This post is sponsored by Kia but all opinions expressed below and honest and unbiased, as always.
Maybe your family’s been doing the amusement park thing for a few hours and the mid-day sun has just starting to wear you down. You smartly found a seat at a round wooden table in the shade, beneath an over-sized neon yellow umbrella advertising an icy sweet treat, while the kids wait in line to refill their slushy canisters. You think it’s probably time to reapply sunscreen. You’re right, but the kids will hem and haw, as kids do.
As you scan the area, watching stomach-turning drops to the left, corkscrew coasters to the right and that rocking pirate ship thing straight ahead, your eyes come upon an arrow on a sign pointing the way towards something unexpected, something out of left field during a day of coasters and kettle corn: a Kia Ride and Drive experience.
It’s funny timing because you’ve been watching the NBA playoffs and seeing the commercials, and you noticed the touchline placards around the pitch of the Euros reinforcing the message that this car brand is here and is everywhere but you think, how strange that I’ve never been in one…and can hamsters really drive? And is LeBron’s ride actually fit for a king? And exactly how horizontal can I lay in the 2nd row of a Sedona?
Tempted by these questions and the lure of a brief air-conditioned respite, you suggest to your kids a quick diversion, wisely upselling the a/c bit hard. They bite and before you know it your gang is happily piled into a shiny red Kia Soul, a pearly white Kia K900, and finally, a majestic Kia Sedona minivan, cruising around in each with absolutely no sales pressure. In fact, there are no sales people on site. This experience is all about the experience, not the sale.
In a neat twist, and quite unlike everything else inside the park, you walk away with more money in your pocket then when you began, a little $10 gift card for your time spent exploring, driving and enjoying the fleet of Kia rides. As you walk back into the park, a few steps behind your refreshed kiddos, you think about what you’ll buy in Target with your gift card — probably something fun for the kids because that’s how you roll.
I’ve been in nearly every kind of Kia now and I love them all for different reasons but I understand the skepticism, I do. Kia has been in America for over 20 years now but for roughly 90% of that time they’ve been a punchline at worst and an afterthought at best, but times they have a’ changed. Kia cars are high quality, high class, comfortable beyond belief, and with a soul, ahem, second to none.
Popping into a Kia Ride and Drive at an amusement park, shopping mall, auto show or wherever they are having one near where you live will go a long way to proving what my family already knows, that Kia is a super car company making a fleet of super rides well-worth driving.
I don’t have a schedule of upcoming Kia Ride and Drives unfortunately but you should keep your ear to the ground and head up for the next time the Kia fleet rolls into your town.
