An Afternoon at Chocolate World

Yesterday was super hot and muggy, so it was a good day for a nice indoor activity. One of the things on our list to do was a tour at Hershey’s Chocolate World. The tour itself is free but of course there are many other opportunities to spend some money.

I went online the night before and looked at the options. There are several experiences available, and they also had bundle options which give you a few bucks off. We were interested in the Chocolate Tasting Experience and the Make Your Own Chocolate Bar experience. There wasn’t a bundle option for just those two, but there was one that included those two as well as a 4D movie. The total for those three experiences was $28 per adult and a few bucks cheaper for Schaun. Given that the Make Your Own Chocolate Bar one was twenty bucks all by itself, I didn’t think that bundle was a bad deal.

Besides the admission to events, these places charge an unbelievable amount of money for a simple sandwich and drink at their food courts. So I bought our tickets online and scheduled our events for the afternoon so we could eat our own lunch. When we arrived there, I was so glad that we had our tickets already because the line at the ticket counter was crazy and it was great to be able to walk right on by.

We did the free tour first. It reminded me of a Disney ride. It was interesting and entertaining. We rode on a car while animated Hershey bars explained the process of making chocolate.

From there we went to the 4D movie. I didn’t take any pictures there, but it was more fun than I expected. Schaun definitely enjoyed it. We had 3D glasses on and the movie was animated and interactive with the audience. Also, after each experience we received a small Hershey bar, so that was a tasty treat.

Our third event of the day was the chocolate tasting. We received a small bag with four sample bars. Two of them were standard flavors, and two I had never had before. The person running the tasting talked some more about the process of making chocolate, and then went through the process of how to taste chocolate. Number one rule – no chewing!

After we tasted each, we got to choose the taste that came through to us, and then we were able to compare our opinion with others in the room.

It was fun. And yummy.

And the experience I left to last was the highlight of the afternoon – Make Your Own Chocolate Bar!!

We got all gowned up to go into the chocolate room.

The first part of the process took place in a room with computer monitors. We each scanned our ticket and got to make choices about our bar. We could choose up to three components to add. Schaun chose pretzel pieces. I chose toffee bits and rice crisp pieces. There were other options also, like cookie bits or chocolate chips.

Then we got to follow our chocolate bar through the process.

The component we chose was added to our bar.

And then our bar was completely coated over with milk chocolate.

After all these steps, our bars traveled through a cooling chamber.

And finally, we were able to design the wrapper for our container.

The end of a super fun afternoon!