Hershey's Chocolate World

After we finished at Niagara on Thursday around noon with 10,000(!!!) steps for both of us on our Fitbits we drove 6 hours south to Hershey, Pennsylvania.   The main goal of our trip was to see Niagara Falls, but I also wanted to see other things in that area since it was such a long drive.  Rose suggested Hershey & guess what?  B-rad had been THROUGH it but never TO it so it was definitely a must see! 

There are tons of things to do in Hershey including an amusement park.  B-rad is all about them - me not so much so we weren't going there.  I chose for us to visit Hershey's Chocolate World.   I mean-the name says it all, people.

 

How can you go wrong when you're greeted by a Hershey Kiss, a Hershey Bar & MY personal favorite, Reese Cup?  

Ok-so the inside is chocolate on steroids.

There was a whole wall just for the different varieties of Hershey Kisses.

CHOCOLATE EVERYWHERE.

I could DIE...

There was other candy too...

BUT THE CHOCOLATE.

HEAVEN ON EARTH.

We found these in the Reese section & had never seen them in the wild.  It's a Reese cup w/ Reese pieces inside.  They had small versions of these so we bought a couple.  They were 'ok'.  I don't like messing w/ my Reese cup.  I have only seen them one other place since we've been home & that's at my Uncles Sav-a-step here at home.  Go figure!

I had read online about the different activities you could do inside Chocolate world, but I didn't plan to do any of them because I didn't know if we'd want to.  When you walk in the door you're met w/ many options for packages & discounts to do the various activities... Well, B-rad wanted to do them all.... so we bought the discounted package to do them all.

This is when I realized my last minute 'try to go to Gettysburg' plan wasn't gonna work... (more on that later.)

First was the chocolate tasting.  I don't know about you but I taste chocolate by putting it in my damn mouth, chewing, enjoying & swallowing so I can put the next piece in my mouth.

Oh no, people - this was like a fancy pants 'break the chocolate to hear the 'snap', smell the chocolate, put the chocolate on your tongue (BUT DON'T CHEW), let it dissolve & see if you can identify the flavors.'

NONSENSE.

Next up was making our own candy bar.  They made us dress in this ridiculousness... poor B-rad even had to wear a beard net!

We each had a ticket & you scan your ticket & choose what you want in your bar.  B-rad just chose it to be plain, I chose crisped rice & chocolate chips for mine.

There was a long, crowded wait to even get up to the belt to scan our ticket so our bar could be made.  

You scan your ticket & watch as your bar drops on the belt.  Then you get to watch it go all the way down the line.  Here my bar gets crisped rice.

After your bar travels through each station (you can choose sprinkles too) it goes through the chocolate liquid tunnel to be covered.  

It takes about 10 minutes for your bar to cool so they can put the wrapper on it.  Once again you scan your ticket on the machine & choose your wrapper.  I found this process extremely frustrating because there were SOOOO many choices & there were SO many people I made my choices very quickly & wanted to be OUT of that cramped room.

And this is the point things got bad.  I think the way it's suppose to work is that while you're busy making your wrapper, your bar is cooling & they send your wrapper to the printer.  Then the little workers wrap your bar up nice & pretty & as you continue to walk through you get your bar, you're done & can move on with life.  WELL.  We waited... & waited...& all the while the room is filling w/ more & more people but no people were leaving.  Turns out one of their printers broke & it caused a MAJOR backlog of candy bars.  I felt so sorry for the teenagers working there because they were totally frazzled.  

The finished product comes in their stock wrapper.

Which was placed inside a lovely metallic tin.

Then they wrap the tin in your custom made wrapper.

Next up was a trolley ride through the town of Hershey.  I found it to be a little too 'campy' for my taste.  When we sat down & found a song sheet in our seat I was like "oh hell no".  Throughout the town the tour guides would sing songs & encourage us to sing a long. 

UHM, no thanks. 

It was very interesting to learn about Milton Hershey & how he built the town of Hershey.  We saw this HUGE building when we drove in but didn't know what it was.  Turns out it's a school that Milton & his wife founded originally for way ward boys.  The school now accepts girls as well but it's still for under privileged children.  When they started the school anyone who graduated received $100 from Mr. Hershey & that tradition still lives on today.

This is the old Hershey plant which is now executive offices.

The main street in town is lined w/ Hershey kisses.

The best part of the trolley ride was that at different stops they would pass around chocolate for us to eat.  

When we finished at chocolate world we knew we wouldn't have enough time to go to Gettysburg, B-rad suggested we go back to the hotel to take a nap (he GETS me, people...).  Later that evening we ventured out to find dinner & decided to play putt-putt.  We found a very nice course to play but I found it difficult to play by the rules.  I broke rule #3 - more than once...

Of course I had the whole trip planned out for each day (DUH) but at the last minute (& by last minute I mean the DAY before we left!), I found out that Gettysburg was about an hour south of Hershey.   How in the world could we be an hour from Gettysburg & not go?  Not an option so I thought I could improvise our plan to fit Chocolate World AND Gettysburg into one day.  I had read that you could tour Gettysburg in your car & it took around 3-4 hours so we thought we may be able to do that after visiting Chocolate world.  We ended up being at chocolate world most the day so we had no time for Gettysburg.  On Saturday our (original) plan was to get up, drive a couple of hours to the Flight 93 memorial then head 7 hours home.  We both really wanted to go to Gettysburg so we decided to get up early Saturday morning, drive to Gettysburg & do the car tour, then drive to the Flight 93 memorial THEN drive home.  

It would turn out to be a miscalculation on our part that caused us to be cooped up in my car together for over 18 hours IN ONE DAY.