School on a Bus (a.k.a. Radical Sabbatical)

Sarah: We were eager to get to Hershey, Pennsylvania, for reasons that should be obvious from its name. Driving down main street, called ‘Chocolate Street’, Mom and I couldn’t detect the chocolate smell the locals say is in the air. We found a place to park Big Bessie and took the Green Toad to follow the signs to Chocolate World. An amusement park was built by Chocolate World, with a roller coaster ride that looked like it would bring a certain, quick death to all brave, foolish people that ventured forth to ride it.

There wasn’t much we could do that wouldn’t cost money, but the tour was free so we took it. We read a short history on Mr. Hershey, then watched a short film on growing cocoa beans. Rounding a corner, we came out on a platform with a striped, round platform that spun around it. Guided by employees who nonchalantly walked about on this spinning… thing, we got into the middle car of a 3 black cars that appeared from a tunnel, disappearing into another tunnel.

A friendly, dramatic voice from a speaker in our car lead us on the tour, and every so often we came upon three cows singing “Hershey’s Milk Chocolate! Hershey’s Milk Chocolate!” There was other words to that obnoxious song the mechanical robots covered with black and white fake fur sang, but that’s all I remember. They showed the cocoa beans being cleaned, mixed into a sauce, adding the milk (thus the cows), and the final product. A sweet chocolate smell lingered around us, and as we stepped off the spinning platform at the end, 2 small Hershey Kisses handed to us by an employee did not satisfy our deep chocolate craving that had developed. So we toured the large gift shop, ending up buying 4 bags of various types of Hershey Kisses. My favorite is Confetti, although some would say Neopolitan. Mom’s favorite, of course, is the chocolate fudge. We left Chocolate World with our chocolate craving satisfied. Mostly.

Kevin: Today we went to Hershey’s Chocolate world. Quite a nice name huh? It was amazing, at first it was just talking about the founder and the cocoa beans, but suddenly it changed into a carnival ride. There was the whole process, which I can’t remember, and three singing cow sisters. It was almost what I would have thought of Disneyland as. Afterwards, we went and got four bags of Hershey kisses in the gift shop. It was GREAT!