Wanting a bigger snake

[mainbutter]

If you're looking for something with some size, but want to stay away from retics, burms, and african rock pythons, as others have mentioned, boa constrictors are a great choice. Colombian boa constrictors are readily available just about anywhere that has snakes other than corns and ball pythons. There is a wide variety of color morphs, subspecies, and localities available from breeders as well. Certain varieties grow larger than others.

Im also going to suggest something a little less typical:

Olive python. If you can appreciate a brown patternless snake, but care more about size, attitude, and unique head shapes/body structure, this might be the snake for you.

Yellow anacondas are also a possibility.

Carpet pythons are a great idea or someone who wants something a bit bigger than a ball python, but or someone who was thinking seriously about burms, I don't think they'd meet your desire for size. I sit here looking at a 7' long carpet python and think "you know, it would be neat if you had a few more feet on you and weighed six times as much".

Older blood pythons can be really impressive, but certainly don't get close to double digits in length. Still, being the girthiest snake in the world is neat, and females seem to often top 25lbs once they get some years of growth in.

If you pick any of the above suggestions, get a female for more size.

Or you could consider a male giant I suppose, if you think you might be ready for it. I've been thinking that it would be neat to have one of the smaller (but still giant) locales of retics and opt for a male.

Rather than think of a snake in length, do you have an overall weight you'd feel comfortable with, or specifically desire? For example, I wanted to get into blood pythons specifically because I wanted a heavy bodied snake that could break 20lbs.

There's a huge difference between a 9' long 6lb blue beauty snake and a 10' long 50lb boa constrictor, despite there only being a foot difference in length.