Today was a scorcher. I’m sure that somewhere I saw a forecast that said 83 degrees, but I realized part way through the morning that I must have been looking at the low. We packed up our Twizzlers van and headed into Hersheypark nevertheless, armed with water bottles and sunscreen. The goal for the day was to hit all of the must-do rides by early afternoon so that we could retreat to the air-conditioning of Chocolate World as soon as possible. Noah was not having it. Somewhere between being conned into riding the flume (for which I got punched very hard in the leg as soon as we reached the bottom of the plummet) and losing completely on the goblet toss, Noah decided that he is not really a fan of Hersheypark. Emma, however, was loving every second from having to tell me when the Flying Falcons were beginning their descent (I’m afraid of heights)…
…to riding The Claw to finally going on The Comet, the very first real roller coaster I ever went on some twenty odd years ago. She is fearless when it comes to amusement parks and would have braved the incredible heat all day had it not been for the foreboding stares coming from the men in our lives.
On to cooler pastures…
Hershey’s Chocolate World has changed dramatically since I was a child, and I could not believe the variety of things to do once inside! With a two and a half hour drive ahead of us, we had a limited time and had to choose wisely. After taking the somewhat re-worked chocolate “factory” tour ride, we checked out the Create Your Own Candy Bar exhibit. The kids were obviously excited to be cool, er, I mean about to design their own candy bar.
Once inside, each person gets to choose their type of chocolate. Now before you get excited like I did about the idea of a customized dark chocolate bar (mmmmm, dark chocolate), just the base is dark, milk, or white. They then run every bar through milk chocolate filling, so my recommendation is to just choose milk chocolate from the jump rather than confuse your taste buds. From there you get to choose what you’d like to add into your bar. The kids loved this part and added fun things like chocolate chips and sprinkles.
Not wanting to overwhelm my tastebuds, I just chose pretzels. Yes, that’s right. Pretzel pieces inside a chocolate bar. And no, I’m not sharing. We then got to watch as our chocolate bar shells moved along a conveyor belt to receive their ingredients and the remainder of their chocolate. While the bars cooled, we were able to design our own labels on another set of computer screens. In the end, we picked up our bars waiting for us in a case wrapped in our custom labels.
The kids loved this portion of our day, but I have to say that I was a little frustrated by my confused bar of dark and milk chocolate with six sad little pieces of pretzel. I was ready for some DESSERT, so we headed to the Design Your Dessert bar upstairs. Now this was my favorite part of the day. The kids and I all chose S’mores kits, and while we waited for our food, we painted the table with edible paint.
Once the S’mores ingredients arrived, we actually roasted our marshmallows over a fire inside Chocolate World! Okay, so it was really a burner surrounded by what appeared to be a campfire, but the ambiance was spot on. The kids and I had a blast and for once, I did not set my marshmallows on fire.
After our S’mores were assembled, we used the edible paint to make them extra special!
With happy hearts, full tummies, and completely exhausted bodies, we headed back to the Twizzlers van to begin our journey home. Before leaving, we snapped one last shot of the van visiting the home of Twizzlers’ parent company, Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Thank you, Twizzlers Landmark Summer, for this amazing experience! Here’s to a summer of wonderful blogger roadtrips!
Disclosure: Travel accommodations and expenses were paid for as a part of this sponsored opportunity with Twizzlers. Thank you to The Hershey Company for also providing complimentary park tickets during the final leg of our trip. All opinions are my own. And seriously, don’t ask me to share that custom bar I made or the two GIANT Special Darks I bought in the gift shop. Back off.