Yesterday we were able to get a preview of the Crayola Experience in Easton, PA.  The girls have been to the Crayola Factory before and it was definitely fun, but then they closed to renovate and opened a whole new world of fun! It is still in the same location at Center Square (except now the store moved in with the Experience instead of being a couple doors down.) We were there for about 3 and a half hours – we had so much fun that time just flew by.  It was a lot of fun for the whole family, not just the kids!

The Crayola Experience opens to the public Friday May 24th and they are giving a box of crayons in a classic box with admission on opening weekend.  The price is $16 a person for admission and $29 a person for annual passes which is what we will probably be doing since I am sure we will be there a few times over the summer.  More information can be found here: Crayola Experience.  We are not affiliated and we do not make money on sales of tickets, this was our experience and our opinions.

Are you ready? Ok here we go on to the fun adventures we had with the crayons! First we went through the newly designed Crayola Store.  They had the same great stuff and more! Stuff you can only buy directly from Crayola.  One thing that was really cool (and this is new to the store) is that you can personalize a large crayon (I can’t remember the size exactly but will say around 2 feet long) and name it whatever you want.  After naming it and having the wrapper (with your name) put on, it will be in a box with a certificate of it’s birth and also it’s birth weight – how cool, right? I can’t remember how much this was in the store, but thought it was really neat!

name your own crayon in the Crayola Store

They have a cafe now instead of the McDonald’s that used to be there.  There is a selection of items to choose from, including pizza.  When you visit, you want to go inside the cafe (even if you are not hungry) because that is where they keep the world’s largest crayon – seriously it is huge! It used to be in the store and the girls always loved this crayon.  It was made from crayon ends that children donated and they were all melted down to make a huge crayon!

The world’s largest crayon

Some of the other cool things we did was to design our own crayon label on a regular sized crayon.  You can pick the design and then the name you want on it.  This is a part of the Experience and you get 3 tokens with each admission – this costs 1 token.  Then you get to wrap the crayon and keep it with your name of choice.

We moved on to take a picture with the crayons in the background (it became a coloring page to color in.)  There were so many things to do that I am trying to remember the order we did them in! We also went back in forth between the rooms to try things out again 🙂

My personal favorite activities in the Crayola Experience were the interactive ones.  I felt like a kid again with these! We did some coloring with a stylus on a mini computer screen.  You could pick between markers, crayons and spray paint.  After you got your picture done the way you liked, you put it on a big screen and you could interact with it.  It detected your movements and reacted to your movements.  This was awesome! You should have seen the girls running back and forth with their creation.  This was called Art Alive.

The 4 of us creating our art to bring it to life

My turtle I created on Crayola’s Art Alive

Her shark she created and was interacting with

We watched a really cool show that showed us how the crayons are made.  A fun lady was showing us along with red and blue crayons (they were helping with the show) how they make them in the machine and how they get packaged.  It was an entertaining and informative show! In another cool room we were able to make a marker – well we watched the machine make it so we know how markers are made.  We also got to keep each of the markers.

The Crayola Experience has a really cool indoor playground.  The playground had a super fast (and I mean super fast) slide! Oh the girls loved this room.  There were also activities set up around the room where the playground was – you could make a puzzle and even play with some paint.

The Water Works room taught us about how canals work and how boats get around in the canals, even when they need to go uphill.  Kids learn by taking crayon boats up through the canal and they learn how boats get up to a higher level in the canal by doing it with their boats.

Learning about canals

There are more fun things we did and more to do, but the last one that I want to share (have to save a little surprise for you) was my favorite! This was another interactive room too and it was called Doodle in the Dark.  There were crayons on a big screen that detected your movements and moved along with you, screens to doodle on with markers that looked like lights as you colored and a really cool game on the floor. The game on the floor detected your movements and you did things like pop bubbles and play air hockey.  I loved that room!

Meet the Crayola crayons! These crayons move with you

Here is what the girls had to say about our Crayola Experience adventures:

My older daughter-

I had a lot of fun when I made a puzzle.  It might not have turned out the way I expected because of my bubble letters that I made, but it was fun! I also had fun making what I drew come to life.  I made a tiger shark.  It was orange with black lightning bolts on it.

They also have a dance floor and it was fun.  It was called drawing in the dark.  I also liked the playground.  The slide was really fun! The best part is when I saw how they made the crayons.  We had a lot of fun!

My younger daughter –

I liked the doodle in the dark.  It was really cool to draw on the window like boards that made my pictures light up.  The dance floor was fun, it lights up different colors and games.  The playground was a lot of fun! There was a cool paint tower I climbed up in the playground, there was a bridge in there and the slide was like a tunnel.  It was really fast.  There was a rope bridge to walk on in playground.

I had a lot of fun at the Crayola Experience and want to come back again soon.

Our crazy hair style

In our schools they do some fun and silly things in the younger grades.  We have a pajama day, green eggs and ham day and so much more.  One of the fun days is crazy hair day.  As soon as the notice came home, she was already planning her hair all out, even tho it was about a week away from the day she got the notice.

So this is the hairstyle she wanted, only she wanted me to pull some strands through the middle of the buns (they looked better in the morning but we were running a little behind so I took the picture after school), but we didn’t have time as it is crazy getting the kids up some mornings.

But it looked cute the way it was, 2 buns in the front and then a braid in the back.  Crazy hair day was a fun day here! She loved her hair this way too.

Do you have crazy hair days? Well besides the “I’m cleaning and my hair is mess” kind of days – I can relate to those days 🙂