Spirit of the Swamp Airboat Tours

Ah, summertime in Florida… and the most common question I’m asked when making reservations is “what’s the best time to take an airboat ride?” 

My answer is always going to be the morning.  Lots of people think that late evening or night would be better, but take if from a Florida native – unless you have a really high tolerance for bugs the night trip isn’t for you.  Besides, your trip will have a very high probability of being rained out.

Yep, it rains almost every afternoon/evening in the summer.  Florida’s nickname may be the “Sunshine State”, but severe weather is a common pattern in the summer.  These thunderstorms are caused by overland collisions of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean called the “sea breeze effect”.

No matter which direction the winds are blowing, they are always off the water!  On calm summer afternoons with little prevailing wind, our sea breezes collide in the middle, creating thunderstorms down right down the center of the state.

Once we get into a sea breeze pattern, these storms seem are a regular occurrence.  So when you see the Florida weather forecast, remember that percentage of rain is most probably going to be late afternoon, and plan to book your airboat ride in the morning!

I’ve gotten some really nice emails lately… as well as some more great reviews on Trip Advisor.   Thank you Dean and Marlene for choosing Spirit of the Swamp Airboat Rides!

 Hi Debi,

 My family and I took an airboat ride with you on the 26th May and I have to say it was one of the main highlights of our holiday. From start to finish the whole experience was thrilling, informative and very enjoyable. The airboat provided the thrills while the captain was informative and very pleasant. We saw lot of wildlife including some baby crocs…. and then we bumped into Mum

 An excellent experience I would thoroughly recommend to anyone

 Thank you, Dean

 And I received this email from Marlene (If you’re reading this Marlene - it’s not a problem that you were running late!)

 Hi Debi

 Sorry this email is so late in getting to you…we just wanted to firstly apologise for not arriving this morning on time…I forgot to lift my cell phone which prevented me from letting you know we were on our way…albeit late…so my sincere apologies…

 Secondly we just wanted you to know how grateful we were that you still managed to accomodate us…we would have been really disappointed if we had missed it..

 Finally…we wanted to let you know that we will be telling all our friends how fantastic the tour is and how great a guide Captain Harold was….the best!! I shall make sure that I fill in my Trip Advisor report as soon as I go home.

 Once again thank you!!

 With all best wishes for your continued success,  Marlene Alistair Lucy and Neil Hobson

I should probably recap all of our videos – maybe there’s one here that you haven’t seen yet!
My favorite is first! It’s short, sweet and to the point. Of course it doesn’t hurt that David Nixon produced this for us!

Oh my, who could forget this one?  I feel the need to share it at least every 6 months or so.  You’ve absolutely have to view it if you haven’t seen it before! “Look Over Yonder…”

And from one of our favorite passengers – here’s a nighttime video of gator shining. Now Daniel had some really cool Lynyrd Skynyrd music set up to go with this, and it was AWESOME. But unfortunately it also made the video contain ads. So Dan changed the music for me. So go put on Skynard’s “Swamp Music” and listen to it while you watch the video, okay?

This one is very serene and calming – it’s a nice collection of photographs and videos taken by one of our passengers.

Enjoy!