28. HERSHEY

Hershey, Pennsylvania

12/30/2009

After we had seen the lights, we drove a weary four hours to the town of Etters, Pennsylvania, so we could start early and already be where we needed to be. We stayed at a Super 8. As you know, we try to really save on sleep accommodations, but this one was pretty bad. The bed was very uncomfortable and the heat didn’t really work. The room was so drafty I felt like I had been camping, rather than staying in a motel. At the “continental breakfast” I encountered the first cup of coffee I couldn’t stomach – and I’ll drink anything! Also, I was aware that Super 8 and a bunch of other low-cost hotels and motels (or “the cheap ones” as my wife calls them) are part of one of those free reward programs. You know the kind, for every dollar you spend you get such-and-such points for a free night’s stay. You’re supposed to be able to enroll at the motel itself, but when I inquired the receptionist at the front desk handed me a pamphlet and said I should probably call some 1-800 number. Thanks for the help, lady.

Never mind that. We didn’t come all this way to stay in a cheap motel – we came for the chocolate! About a half hour from the illustrious Super 8 is Hershey, Pennsylvania, birthplace of the Hershey chocolate bar. We couldn’t help but smile at the streetlamps all shaped like Hershey’s kisses as we drove through the town on our way to Hershey’s Chocolate World.

Hershey’s Chocolate World is basically a giant store, frankly. But for some reason, there is something just really hypnotic about what seems like acres and acres of chocolate bars for as far as the eye can see. It’s free to enter, as is a trip on the “Hershey’s Chocolate Tour” – a really hyper ride where you sit in a little bumper car that moves you through a simulation of the chocolate making process. All the while giant cow puppets are singing “HERSHEY’S CHOCOLATE!!! HERSHEY’S CHOCOLATE!!! HERSHEY’S CHOCOLATE WORLD!!!” over and over again until the song is forever burned in your unconscious. What kind of drugs did they put in those Reese’s peanut butter cups when they built this thing? At first, Daniel didn’t know what to make of it (nor does the rest of mankind), but when he saw his mommy and I were smiling, he clearly perked up. It was the first time he had really smiled a good smile in a couple of days, so we were glad he was enjoying himself.

Just one more minor oddity about the “Chocolate Tour”: You can’t take strollers on the ride, which is fine and perfectly understandable. However, at the entrance they had a woman standing there who seemed utterly exasperated every time a stroller approached her. Since the ride is free, no tickets are required, and anyone can freely walk up the ramp where other employees help people into the cars, it was obvious this woman’s job was, in fact, to tell people about the stroller policy. That was why they had put her where she was in the first place. Now, I understand that after ten years of telling hundreds of people a day “No strollers” might make anyone a little bonkers, it was slightly off-putting.

It might sound like I’m making fun of Hershey’s Chocolate World, but I’m really not. Is it a bizarre place? Yes. But that’s what made it fun. I should mention that within the complex are some other rides and exhibits (like a chocolate tasting demonstration and some sort of 3-D show) but they all cost money, which we decided not to spend.

One last thing: in one corner of the place they have a little assembly line set up where kids can pretend to work in the Hershey factory. They have to move really fast and even clock in and out in a toy punch-clock. Man, this place is weird.