Rhett's Birthday Part 1: Hershey!

We left for Hershey on Friday afternoon as soon as Chuck got home from work. This being D.C., we hit a bit of traffic, but that's to be expected, yes, even at 3:00 p.m. We arrived, had dinner, and checked into the hotel, which was right on Chocolate Avenue. Rhett was soooo excited to see all the street lights that were shaped like Hershey kisses. Staying in the hotel was an interesting experience. Since we didn't have a suite, we shared a room with Rhett. Let's just say he had a bit of a hard time falling asleep while we were there, even with us hiding under the sheets! It was really entertaining and soon enough everyone was sleeping.

We got up early (of course) and were at Chocolate World as soon as it opened.


The first thing we did was take a ride (think slow tea-cups) to get the history of Hershey's. Rhett loved this. He's still talking about the singing cows. At the end of the ride, we got our first free chocolate of the day. We couldn't make him wait and dealt with chocolate fingers immediately. (We did this ride a second time right before we left, too. That's how much he enjoyed it.)


After doing some silly Hershey's kiss thing, we did the "design your own chocolate bar." That was fun. We got to choose a milk chocolate (Rhett's choice), dark chocolate, or white chocolate base (my choice). Next you got to choose your fillings (Rhett chose chocolate chips and chocolate cookie bits--surprise), and then you got to choose whether or not it had sprinkles.


Then you got to see it get made. Here are our bars coming down the assembly line.


And here they are going through the cooler.


While the bars were cooling, you got to design your wrapper. Most of it was from a pre-set bank of images, but Rhett picked everything for his bar, including the pink wrapping. When it was done Rhett was so excited, but we wanted to make him wait a bit before eating.


Of course they have a huge shopping area where you can buy everything they make. Most of it was the stuff you see in stores, so we didn't see the need to buy much. But I couldn't resist these long Twizzlers to bring to the Young Women.


When we could wait no longer, we sat down and gave Rhett two bites of his Rhett-designed bar. He loved it. If only I had this kind of bribe every time I pulled out the camera.


Our second-to-last stop was to see some funny 3D movie of Hershey characters. Seeing as this was not only Rhett's first 3D movie, but his first theater movie, it was interesting. He was just not sure about it at all. He was sure he didn't like the water raining on him; nor did he like the tremor-like shaking of the theater. We were all happy it was only 25 minutes long.


Because we had time, we continued on to Amish country when we were done with the factory. Rhett could NOT stop talking about seeing buggies (our fault, yes, but still). Thankfully we finally saw a couple and could feel good about going home. And now our boy has a new favorite sign. I think it's just a little too late to make it on his birthday shirt, sadly.


We had a great time, and were reminded of how much we like road trips, no matter the distance. If you're thinking about going to Hershey, it's definitely do-able in a day; we just happen to like staying in hotels. Next: birthday festivities!

I have to add that this morning, after opening one present and just sitting on the couch, Rhett said, "Well, happy birthday," in a kind-of deadpan voice. It was awesome.