Hiking Wekiwa Springs State Park

Across the water from Rock Springs Run State Reserve, I found myself in a similar situation. The long hike I planned didn't yield near as much wildlife as I found near the trailheads. Once I finished the loop I designed, I headed off toward the lake on the side of the property I hadn't explored yet. Very glad I did.
So my loop basically started at Sand Lake and went to the boundary with Kelly Park. It then more or less followed the spring run back to Sand Lake 09:43. Once back there I started seeing small grasshoppers, skinks, turtles, an alligator, and many more tortoises. I had only seen one tortoise on trail. That and a few birds and flowers, insects and frogs. Those sorts of things.
The deer at the beginning are before I reached the parking lot at Sand Lake. The only other deer I saw was not captured on video.
Once back to my van, I drove to the parking lot at the swimming area and hiked over to Prevatt Lake 11:56. Here I found lots of water fowl and an even bigger gator. As I returned to the spring to film it and the boardwalk nearby, I spotted some wild turkey in a burn area.
All in all I saw quite a bit. I just wish I felt the days worth of hiking was worth it, considering I could have probably filmed more wildlife by just doing shorter trails.
I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing though.
As for the wait to get into the park, I was hoping to do this hike during the colder months but summer came early. I was waiting for the time change so sunrise would be closer to opening time.
I arrived about 30 minutes before the park opened and I'd say there were 20 to 30 cars in front of me already. 30 minutes after the park opened, I still wasn't passed the ranger station where you pay to get in. It wasn't great getting to the lesser used parking area to find several cars already there. I like to be first on trail to increase my odds of finding wildlife. A lot of these cars were probably from overnight backwoods campers though. What I did like was the park staying open until 8. I might have missed sunrise but I was there for sunset.