Crayola Experience Orlando

Written By: Gail Clifford | Published By: Weekend Notes | February 14, 2023

https://www.weekendnotes.com/crayola-experience-orlando/

If you have littles who love to color or older children whose creativity loves the explosion of color, the Crayola Experience at the Florida Mall in Orlando, Florida needs to be on your to do list whilst visiting Orlando. The strange thing is, if you don’t go looking for it, you may never even realize this wonderful resource is available.

Many people walk into the Florida Mall, me a dozen times to visit the Apple Store for Genius Bar help, but never know this is located just a section away. From inside the Mall, you’ll follow the signs for Dick’s Sporting Goods. What you see from the mall side is a large Crayola store. That’s unusual in itself, I agree, and the rows of plexiglass lined bins of Crayons and tubes of color remind me of the ones filled with M&Ms at Disney Springs. These, of course, are filled with many colors of crayons. If you can tear yourself away, though, head to the back of the store, out the industrial fire doors into another colorfully lit area, follow the line right, back, and then left into the actual line to pay for entry.

From outside, though, keep driving through the parking lot until you reach the exterior entrance for a much more Show-Stopping Experience. The exterior is brilliant, vibrant with color and an extensive, open parking space that so many mall visitors crave. At about $30 per person per day (free under 2), it’s a bit pricey, and an incentive for anyone local (or with littles) to upgrade to the annual membership for about $10 more. When you see how much is available to do, you’ll realize it’s good value for your money.

Pro Tip: Check out the Crayola Theater Schedule first so you don’t miss a show.

I entered as a live show began at the Crayola Theater. Our lovely cast member interacted with Scarlet (red) and (blue) crayons as we learned how crayons are made, then sorted and packed into a box of four. It’s a cute show with an educational component but still heavy work for the petite lady who had the strength to lift the metal container filled with hundreds of red crayons “fresh” from the cooker.

After the melted waxy formulation is cooled with ice water (the crayons have something to say about this!), they’re broken free from the encasement, checked by a real-life person for imperfection in form or function (they even confirm the crayons can color uniformly) recognizing that the little hollow air bubble in the middle of the crayon keeps them strong, they’re double wrapped in the color label, making them even stronger, then sorted with the three other primary colors in the 4 pack box (yes, I know only yellow, blue, and red are primary and blue and yellow makes green, but bear with me!)

At the end of the show, after learning what a ginormous number of crayons have been made by Crayola to date (2,698,745,749,927,384), each guest may choose one crayon from the wooden crate used to collect this show’s largesse.

Also in the theater, see a (currently prerecorded) Chaos and Creativity Show, first with multiple choice historic Crayola questions, then the story of young Perry (short for Periwinkle) who gets to take over the factory for part of the shift when his colleagues are called away for an urgent mission. Young Perry, of course, gets into a bit of a bind, but by using his imagination, and with the help of his new friend “Kat,” the caterpillar who can paint like a dream, he survives and thrives through the experience.