A few weeks ago, I made the drive from Washington, D.C. to Hershey, Pennsylvania, to spend a weekend visiting the town's various chocolate-themed attractions, including Hershey's Chocolate World, HersheyPark, and the Hershey Story Museum. I had an unbelievably sweet time and am ready to relive my Hershey experience.

The Hotel Hershey

On Friday afternoon, I checked into the Hotel Hershey, the town’s signature hotel, built by Milton Hershey in 1933 as part of a massive town-wide building program to help keep residents employed during the throes of the Great Depression. The hotel is lovely; it’s a five-star resort nestled among 300 acres of manicured gardens, reflecting pools, and fountains. I stayed in a villa room, which is part of a collection of smaller house-like buildings set back from the main hotel building.

The hotel itself is designed in the Mediterranean style, reflecting Milton Hershey’s love of travel and evoking the he and his wife Catherine’s trips to Italy. The most stunning feature is the main lobby, also built in the 1930s, that is designed to transport you to a Mediterranean courtyard, complete with a fountain, balconies, and a roof that mimics the sky.

The hotel features superb dining. I had the opportunity to dine at both Trevi 5, an Italian restaurant, and Harvest, which serves contemporary American fare. Both are relatively laid back in terms of “stuffiness” while still feeling upscale. The food at both is excellent, although I preferred Trevi 5’s appetizers and main courses (I had calamari and a pepperoni pizza) to the appetizer I ate at Harvest (the loaded chips), but Harvest’s S’mores cheesecake was divine!

Hershey’s Chocolate World

For most visitors to Hershey, the real fun starts when you arrive at the main entertainment complex, which sports two major attractions: Hershey’s Chocolate World and HersheyPark. Hershey’s Chocolate World is best described to this audience as if classic EPCOT had a Future World pavilion dedicated to chocolate. It’s amazing, and the experiences you’ll find there would be right at home in EPCOT or any other top-tier theme park like Disney or Universal.

The signature attraction is the free HERSHEY’S Chocolate Tour, a dark ride that takes guests ‘into the factory’ to discover how Hershey makes, as the ride puts it, the great American chocolate bar. The ride is surprisingly well done and (once again) reminds me a lot of an old-school EPCOT ride with some modern technology mixed in.

Riders begin their journey on a Pennsylvania dairy farm, where singing cows welcome them as they make their way to the factory. From there, they follow the chocolate-making process from bean delivery to shipping the finished product all over the world. One of my favorite elements of the ride is how they show you the inside of the various chocolate-making machines. They use projection mapping to simulate having x-ray vision, allowing you to see the chocolate being made inside.

Next, I partook in the Create Your Own Candy Bar attraction, which takes what you saw during your chocolate tour and makes it real. First, you don an apron and a hairnet and travel through various stations, eventually selecting the composition of your custom Hershey’s bar. You can choose the type of chocolate (milk, special dark, or white) and then fill it with various rotating mix-ins (like pretzels, butterscotch chips, and other things of that nature).

Next, you design your own wrapper and then watch your bar travel down the assembly line, eventually reaching the looooong cooling tunnel. When your bar emerges, it’s wrapped by machine and handed to you by an attendant.

Chocolate World also features a collection of paid immersive attractions, which were the true highlights of my visit. HERSHEY’S Great Candy Expedition is an immersive, interactive movie that takes guests aboard a train to visit the places where Hershey candies are made, such as Reese’s Ridge, Jolly Rancher Junction, Kit Kat Timbers, among others. And what’s more, you get to pick the destinations.

I was pleasantly surprised by the entire experience, from the train station-themed pre-show room to the theater with its wrap-around screen that fully envelopes your vision. The show occupies the space that previously housed Chocolate World’s various 3D movies; however, this film is not 3D, and it’s better for it. As guests exit the theater, they’re handed a small branded bag filled with candies fresh off the train from the various possible destinations.

The other major immersive attraction I experienced was HERSHEY’s Unwrapped, an immersive chocolate tasting experience where you become a student at Hershey’s amazing chocolate university. I won’t say much about the experience at risk of spoiling the big surprise, but suffice it to say that this is no ordinary candy sampling class. The attraction won an IAAPA Brass Ring Award for excellence in 201 (IAAPA is the global industry organizing organization for theme parks, amusement parks, zoos, and museums around the world).

You can easily spend a day at Chocolate World and will likely want to at least spend 4 or so hours there, riding the Chocolate Tour, doing a few of the paid experiences, perusing the gift shop and the Hershey’s Largest Candy Store, and enjoying some of the special sweet treats made in-house.

HersheyPark

Next door to Hershey’s Chocolate World is HersheyPark, the only amusement park dedicated to chocolate! For most people coming into town, this is the main attraction and will likely take you a day or a day and a half to do everything you want to do, although you can trim some time off your visit if you purchase the FastTrack pass (similar to Universal’s Express Pass or Disney’s new Lightning Lane Premier Pass).

The park features one of the best lineups of coasters in the country, and they can be intense. The highlights in terms of coasters for me are Candymonium, located in the relatively new entrance area of the park called Chocolate Town.

Candymonium is the taller, fastest, and tallest coaster in the park, climbing up to 210 feet before plunging riders down into seven camelback hills, all reaching speeds of 76 miles per hour. It’s a great ride! As the name suggests, the coaster is themed to Hershey candy, and each coaster train is themed to a different iconic Hershey candy, such as Reese’s, Kisses, or the iconic Hershey Bar.

My other favorite coaster in the park is also the park’s newest, Wildcat’s Revenge, which is an RMC hybrid coaster that builds on the legacy of its predecessor, Wildcat, which was a traditional wooden coaster that was a Hershey classic. The most thrilling moment of the ride, for me anyway, is the 82-degree drop (not the four inversions).

