Every traveling family knows the feeling: you wake up on vacation, look out the window, and see pouring rain. But instead of letting the weather wash out our fun on our recent trip to Hershey, PA, we put our backup plan into action. We always try to save a few indoor adventures specifically for moments like this to keep the fun going, and Hershey’s Chocolate World is the ultimate rainy-day savior.
If you’ve never been, Chocolate World is so much more than just a candy shop. It is a massive indoor hub of activities. Beyond the shopping, they offer the classic free chocolate tour ride, a fun 3D movie, a guided chocolate tasting experience, and access to trolley tours of the town.
On this particular rainy afternoon, we decided to tackle one of their most popular attractions: the Create Your Own Chocolate Bar experience.
How It Works
If you are picturing putting on an apron and getting your hands covered in melted chocolate, don’t worry—it’s completely mess-free. Instead of physically making the bar yourself, you are given a ticket to scan at various digital kiosks to build your perfect treat.
The customization process is a lot of fun:
The Base: You start by choosing your base shell: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, or white chocolate.
The Add-Ins: Next, you choose your fillings. Options range from cookie or toffee pieces to pretzels and various flavored candy chips.
The Topping: Finally, you decide whether you’d like to finish it all off with sprinkles.
Once your digital choices are locked in, you wait in line to hand your ticket to a worker. They scan it and let you actually pull the physical switch to start processing your bar!
From there, you get to walk alongside the conveyor belts and watch the factory machines work their magic. You watch the machine pick up your specific shell, fill it with your chosen add-ins, and enrobe the whole thing in a waterfall of liquid chocolate.
The One Catch (A Heads-Up for Dark and White Chocolate Lovers!)
There was one odd thing about the experience that we would change if we could. No matter which base shell you choose at the beginning (milk, dark, or white), every single bar is enrobed in milk chocolate at the end.
Max and I both chose the milk chocolate shells, while Lori went with the dark chocolate. When it came time for the taste test, we found that although there was a hint of dark chocolate flavor in Lori’s bar, the milk chocolate coating completely dominated the flavor profile. I can only imagine it would entirely take over a white chocolate shell as well. It’s a small detail, but definitely something to keep in mind when making your selections!
Designing the Packaging
While your custom candy bar heads off to the cooling tunnels, you move on to another kiosk to design your own custom label.
Hershey does a fantastic job with the presentation here. The finished candy bar is sealed in a box, which is then placed inside a really nice keepsake metal tin, and finally wrapped with the custom label you just designed.
Is It Worth It?
The experience is a little bit pricey on its own, but Hershey offers bundle packages with other Chocolate World experiences that can save you some money if you have the time to do more than one thing.
However, for the price you pay, the final product is incredibly substantial. This isn’t a standard checkout-aisle candy bar. It is exceptionally rich, heavy, and could easily be cut up into four or five generous servings to share.
Because everyone else had the same idea to escape the rain, the building was pretty crowded, so our total adventure took over an hour. On a lighter, sunnier day, I could easily see this taking as little as 30 minutes.
Overall, it was a fantastic way to save our rainy afternoon, and it’s a unique, interactive experience we would definitely do again!