SundayWe were planning on going up to Vanderbilt/Roosevelt Mansion, but they're only viewable in tours and by the time we got ready in the morning, we realized we weren't going to make the tour times that would get us home at the time we needed to be home by. So, in a spur of the moment decision, my wife was like, "let's go to the Crayola Factory!" And off we went.
I had been there as a kid and, more recently, about 2 years ago with some family, but I knew it could be fun even with just 2 adults going, especially knowing my wife's interests. It was only an hour and 20 minutes from the city, so it was even closer than going up to the mansions. We got there without trouble, found parking a block away and entered the "Crayola Experience" (at some point they took "factory" out of the name).
Entrance was $17.99 for adults and a couple bucks cheaper for kids. They had a coat room at the entrance, and I noticed that people just hung up their coats and left, so I asked the staff if there was a guard at the coatroom or anything and they basically said, "This is Easton, PA. Sure there are guards that walk around the premises, but no one steals anything from the coatroom." lol I took my phone and wallet out of my coat and then we hung them up.
We began the self-guided tour by visiting the crayon-making station. Basically, you get a few tokens that you put into a machine that spits out a crayon and a label. You can personalize the label with your name or whatever and then you roll the sticker onto the crayon. We then visted a tech area where you draw on a tablet and then what you draw gets displayed via projector onto the walls. We then went into the next room where there was a station for just random crayon doodling and then a place that takes a picture of you with a Crayola background and it plays with the image so that you look a bit fuzzy/cartoony. It prints it out in B&W and then you draw on it with crayons. You could then pay to have the image printed onto a tshirt/mug/etc. We opted just to keep the printout. After that, it was time for a live crayon-making show. It was the closest aspect of the day to being an actual factory, yet it was still just a cute and show on how they make crayons. Fun to watch.
The next floor/station had make-your-own-marker machines. These machines also required a token and basically you just hit go and then watch it take an empty ink cartridge, fill it with the color ink that you choose and then see the cartridge slide into the marker tube and get capped and pop out for you to keep. We skipped the next station where, for a few bucks, you get playdoh and can build stuff.
On the next floor, there is a cute little water canal where you can play with toys in the water and watch them go downstream, we skipped that one too. In the next room they had 2-story jungle gym that we skipped and then a station where you could draw on a paper and place your drawing into a puzzle-cutting machine. Cute idea, but the cutter was terrible, and I had to recut the pieces with a scissor at home.
On the final floor, you get a crayon and place it into a machine that melts it into a mold and it forms a few different shapes. Would have been cool, but every time we tried it, the machine did a very bad job and our creations didn't come out too well. There was also a station for taking melted crayon and sprinkling it onto paper to make cool designs as well as machines that would melt a crayon and then spin the melted colors onto a paper to create cool designs.
The gift shop was nice and surprisingly had a lot of cheaper ($10 and under) items. I picked up a bunch of Chanukah presents there for kid relatives.
We had a really nice and fun time! It definitely is a great place if you have a young kid, but even as adults it was fun - especially if you or your wife have a kid side to them!
Awesome Thanksgiving Weekend and, once again, we didn't have to fly anywhere to have some fun!