rivka | (no subject)

Entry tags:

outings,
travel

(no subject)

[Poll #1422136]

"The Factory Tour Capital of the World" is York, PA. Unfortunately Alex and Colin are too young to tour the Harley-Davidson plant, but we're thinking of touring the Wolfgang Candy Company, the dairy, and perhaps the Utz potato chip plant. I think it will be fun.

Is there something wrong with me?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I bought my nephew a tin of ThinkGeek Smartmass for his birthday, but I've been too busy playing with it to actually mail it off. So I'm perhaps not the person to ask, here.

Do they have an age limit on the Harley plant? Because otherwise, I think that would totally appeal to a kid. (Just thinking about how enthralled the boys are every time "How it's Made" comes on the Discovery Channel.)

ETA: And considering that most girl scout troops used to go on tours of the McDonald's kitchen, this is WAY cooler.

Edited 2009-06-28 02:49 (UTC)

Yes, you have to be 12 to tour the Harley plant.

My Girl Scout troop toured Dunkin' Donuts. So yeah. But I still remember my fourth grade class trip to a bakery.

I went to the Gardner's Bread Bakery with my Girl Scout Troop when I was eight or nine, and I still remember it. It was fascinating.

I got to tour the Legendary Dublin Dr Pepper bottling plant more than forty years ago with my Cub Scout den, long before Dublin Dr Pepper was cool. Today, I take my friends to tour the plant because it is cool, and interesting, and you can get Dublin Dr Pepper there.

Factories are so much fun! At any age! Especially anything to do with food products/candy. Hell, watching documentaries about candy factories is fun, never mind the factories themselves :-)

That sounds like pretty awesome fun for Alex, and what's more fun than watching your kid get some geek on? You'll probably get some free candy, there will very likely be a cow someplace in relation to the dairy and Alex will get excited and say highly bloggable things. What's not to love?

Let me know how the trip goes - we may have to make one of our own when Danger Lad! is a little older.

Yeah, it's geeky, but it's not like there's anything wrong with that...... :)

I consider geeky a feature....

Post pics!

Bloody hell. Geeky is a FEATURE, not a problem.

And visiting the Wolfgang Candy Factory will be wonderful. Heck, one of the great children's books, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is about that kind of tour.

They'll have a blast.

I'm sorry that they can't visit the Harley-Davidson plant...

Bloody hell. Geeky is a FEATURE, not a problem.

YES! To me, geeky means "passionate (about a not-mainstream subject)". And passionate is GOOD.

That sounds really fun, and I'd want to go to the glass factory and the violin maker (but would probably decide the violin maker would be too painstaking and slow for my kids to want to watch).

I wanna do the Violin factory! (Ok, I'll shut up my inner music geek).

I /loved/ York when I was a kid. (slightly older kid, I admit, but /still/.)

Also: No. Lots right, though!

When my school did a visit to the local steelworks, I was the one with my own cotton overalls and safety boots.

Not geeky, farming family. And cotton doesn't have holes melted in it by the sparks from arc-welding.

You can always do Harley Davidson another year, but it could be worth a call to see if they sell a video.

We were in York when Hannah was about three, but couldn't get it together to do the chocolate tour. Still definitely planning to do that.

Incidentally, the Herrs potato chip tour is about 15 minutes from my house, and they give you HOT potato chips right off the line.

Oh, I think you'll all love it! I took June up there when she was around Alex's age and we both had a great time; we did Snyder's, Utz and Revonah. I think Utz was self-guided - basically a long hallway with windows overlooking the factory floor and posted explanations of what was going on. That worked out well, since June and her friend wanted to stare at some things for a while and didn't really care about others, and could go back and forth between windows, etc. No worries about keeping up with the tour, and I think it's where we ended up spending most of our time.

Anyway, it's not geeky at all - it's super fun, and it's free, and it's something that isn't specific to one particular age range - what's not to like?

Is there something wrong with me?

Not at all!

I think human beings have an innate need to make things, and to learn how things are made. Factories are just fascinating places. One of the highlights of my current job has been that I've had the opportunity to do a few factory tours, and I always find them amazing. My favorite so far (which makes me a complete whacko, I'm sure) was Cargill Meat Solutions in Fort Morgan, CO, where cows go in one end and steaks come out the other. The Lockheed Martin plant where they build stealth bombers was also pretty cool!

Nothing wrong with enjoying factory tours! I had a great time recently touring the Worcester Bosch factory (which makes boilers; I was giving a presentation there.) I even found some synergy with some spiritual things I'd been pondering.

On our Great Northeast Tour, we went to the Ben and Jerry's factory. And planned our route from western Mass to Ottawa so we could do that. And we were disappointed that we couldn't go to the cheese factory tour while we were there.

So I think it's not geeky at all. It would be fun. I'm looking forward to Naomi being old enough to enjoy the tours, too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only