Crayola Factory

Today was the final day of our trip.  I'm sad to be going home, but also looking forward to sleeping in my own bed...and not sharing a room with the entire family.  It's been really great to spend so much time together though.  We've been hot, and tired, but we've had a lot of fun.  I feel like I've gotten to know my kids again.  Looking forward to the summer (I think).

This morning we woke up and had breakfast (did I mention I like free continental breakfasts?).  The kids headed to the pool with Dad while I showered and cleaned up the room.  Can't miss the opportunity to swim in every pool!  The elevator was out so we had to lug the luggage (I guess that's why they call it that) down the stairs to our van.  Took a few trips but we made it.  (Side note, I accidentally type elevatory first, before correcting it and it doesn't tell me that's a misspelling.  What's an elevatory?)

Once we were packed, we headed to the Crayola Factory.  Excited!  This town is a dump.  Seriously sketch.  Every other store is boarded up and it just looks like nothing good happens here.  We were still hopeful that the factory wouldn't disappoint.

After waiting a LONG time in the line-up to get it (seriously, open more than one till people - am I just getting crabby?) we were on our way.

It was basically a self-guided process where you could just do whatever the heck you wanted.  And sadly, in mine and Tyler's opinion it wasn't really worth it...but the kids loved it.  Mostly just tables and chairs set up in different rooms with crayola supplies on them.  First they got to use washable crayons to colour on this white-board car.

Then we used special markers that you write on black paper and the colours show through.  Not sure how to explain that better...not sure I care.

Then it was off to play with Crayola's version of play-doh.  Can't remember what it's called.  They gave us a handful of tokens at the beginning that we could use to 'purchase' supplies and the play-doh was just such a purchase.  The kids had fun at this station and we stayed there for a while.

Little Play-doh Logan:

Tyler jokingly made me a ring and I said "YES!".  "Wow, no hesitation this time."  "Nope, I can't say no to that ring."  He didn't like my joke.

The two older kids took turns going with Dad to paint with melted crayons.  It was a bit messy and hot (Max got burnt once) so we decided it was probably not a good idea for Logan.

Then it was side-walk chalk...which was a good idea in theory.  And Logan really loved it.  But it was messy.  Chalky bums.

They had walls set up where you could draw with a glow-in-the dark wand, but they didn't work very well.  And Tyler even found one that was shorting out.

Next, while Lucy danced it up, the boys played in a kid's zone.

Then Logan got his picture taken with Lightening McQueen.  They printed out a colouring page that had Lightening on it and him.  Pretty cool.  Max posed with Spiderman and Lucy posed with Cinderella.

Then they used watercolors to pain paper plates and put them through a dryer so we could take them home with us.

They got to do Color Wonder pages, and colour with markers on a wall.

We tried doing a "How it's made" demonstration on how crayons are made, but it was WAAAAAY boring, so we left.

In the middle of the factory, they had these water tables where you got to guide a boat and it's cargo through the locks.  Not sure what it had to do with Crayola at all.  But the kids liked it.

One of the best parts was the glow-in-the-dark markers.  We had fun there.  Partially because we hit it at the right time and it was quiet in there, and partially because it was just really cool.

Lastly, the kids got to make their own vests out of a paper bag.  Max's is a space suit, Logan is a cowboy and Lucy is a princess...I guess you could call her the paper bag princess.

We were exhausted by the end.  The kids used the rest of their tokens to get markers and crayons and we headed out for one last stop at McDonald's (seriously, 3 days in a row is SO gross) before we headed for home.

My overall thoughts on the Crayola Factory?  Skip it.  Not worth the money.  It cost us about $50 to get in and we could have used that money to actually buy our kids a butt-load of crayola products and recreated the same experience at home.  Plus the place was chaos and the town was sketch.

When we were looking at the Crayola webiste last night in preparation for our trip today we realized that there was an amusement park called Sesame Place a little ways outside of Philadelphia.  If we had gone a different way home we could have stopped there instead and had WAY more fun.  I guess that just means we need to plan another road trip!