Animals are a huge part of the appeal of Wild Adventures in Valdosta, GA. It’s great to be able to look at them, but to have an animal experience where you can feed and interact with them will make your trip much more memorable. The Ultimate Animal Feeding Package at Wild Advantage is a great way to have several animal interactions together as a family. At under $30 and including a souvenir photo it’s a tremendous value too.

The Ultimate Animal Feeding Package is available for $29.99 and includes the following:

Ultimate Animal Feeding Package

• (2) Giraffe feedings
• (2) cups of feed at The Birdhouse
• (2) bags of gator food at Discovery Outpost
• (1) cup of feed for Liberty Farms Petting Zoo
• (2) nature feeds for the pond
• (1) 6×8 souvenir photo.

Each of these is a fun and unique experience and we’ll describe each of them below. When you buy the feeding package you get a little box reminiscent of something a happy meal would come in. Inside you’ll find 3 of the actual feed items in the gator food, bird food and fish/duck food. You’ll also find cards in the box for redemption for the other items.

One of the first animal areas you’ll encounter as you enter the park is the gators. This area is tons of fun as the gators are highly visible and there are fun ways to interact with the environment such as the rope bridge that goes over top of the habitat. The gator feed is included in the box in two paper bags with a half dozen or more large dried pellets in each. You just simply take these and throw them over the fence to the gators waiting on the other side. The gators really seem to like these treats as the water almost looks like it’s boiling as they go after them. More gator food is also available for purchase nearby.

The next area up is the Liberty Farms Petting Zoo. This area is highly similar to most any petting zoo you’ve ever been to before. It does have some nice photo spots and in an interesting surprise there are cool posters around the exterior that tell the history of the park.

The bird house was a real highlight. The birds here are not shy at all and will land on your feed cup, head, shoulder and just about anywhere. The little cups last forever and you’ll probably find yourself discarding some feed in the small bowl on exit rather than running out. If you do run out though or need extra cups for other family members you can buy them for just $2. Kids seem to love this one probably because the birds aren’t scary or intimidating like larger animals. We also found the birds more active in the morning than the evening, so may be best to hit this one earlier in the day.

The giraffe feeding is a real highlight. Be aware it’s time specific typically happening at 1:30pm and 3:30pm daily. There’s a special feeding platform and your whole family can go on the platform at once. You exchange your two cards from the box for 8 lettuce leaves and get to feed a giraffe! There is a park photographer that will capture some pictures for you and you can also of course take your own. In the final pic one member of your team takes the final lettuce leaf and puts it behind their head so you end up with a giraffe photo bombing your picture! You can also get this picture printed for free, more on that later.

The pond is the most informal of the feedings. It’s essentially the huge lake in the middle of the park where you’ll find things like ducks and fish. There are a number of areas around the circumference where you can use this little cup of feed.

The final item is the feeding picture (usually from the giraffes). If you’ve ever bought a picture at a theme park you know you could easily spend $30 on a picture souvenir alone, but in this case the package comes with a printed picture!

We were able to experience most of these experiences in a single afternoon and could have easily have done them all, but we took the opportunity to spread them out since we were on a multi-day trip. Spreading the feeding out over multiple visits is pretty easy to do given things like the giraffe feeding and petting zoo come as cards to be cashed in at the animal locations. The gators, birds, pond and petting zoo are experiences you can spend as much or as little time doing as you would like. The only one that is different is the giraffe feeding which as set times typically of 1:30pm and 3:30pm daily. For the giraffes the longest part of the experience may be a small wait in line with the actual feeding taking only a minute or two. However short the experience was though, the picture of a giraffe taking a lettuce leaf from your hand lives forever on Instagram!

Wild Adventures offers many opportunities to interact with the animals and some are totally free like holding a gator or interacting with other animals in the park entrance courtyard during park opening. You can buy most of the items in the Ultimate Feeding Package individually, but you’ll save money getting the package. However, if you’re budget conscious you can pick a single encounter like getting a cup of bird feed for only $2 and still have an awesome animal experience. In fact I think the birds were probably our group’s consensus favorite animal encounter. If you’re looking for even more animal experiences, the park also offers Discovery Tours such as a “Swamp Tour” for $29.99 a person where you can hold and interact with snakes, spiders, alligators and more.

I couldn’t recommend theme park animal experiences more. We’ve also done other animal interaction reviews like SeaWorld Orlando’s Dining with Orcas and the Penguin Encounter at SeaWorld San Antonio. Each interaction was easily one of the most memorable parts of the trip. The Ultimate Feeding Package at Wild Adventures has advantages of both being very affordable, being a multi-experience package and being able to be shared across a group all for only $30. Be sure to check it out on your trip to Wild Adventures, you’ll leave with some great memories and some great pictures too.