The Hershey Story Museum is located in Hershey Pennsylvania and focuses on Milton S. Hershey (the creator of Hershey’s Chocolate Candy), his life, the company and the products that were made over the years.
If you’ve never visited the museum before, it’s located in downtown Hershey (the sweetest place one earth) and right on the main drag through the city (on Chocolate Avenue). You’ll see plenty of signage and parking is available around back.
You do have to pay an admission fee to enter the museum but we found it to be very reasonable. Once inside, you’ll be in the lobby which has a really nice gift shop where you can pick up some souvenirs and/or Hershey’s candy. After your done exploring the bottom floor, you’ll want to head up the staircase, so that you can explore the museum (elevator also available).
On a recent visit to the museum we took our little grand daughter along with us. This was her first visit there and she absolutely LOVED it.
They have all kinds of things for kids to do: pack fake chocolate bars into crates, measuring chocolate bars, pushing carts in a pretend factory, dressing up in factory worker clothes, mini videos for them to watch and all sorts of other things! You’ll find most of the children’s interactive activities downstairs on the first floor, right off of the lobby area.
Upstairs you’ll learn about Milton S. Hershey and how Hershey’s Chocolate came to be. You’ll learn about his family history, his childhood and follow him into adulthood. It’s very interesting how this man (genius if you ask me) started all of this and how it grew to be one of the largest companies in the world.
One of the things my hubby loved looking at was all of the vintage advertising, signage, old containers, packaging, etc. He’s into “old things” so he really enjoyed this part of the experience.
It took us about 3 total hours to thoroughly explore everything that the museum had to offer and trust me, we really took our time since we had a 6 year old along with us. I’m sure you could do the entire self-guided tour within 2 hours if you had no children along with you.
Once we were done we headed back down to the gift shop and I picked up several bags of candy and the Princess got a souvenir. Once we left the museum…we headed over to Cafe Zooka on the other side of the building and grabbed a quick lunch.
Overall, we had a really nice time and in a few years…we will be taking the Princess back for another visit. The Hershey Story Museum is a great family-friendly and educational activity to do when you’re visiting the Hershey Pennsylvania area.
This sounds like a great museum to visit , with or without children. I know that I would love to someday visit this entire area because you have reported on so many different things to do there.
(The Hershey Story Museum) This place sounds like a very interesting day and visit, maybe somedat I will make it out that way and stop in to see it all. I love chocolate!
well, this would be my dream museum, lol! I love a good Hershey Bar!
I would love to go there. I read that you can buy cocoa bean hulls for your garden there too.
What a beautiful museum. I would so love to visit this with the whole family. I think this would be so neat and magical to visit as a child. I would do some serious shopping at that gift store.