Today we visited the Crayola Experience at the Florida Mall. It impressed me more than I thought it would!
On the way in you are given a plastic bag with two tokens inside. The tokens are for two of the activities. The first is Wrap it up, where you can design your own crayon! You put your token in the machine which is the colour you want and follow the on screen instructions to choose a shape and what will be written on your crayon. When you are happy with your design you press print. A crayon and a sticker come out of the machine. You take these to a special machine that wraps the sticker round the crayon. If you want to design more crayons then you can purchase more tokens. Its $1 for two tokens.
The other token can be used at the modeling madness station. The token will get you a small packet of dough. It is a bit like play dough but lighter and less sticky. You can use the equipment to make yourself a small model and this will air dry within a few hours. Again if you want more than one colour of dough, you can purchase more tokens.
The next activity we took part in was starring in our own colouring pages. You choose a background, pose for a picture and then print it out to take away and colour which is really fun.
The kids also liked making their pictures come to life on the big wall at Art alive. First they coloured them in on the screens, choosing special effects etc and then sent their designs to the big screen to watch them bouncing around.
The next activity we tried was drip art. We got to choose two coloured crayons each and were shown how to put them in the special machine which melted them onto spinning paper. We could change the speed of the spinning which changed the final design that we got to keep.
We moved on to making shapes out of melted crayons at Melt and Mold. This time we chose one colour each. We were given the choice between making a shark, a ring, a seahorse or a car. We were shown where to put the crayons and wait for them to melt into the moulds before being dried so we could pop them into our plastic bags to take home.
Next there were two interactive activities we enjoyed. One was a kaleidoscope which took a video of you that you could email yourself. The second was a wall of raining wax called rainbow rain. If you stood in front of it, your picture appeared on the wall and the wax fell around you.
We then watched a show in the cafe. There are shows running throughout the day here and in the theatre near the entrance.
After the show finished we made shields in the activity studio by painting, cutting and sticking and then headed over to more activities.
The next activity called Rockin’ paper was really fun! We coloured in bugs and butterflies and pressed out the shapes to take to the lady who stuck them together for us. She then added clips to their feet and put them on a special stage. The bugs danced to the music and it was really good. Here is a video to show what I mean:
After the dancing bugs we moved to the room next door and designed our own cars and outfits on special colouring sheets. We then scanned them in the machine and watched them come to life on the wall!
The next activity, colour magic, was to colour a picture and then use crayola magic to bring it to life on a screen. We then took selfies with our creation and were able to send it to our email address to keep.
Then we went into the Adventure Lab. This was actually really fun for older children. We were given an ipad which directed us to three interactive challenges which were puzzles to solve. I personally failed two and solved one! There were a lot more challenges so you could go back and do more.
The kids then had a play in the Color Playground, a Crayola themed soft play area. There was also a fun looking Toddler Town soft play area for younger children.
There are a few extra activities that you can pay for such as sand art and making a wax model of your hand but there is so much else to do that’s included with the price of entry.
Our visit to the Crayola Experience took longer than we thought it would, there was so much to do. The attraction is unusual and a welcome change to the theme parks. We all had a really great time.
We were guests of the Crayola Experience for this adventure but all opinions are our own.
Taking an autistic child to the Crayola Experience?
The Crayola Experience actually do special sessions for children with autism, information about these can be found on their website.
We visited in the afternoon on a Monday and it wasn’t crowded. We didn’t have to queue for any activity and because the room is so big it didn’t feel like there were many people there.
Background music was minimal.
Staff are on hand to help you with the activities.
The shows are avoidable if you don’t want to see them and there is still lots to do without them.
There are toilets, food and drink available.
We loved it here.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you would like to read more then feel free to follow my blog or like my Facebook page which I keep up to date with new posts as they are written. You can also find me on Twitter @KidsOnTour1.
Wow. This sounds amazing. Such fun!
It really was, we all loved it 😀