The rest of Hershey's Chocolate World

 We loved the things that we did at Hershey's Chocolate World, but we did not do everything we could have done.

In addition to the Trolley Tour and Fall Festival of Flavors, other options included building your own candy bar, taking a chocolate tasting class, and a 4-D movie.

We know people who have done some of these and really enjoyed them. Knowing what we know now, if we had to do it over again we would have not gotten the theme park tickets, and instead done everything at Chocolate World, plus visited The Hershey Story Museum and Hershey Gardens. That is taking into consideration allocation of both time and money.

There are other things you can do at Chocolate World without a separate admission. There are photo opportunities, with a regular studio and with characters who walk around. They are in the 4-D movie, but may also look suspiciously like the candy you may buy.

There are some interactive Kiss-based games you can play.

There is a food court with a pretty good selection and reasonable prices. This is very practical, for employees as well as visitors. There is nothing within easy walking distance and the main attractions without any solid food could easily send someone into sugar shock.

But that is the best part.

All of the places on our Fall Festival tour, in addition to the samples we got, have regular product offerings. That does mean an ice cream place, and a place where you can decorate your own cookies and cupcakes, but also it means the most amazing bakery cases, with beautiful (big) cupcakes and cookies incorporating kisses, chocolate bars, and peanut butter cups. They are amazing.

Obviously, it is important to pace yourself - share different things in the group, come back on different days, whatever you have to do to maintain a reasonable level of wellness - but they have some great stuff.

Have a sweet day; they make that really easy.

http://www.hersheys.com/chocolateworld/explore

https://hersheystory.org/

http://www.hersheygardens.org/

The Milton Hershey School

There was only one point on the trolley tour where we got off, and that was to see the main building for the Milton Hershey School.

It may not look like much on the outside, but where that dome is on the inside is very impressive.

There are many buildings with the school, both for classes and houses for the students, but those would not be appropriate for touring. It is here that they tell you more about how Milton and Kitty Hershey - childless themselves - created a school, originally for orphan boys, to give them a start in life. Kitty is generally credited with the idea, but Milton was from a poor family where his father was often absent, so there were reasons for it to resonate with him.

There have been many changes, while keeping to similar values. Chores are still a part of daily life, but they no longer include milking cows, which was an important part of chores in the middle of dairy country back when the school was started.

The school used to focus more on trades than college preparation, then college became more standard, much as it did with society. Originally only white boys were accepted, but now boys and girls of all races are accepted. Also, they used to only take orphans. While the children accepted are from difficult circumstances, in many cases their parents are living. Circumstances have changed and the school has adapted.

There is more information on the school available, including a short documentary, Living the Legacy. That is fairly clear about the difficulties faced in what they are trying to do, but ultimately hopeful.

http://www.mhskids.org/

http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/hall_of_fame/milton_hershey

Hershey's Chocolate World - The Trolley Tour

When looking at optional experiences at Hershey's Chocolate World, one of your options is to head over to the Trolley Works. We selected the Chocolate and History Trolley:

http://www.hersheys.com/chocolateworld/Trolley-Works

This was our guide. He did three things for us. The first was letting us know about the area and its history.

We saw farmland (this was a big dairy area, because you need milk for milk chocolate).

We saw some glimpses of the factories and industrial sites.

And we saw historic homes. Milton Hershey was a big believer in community building, so that included facilitating comfortable homes for factory employees but also some very generous housing deals for his executives.

Hershey includes education and recreation. There was one stop that I am going to treat separately, but for now I still need to say two things about our guide.

He did not just give us history, but also jokes with the history. It may have been fairly corny humor - maybe better than the Disneyland Jungle Cruise, but somewhat similar - but it still contributed to the enjoyment of the tour and in no way subtracted from what we learned.

He also gave us candy.

There was so much candy. It all related. We got caramel when he was telling us about Hershey's early work there, and how he used milk in the caramel first. There were different kinds of kisses. There were Reese's Peanut Butter Cups when he told us how H.B. Reese was inspired and supported by Milton Hershey, and how his sons eventually sold the business to Hershey.

Then at the end, we each got a full-size chocolate bar.

I remember ages ago someone talking about how after you took the Hershey Factory tour they gave you a kiss, and that didn't seem like that big a deal. No, if you take the ride, you get a bigger candy than that, and you can do it for free, as many times as you want. If you take the trolley tour, you get lots of candy, including multiple kisses. I took a survey, and only I took it, but they gave all three of us full-size candy bars.

They do sell candy at Chocolate World, but they give out a lot of candy too.

How can you not like them?

Hershey's Chocolate World - Flavors of Fall Dessert Festival

While the "factory tour" (really called the chocolate tour) is free, there are lots of ways to spend your money at Hershey's Chocolate World. In addition to the retail space and the many tempting places to get food, there are also some paid activities to do. We ended up choosing two, one of which was The Flavors of Fall Dessert Festival. It was seasonal, so not on the web site, but once there it was an easy choice to make.

We were given a box with slots inside and a checklist on the outside. Each symbol on the box appeared somewhere else in Chocolate World, and we could go there and get a treat. This allowed us to see what treats were new for Fall 2015 - and was a really good price for the treats - but also it gives you a tour of Chocolate World. It's focused on what there is on the food side, but most of the stops were near other activities. For example, if I remember correctly, one stop was near the Build Your Own Candy Bar activity, and one was near the Photo Studio. You ended up covering most of Chocolate World as you filled up your box.

Portions were generally small, because at every stop you were seeing wonderful things that you might want more of. Employees were very friendly and helpful. Generally they really knew their stuff too, except for the ice cream guy. He was not sure which thing he was supposed to gives us (probably something with caramel) so he just said we could have whatever we wanted free. We were satisfied with this.

Other stops included a candy-corn style mini cupcake, an apple crisp mini-muffin, and a dipped pretzel rod. Something had made me think that we were going to be able to dip our pretzel rods ourselves, but they were already dipped. Maybe I was confusing it with the other stop.

There is a section that focuses on building your own. There is a lot of emphasis on s'mores, but you can also concoct hot cocoa with marshmallows, or decorate cupcakes, or our creative endeavor...

decorating a pumpkin cookie.

This was a nice chance to wind down a little and relax. It's upstairs from most of the traffic, so you can let your creative juices flow, and then eat a cookie.

I can't find a picture of the third cookie, which was completely covered in sprinkles, but we all had a nice time.

In a very real way, every single thing you can do at Chocolate World is for your sweet tooth, so saying this was satisfying for that... I mean, what wasn't? I maintain that this was a good choice.

http://www.hersheys.com/chocolateworld/explore