We’ve been to Hershey a few times, but the girls and I made the 1 hour and 15 minute drive west again yesterday morning with a single-minded purpose: to test-drive CREATE YOUR OWN CANDY BAR, the faux-factory’s latest attraction.
The main draw of Hershey’s Chocolate World has been, for many years, the free amusement ride that teaches you about the process of making Hershey’s chocolate; from the cocoa beans to the packaging, and everything in-between. It’s fun (singing cows!), colorful, nets you a small piece of candy at the end, and, best of all it’s free. But if you think you are escaping the clutches of Hershey without spending a dime, hah, you are sorely mistaken my friend. The Hershey store is stocked full of stylish and cool clothes for young and old, stuffed animals, trinkets and oh, just about 3 million pounds of candy. York Peppermint Patties, Kit Kats, Recess Peanut Butter Cups, Twizzlers, Kisses (of course) and every other sweet confection produced by the Hershey Corporation can be purchased in a dizzying array of sizes and flavors. It is, after all, the “sweetest place on earth”.
Even if you manage to get through the store with your wallet relatively unscathed, there’s also a ticketed 3D movie, a customize your own Hershey Bar wrapper studio, the Hershey Kisses Packaging Worker experience, the Chocolate Tasting Adventure, Hershey Trolley Works, and, now, the reason we went back again – the chance to design your own candy bar from scratch; ingredients and packaging! See the full list of Hershey Chocolate World attractions here.
So, here’s the scoop on the new CREATE YOUR OWN HERSHEY CANDY BAR ATTRACTION.
$14.95 per person/candy bar created. This means everyone going in needs to pay; you cannot escort your young kids without paying to create a bar yourself. I tried, it’s not going to fly.
Never before have I thought spending $15 on candy bar is a good deal, but this was awesome! Hershey essentially built a mini-working factory inside Chocolate World. After putting on aprons, hairnets (and beard nets, if applicable), and sanitizing your hands, you use snazzy touch screens to select your type of chocolate bar (milk chocolate only right now, but dark and white are coming), then select up to 3 mix-ins from a menu of 6 rotating options. We had the following to choose from: vanilla chips, caramel bites, cookie pieces, rice crisps, graham cracker crumbs, rainbow sprinkles. You can also select to have rainbow sprinkles adorn the top of your bar. The touch screens are close enough to the ground that the Bear (age 6) could reach and design her own bar – a good thing – but the Mouse (age 3) couldn’t comfortably use the screens or see the candy bar progress along the belt without me picking her up.
You then proceed to the mini-factory floor – pristine and clean – to begin the bar making process. This really is amazing. You pull a lever and your very own bar drops on to the conveyor belt, then stops at each mix-in station (your name will appear on each of the station’s LCD screens) before cruising through a milk chocolate waterfall then a cooling tunnel for 10 minutes. While your bar is chillin’, you move to the design studio to work on more touch screens. Here you pick the classy silver tin’s wrapper color, design, characters, etc (see photos of our 3 wrappers below). You can rotate, re-size, move images and your name all over the wrapper. Very full functioning, all with your finger. Very, very cool. After that, you pick up your completed, custom Hershey Chocolate Bar.
Hershey Chocolate World’s CREATE YOUR OWN CANDY BAR ATTRACTION is worth every penny of the $15 you’ll spend, not for the few ounces of chocolate, of course, but for the experience of playing a realistic Candy Man (or Woman). There’s no elevator smashing through a glass ceiling at the end, but this is about as close as you can get to being Willy Wonka, if only for 20 minutes.
After we had our candy bars, we jumped on the free ride once again (the Mouse was freaking-out-excited!) then headed to the Trolley Works, which we’d never experienced before. The girls loved it! A 45-minute journey through the town, past the Hershey mansion, the Milton Hershey school(s), the real chocolate factory – all with singing conductors (“By Bye Blackbird”, “You are My Sunshine”, to name a few tunes)! One of the conductors leaves the trolley bus only to constantly return as different characters from Hershey’s past. It’s kinda corny, but also kinda humorous. Oh, you also get samples of Kisses, Recess cups, and Hershey bars along the way!
The Hershey Trolley Works is also well worth the time and money, especially on a hot day – ’cause the trolley is very well air conditioned!
I spent no money in the store, not a penny, but still dropped a total of $70 at Hershey’s Chocolate World. See, you cannot escape without dropping a few coins in the chocolate fountain.
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