I went into the coaster having recently ridden another RMC coaster, Iron Gwazi, at Busch Gardens Tampa, on which I got banged up to the point where  I didn’t enjoy the ride as much as I wanted (maybe running on zero hours of sleep didn’t help), so I was expecting to be in pain after riding Wildcat’s Revenge. I was pleasantly surprised at how balanced this coaster was. It was intense, but not so intense that I couldn’t enjoy it (and hop back on for a re-ride or two).

Other favorite coasters include Laff Trakk, a funhouse-themed indoor spinning coaster, and Skyrush, which got some nice ‘quality of life’ improvements this past summer, as the gamers would say.

However, as much as I love the coasters, I was in the park for one main reason: Dark Nights. Dark Nights is HersheyPark’s take on a Universal Halloween Horror Nights-style haunt event, and it punches way above its weight for a regional park, featuring three scare zones and five haunted houses.

The Haunted Houses are unbelievable and exceeded my expectations; they aren’t quite on the scale or budget of Universal’s reported $1 million-a-piece houses, but they are very, very close and they have some design elements that Universal wouldn’t dream of implementing that elevate the experience, particularly in the Haunted Coal Mine: The Curse of the Tommyknockers house.

This particular house riffs on Pennsylvania’s history as a coal mining state, with the premise being that HersheyPark staff uncovered an unmapped entrance to the town’s old abandoned coal mine, which, as you’ll find out, is inhabited by tommyknockers (a creature of legend amongst real-life coal miners that were said to be 2-foot tall tricksters who would steal tools or turn off the lights) who, in this mine, are out to get you and protect their treasure. However, to get to this mine, guests need to take a simulated elevator ride deep under the ground, in which the door you entered suddenly takes you into a different direction as you exit, deeper into the mine. I won’t spoil much more because I’m sure this house will return next year, but suffice it to say, my jaw was on the floor.

The scare zones were light on the actual scares (most likely because the park simultaneously hosts an event for smaller children called HersheyPark Halloween that focuses on trick-or-treating) but are incredibly atmospheric, creating the right kind of spooky vibe that bridges the gap between the attractions for little kids and the thrills and chills for the older guests.

Finally, I dined at the park’s signature restaurant, The Chocolatier, which is truly a great time! You don’t even need a park ticket to dine there, and it’s open year-round, even on days the park is closed (alongside Milton’s Ice Cream Parlor and The Sweeterie Confectionery Kitchen, which are both amazing). Aside from the desserts, which are over the top but heavy on milkshakes, is the Ferris Wheel Sampler, which includes Hershey's Chocolate Barbecue Chicken Wings, Crispy Mozzarella, Classic Chicken Tenders, Cheesy Corn Dip, Soft Pretzel Dippers, all served riding on a giant Ferris Wheel that is brought to your table. It’s so much fun and is more than enough for a meal (at least for my party of one).

The Hershey Story Museum and Hershey Gardens

On my last day in town, I visited the Hershey Story Museum and the Hershey Gardens. The Hershey Story Museum might have been the highlight of my entire weekend, considering I had never set foot in the museum or even been to downtown Hershey during my prior visits.

The museum is very well done and integrates a number of fun interactive elements in addition to copious amounts of media and even working vintage factory equipment (such as a machine that demonstrated how early Hershey Kisses were made).

The exhibit space is split between Milton Hershey’s life and philanthropic work, the history of the Hershey Chocolate Company, and the town he created. As someone whose knowledge of Hershey and its founder extended little beyond the marketing blurb and the bits and pieces I’ve picked up over the years from my father who grew up in Hershey, I found the museum fascinating, especially the timeline that included various discounted products. Did you know Hershey made branded gum? I didn’t.

The museum also features a chocolate tasting experience where visitors are given small glasses of sipping chocolates from around the world, split evenly between dark and milk chocolates, with the grand finale being the iconic Hershey’s milk chocolate, of course. Frankly, as someone who likes his chocolate sweet, it made me appreciate the taste of Hershey’s milk chocolate more, especially after learning about the effort and experimentation that went into creating the formula for a milk chocolate that not only tasted good but was affordable for the average person.

They also offer a chocolate lab experience, but unfortunately I had to hurry over to the Hershey Gardens before heading out of town, so I didn’t get to partake in that experience, although based on the rest of the museum, I’m sure it’s worthwhile.

The Hershey Gardens are nestled next to the Hotel Hershey and are massive. As someone who has never been to a botanical garden before, I don’t know how useful my thoughts will be. For me, the highlight was the butterfly atrium, an indoor garden where visitors can frolic amongst the butterflies. This appears to be the main draw of the garden for most visitors as the bulk of the merchandise in the obligatory gift shop was butterfly-related.

Heading outside, visitors can meander through what felt like dozens of themed gardens dedicated to roses, herbs, the nation of Japan, giant sequoias, and more. It was very pleasant and quite tranquil, and I could easily imagine spending more time here on a pleasant spring day. Doubly so if admission was included for the entire duration of a hotel stay at the Hotel Hershey.

The Sweetest Place on Earth

My weekend in Hershey has come and gone, and I’m actually late in publishing this article, but only because I’ve been busy planning my next visit to Hershey for December to partake in Christmas Candylane! I’m looking forward to partaking in all of the festive fun across town!

I think my quick return speaks for itself in terms of a recommendation!

Thanks to the folks at The Hershey Company, Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Company, and The Hershey Foundation for hosting and facilitating my trip, this article, and accompanying social media coverage.