Hershey Gardens Entrance
This has been one of the busiest summers I’ve had in a long time and as I reviewed this website I realized I’ve posted NO (that is zero!) trip reports this summer. Shame on me. I’ve actually made 17 visits to Hersheypark and Dutch Wonderland since the parks opened Memorial Day and I’ve taken tons of photos, but I just never had the time to put the reports together. I’ve actually begun loading my zillions of photos to Flikr and they are all public so you can browse through them at your leisure. I’ll be putting a post up about that in the near future and link back to it here.
But today I’m talking about our most recent trip to Hershey Gardens and (thanks to Dear Hubby bribing the kids, Chocolate World.)
Earlier this year Hershey Gardens sponsored a name the frog contest to name their new education mascot. I submitted an idea near St Patty’s day, Phineas O’Flannigan, in honor of the holiday. To my surprise I won the contest and four tickets to the gardens. This was a great thing since this year my family did not get season passes to any parks or gardens and entry fees for the four of us are pricey. My five year old daughter Alyn Rose is a butterfly nut so we decided to make the trip late in the summer to see some great flying action in the Butterfly House. We left early on Saturday, August 24th and arrived around 10.
Parking is half grass, half pavement
Every time we visit I am still amazed at the parking in this attraction. It’s just weird. It works OK, but some folks have an issue with parking on grass… Just be aware there are compact car parking spots and that the paths to park on are a little confusing. Take it slow and you’ll do fine – plus much of the parking this time of year is shaded – hooray!
There were some new things at the park since our visit at Halloween last year, most noticeable to use was the addition of the Garden Gate café before you enter the park. This is a wonderful addition since you are unable to take food into the park with you and the closest vittles are at the Hotel Hershey (talk about pricey) or down on Hersheypark Drive (a complete mad house.)
Garden Gate Cafe
We packed a lunch but ended up getting a little something at the Café. It doesn’t appear to be run by the Hershey Entertainment Company directly, so you have some unusual offerings and beverages from Swiss Premium instead of Turkey Hill. This year you can also search for Phil the Frog… we HAD to do that. (We did find him…)
Back to the gardens. We used 3 of our 4 tickets and my Hersheypark Gold Explorer Pass to get in. We got one of their new maps – nice, heavy maps – and used the restroom inside the entrance. (A note, if you ever want to leave the gardens and come back you will need your ticket stub. They do not do hand stamps so save those stubs.)
Rare moment of stillness at the Gazebo
Our kids went straight for the Seasonal Display and Rose Garden and we milled around in there for awhile petting bumble bees and smelling flowers. Then we went to the “giant kisses” which are at the entrance to the Butterfly House. I have yet to figure out how these work be it a timer or a motion sensor, if anyone knows please leave a comment – I’d like to surprise my kids sometime when their face is right over the top of the kiss. (Bad Mommy… hee-hee.)
How does it work? I’d like to know….
There is a new caterpillar colored on the cement in this area but I forgot to take his picture. So many tiny things to see in the Children’s Garden, it is a must do for any family who spends time outdoors.
Butterfly Diner
A few weeks ago our family participated in a Butterfly Safari at Little Buffalo State Park and my daughter learned how to safely pick up butterflies to examine them. We had to explain to her they don’t like you to do that in the Butterfly House. We got our ID cards and spent a goodly amount of time observing and photographing the butterflies. A few landed on us which is always neat. Alyn Rose’s hat was red with daisies and seemed to be a big hit with certain of the butterflies.
Butterfly Landing
If you are a family with children in strollers, please be aware you can’t take strollers inside because they can crush butterflies that land on the ground. There is a parking area for strollers outside the building. They do allow wheelchairs though so the area is handicapped accessible.
Trim the Sails! (Or so Sterling said.)
Sterling got bored with the butterflies so we left (after checking for hitchhikers) and went to the noisy section of the Children’s Garden where there are so many neat ways for kids to play. Musical instruments, a ship to climb on, a pretzel maze etc. All wonderful teaching tools for parents to enjoy too. I personally love the human sundial which tells the time.
It’s a Pretzel Maze… gluten free even!
We used the bathrooms in the teaching facility and then grabbed a drink at the vending machines on the patio below. $2 for a Pepsi product – warning, this machine only takes $1 bills. Fortunately we had enough. The machines up by the gift shop take $1′s and $5′s.
