive-thru safari.

We bought our tickets ahead of time online to help expedite our entrance to the safari. You drive along a gravel path with the entire park covered approximately 170 acres.

The animals are free roaming and will give you an up close and personal experience with them. You do need to drive very slowly and cautiously as they will just randomly walk across the pathways. We were given a guide when we first entered with a kind of scavenger hunt to be on the look out for just a few of the over 150 animals that roam the safari.

Once we finished driving through the safari we parked and were able to go and visit the giraffe platform. For a small $5 fee per person we then were able to hand feed a giraffe some crispy romaine lettuce leaves.

Also up on this raised platform is where the first pressed penny machine was located. It was a four design manual crank machine and probably most surprising is that it was still only $0.50 to press your own preferred penny. The set includes designs of the Wild Florida logo, a giraffe, a gator and a sloth.

Amazingly that was only the first half of our day. Our safari ticket also gave us access to their Wildlife & Nature Park. The downfall was that it was extremely hot out so we didn’t spend as much time in this area as we would have liked.

As with any good Florida nature park there were plenty of gators floating around. The larger ones are always out in the main larger bodies of water.

The smaller ones are kept in separate areas until they are large enough to join to the others.

The rest of the park had plenty of habitats with other wildlife like raccoons, capybaras, lemurs, and plenty of lizards and snakes.

Wild Florida also offers Air Boat rides which we didn’t during this visit. Where you would check-in for those boat rides was also a gift shop.

If you walk straight through the gift shop, out the back doors and onto the dock that leads towards the air boats is where the second pressed penny machine was found. The designs at this machine had some really nice details to them with images of a Rhino, Gator, Lemur and one of their air boats.

By this time we were definitely melting and anxious to get back into our car to cool down. This was a lot of fun and we will definitely be back again sometime. A very special thank you to our friend and fellow collector Joe Watts who helped give details on these machine locations. Without his help I probably wouldn’t have been able to find these machines.

Keep on Pressing!

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