A Made in America Roadtrip: The End

Days 4 and 5: Saturday 6/27/15 and Sunday 6/28/15

Time to start heading north. I actually slept until almost 7. I was pretty proud of myself. Everyone was moving pretty slow this morning, but we were up and out and in the car by 9. We considered stopping somewhere for breakfast, but there was nothing really on our way, so we ended up just munching on leftover half-eaten whoopie pies, and some granola bars and trail mix. It’s vacation!

It was raining, but traffic was minimal, so before we knew it, we were in Easton, PA. We easily found the Crayola Experience, and a few minutes later found a parking garage across the street. We walked over to Crayola, taking pictures along the way.

Once in Crayola, we found chaos. I know it was a Saturday, and it was raining, but it was kind of like the entire world had descended on Crayola. And with tile floor and a hard surface ceiling, there was nothing dampening the sound at all. Lines were long, so we passed our time in line waiting or tickets by, what else?, taking pictures.

The line moved faster than we expected and eventually we were buying our tickets. Important note, if you are a AAA member, you save $3 off an adult ticket with your AAA card. Every little bit helps.

Once we had our tickets, we had to get in a second line to go through bag check and actually enter. Because there were so many people, we had to walk through the store and back out into the entrance to join the line. It was pretty nuts.

After we’d gone through security, we decided to start at the top floor, to see if we could actually accomplish a couple of activities. Crayola is now 4 floors. The first floor is ticketing, a store, and a cafe. The 2nd-4th floors have LOTS of different activity things. (And FYI, a Crayola Experience just opened in Orlando. From the looks of it, they’ve put everything from the PA location into the Orlando location, in 2 floors. I’m hoping they’re very large floors.) The idea, as best as I could tell, was to show us a ton of different things that can be done with crayons.

So we hiked to the 4th floor. And we encountered a line, but it was short. And most of the noise seemed to be coming from the 2 story playground that started on the 3rd floor, so it was little more bearable.

Our first activity was drip art. While we waited in the short line, we were given 2 crayons. We had our choice of 2 colors. When it was our turn, we went to these machines that have a drawer underneath, and a shifter next to them. You stick a piece of round paper in the drawer, and then put one crayon in the machine. The paper starts spinning instantly and you use the shifter to change the speed of the spinning. You then repeat this process with the second crayon on the same paper (so pick colors that look good together!). The finished product was pretty cool.

From here, we moved on to Melt and Mold. Again, we waited in just a brief line. Here we were directed to choose one crayon color, and then we were directed to choose between 3 different shapes (dinosaur, ring, Crayola dude), to have our crayon melted and molded into. Kim and I both chose the Crayola dude. I’m not entirely sure what Kathy and Hannah chose. This was a 4 minute process, and all we actually had to do was load the crayon in the melter and close the door. The result was kind of cool.

After our new crayon figures had been created, it was on to Meltdown. This is an area where you paint with crayon wax. It’s harder than it looks, because the wax hardens very quickly. We had fun with it. 

Done with the 4th floor activities, we wove through the now LONG lines, and made our way down to the 3rd floor via a semi hidden staircase. This place needed a different name. Instead of being called the Crayola Experience, it should have been the Crayola Zoo. Seriously...don’t go on a rainy Saturday.

The third floor contained the playground, which was pure chaos. It also had more activities. We bypassed the watercolor painting, although we did stop to check out the really cool dryers they had (that looked a lot like those ovens they put the sandwiches through at Earl of Sandwich), to dry kids’ painting creations. Good thinking! We did make a stop at “Puzzle it”, where we made our own puzzles by drawing within a box and then putting the paper through a die-cut machine. That was kind of nifty. Then it was on to Doodle in the Dark, where they have a little dance video game thing where kids can move within a box and cause a virtual crayon to move. Hannah enjoyed that. They also had backlit doodle boards on the wall, which reminded me a lot of one I had as a kid that I can’t remember the name of. But it was a black board that you doodled on with fluorescent colored markers, and it was backlit. We all doodled a bit.

The last section of the third floor was Water Works, which we bypassed. I think it was essentially a giant water table that you float a boat down. The line was miles long, and Kim and I both work with special ed kids. We can play with sensory tables (water, rice, etc) whenever we want…

We got to the second floor just in time to go into the little “theater” for Crayon Factory, a show about how crayons are made. It incorporates video from the factory, some virtual crayons that the kids all loved (We definitely live in a digital world!), and a Crayola employee showing the process step by step. The entire show was roughly 15 minutes. It’s certainly nothing like a factory tour would be, but it was neat to see, and I learned something. At the end of the show, everyone got a free crayon. Yes...singular.

We exited into more chaos...err...Wrap it Up. This station requires one of the tokens that they give you when you buy your ticket. They give two tokens per person. They have multiple color crayon dispensers and you get to customize your own label. Then the machine spits out your label and your crayon, and you wrap the label on the crayon.

Once we’d all obtained our custom crayons, we moved on down the hall to Modeling Madness, where you obtain a packet of Model Magic from a vending machine with your remaining token, and then you can play with it. We all obtained our packets, and continued moving. I figure I can bring it in to work for my kids to play with…

By this point Kim and I were basically done. It was just TOO crowded. Most of the rest of the stations involved coloring or digitizing coloring pages. She and I wandered while Hannah and Kathy did a bit more, and we eventually ended up down in the store, stopping for pictures along the way.

 

It was amazing how peaceful the store was compared to the rest of the building, even though it opens into the entrance area. The store is filled with Crayola stuff plus souvenirs. I bought a few things to use at school that I hadn’t seen before.

Once we’d all finished shopping, we headed out. We discovered a line at the entrance, outside the building, and an employee standing there with a walkie talkie doing crowd control. Seems that Crayola had reached its official capacity, and they were holding everyone outside until some people left. I was not very surprised to see that.

Overall, Crayola was pretty cool, even as a group of adults. There was plenty to do. It’s not a place I’d have to go back to multiple times without kids, but going once was fun. That being said, do NOT go on a rainy Saturday!

We found the car and drove out of Easton, watching for places to eat along the way. Shortly after getting on I-78, we found a sign for Panera, so we stopped there for lunch. It wasn’t the most competent Panera staff that I’ve encountered, but 3 of the 4 of us were content with our lunch.

After lunch, we finished the drive to Connecticut. It rained, basically the whole way. We all came to love the Google Maps app on my phone. We used it for our GPS for the trip, and we were so happy with how it redirected us as the rain created more and more accidents. Once we reached Connecticut, we had to take a different route than we had intended, but it saved us over an hour according to Google Maps.

We dropped Hannah and Kathy off and visited with them for a few more minutes before heading back to Nick’s grandparents’ house. Kim and I were both completely exhausted, so there was no way we were finishing the drive to NH. We visited for a bit with them, and Nick’s grandfather made us all grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, which was perfect for a rainy night. After some more chatting, we crashed hard. I know I had no trouble sleeping that night.

The next morning was fairly lazy. Nick’s grandfather made pancakes for breakfast and we all just visited for quite awhile. Kim and I finally got on the road about 11:30. It was a surprisingly easy trip back to NH. The rain had passed through more quickly than originally forecast, so the worst we encountered was a bit of drizzle, which was significantly better than the weather we had driven through the day before. Traffic was also surprisingly not bad for a Sunday. Including stops for gas for the car, we made it home in just over 3 hours. 

All in all it was a great trip, and I'm very glad I went. Everything other than Chocolate World was a new experience for me, and it was all a lot of fun, and very interesting. Of course, now the road trip bug has actually worsened, so I'm trying to find more excuses for road trips!