On to find the hidden table my kids found last year near the Japanese Garden. This is modeled after a book (which I can’t remember at the moment) and my son found it right away. Last year I believe the area was still being built since I didn’t remember the bridge being there but maybe it is just my bad memory. Our kids and a bunch of other kids loved this area. It is dark and secretive… very cool.
Next up we visited the Japanese garden and enjoyed the fish in the pond and the rushing stream. I have lived by water all my life so Japanese Gardens have always been a favorite of mine.
Here fishy fishy
While in this area we found Phil! We crawled up to get our picture taken with him (probably shouldn’t have….)
Thanks for the tickets Phil!
It was about this time I found out that Hubby had promised the kids a trip to Chocolate World if they were good. I thought he was insane, a Saturday afternoon in August? But, oh well, you only live once.
A bee, a bee, there goes a bee!
Then we toured the rest of the gardens and finished up in the Seasonal Display Gardens where the gazebo is and all of the Catching the Wind exhibit “windpins” as Alyn Rose calls them were displayed. This year throughout the Gardens you will find wind chimes, pinwheels and other wind celebrating displays. We enjoyed them quite a bit.
Bamboo Windchimes
We made another bathroom and hand washing stop since we were going to eat our lunch next but we went through the gift shop first. Boy do they have some nice things here – definitely gift giving ideas for our kids for Christmas. Winner of the most unusual souvenir has to go to the flower pot coffee cup. Heavy like a real pot, it is just the thing for a gardener friend.
Best Souvenir Award!
So…. I went back to the van to get our cooler and hubby and the kids grabbed a picnic table. They were set up with table clothes and mason jars full of flowers, very pretty. Many of the tables are reserved for customers of the Café, but a few were not marked as such. We looked over the Café menu and chose the Fruit and Cheese offering. Gluten free and tasty it was a wonderful addition to our lunch and the price was right at $5.95. Ours included strawberries, grapes, brie, Swiss, muenster and a mild cheddar type of cheese. There might have been other fruit in there but the kids gobbled it up so fast I missed it. You can see the full menu as it was when we visited below. Many people were eating and I heard no complaints while we were there. The Café menu is online along with dates/hours of operation (which are very limited) at the Hershey Gardens website here.
Garden Gate Café Menu
We finished with lunch and were packing up when the Hotel Shuttle showed up. Hooray! What luck! Hubby quickly stowed the cooler in the van and I boarded the shuttle with the kids after making sure we could go to Chocolate World and come back to the Gardens. The driver was super nice and said sure thing. I have to admit I never use the shuttle system because I always thought it was reserved for hotel, motel and campground guests but he assured me we were perfectly entitled to use it so in the future I will be using it more.
There are no pictures from this point on since I knew I couldn’t handle a camera and a preschooler in the Chocolate World crowds. As we got closer to the park we were so glad we took the shuttle. Traffic into the park was awful, they were parking folks in front of Giant Center and using Tram Stop 3 to get them to the park. It was nice knowing we didn’t have to fight all that for our 15 min tour and bite of chocolate.
Hubby now understood my apprehension when we entered Chocolate World and the line to the new women’s restroom was out the door and the line for the Chocolate Factory ride was down nearly to the entrance. Yup, 2pm on a Saturday in August, not a great time to visit if you don’t like crowds. But the tour line moved fast, and an unusual thing on this trip was the right line was moving much faster than the left. I always tell people to go to the left but this time I didn’t listen to myself.
Every time I ride the tour ride I see something new. This time though we spent our time laughing at Sterling who stood up and danced every time the cows sang. Not safe, I know, but he was in the middle of all of us and it was just adorable. They have finally removed the turnstiles to this ride exit which were such a pain and even though our ride photo was OK we didn’t get it. We’ll get one later without another family in it. 4 mini-Hershey bars later (those things are just the right size…) and we were down on the floor shopping for Kisses. Hubby snuck me a pack of Bubble Yum original which is my favorite. We refilled our soda bottle from the Gardens with water and we were off to wait for our shuttle. It did take 15 minutes for it to get there and we watched two Lodge and one Campground shuttle come and go during that time, but eventually we got our ride.
A short air conditioned ride back to the gardens with the same nice driver and we were packed up and ready to head home. All in all it was a great trip that lasted 5 hours with kids aged 3 and 5. Minimal meltdowns, a total expense to us of less that $25 (which includes $15 for candy at Chocolate World) and a fun time for everyone, even on a Saturday in August.