CRAYOLA EXPERIENCE REVIEW - We decided to check out the "CRAYOLA Experience" in Plano Texas recently, so this review is based on January 2020.
Similarly to "LEGO Land" at Grapevine Mills Mall, The Crayola Experience is a brand experience anchored onto the side of a mall. Crayola Experience is in Plano at "The Parks at Willow Bend" Mall, off the Dallas North Tollway just north of George Bush Turnpike.
Admission is $23.99 per person for the day ages 3 and up, and free for 2 and below. If you buy tickets online you can get a discounted rate of $20.99, and it is possible to buy tickets online while you stand in the lobby of Crayola Experience on your phone.
Our family of 4 which included one infant was approximately $65 with tax to get in for the day.
The facility is very large, approximately the size of a warehouse, and has been colorfully painted in Crayola style. Everything was extremely spaced out, as if the place was designed to accommodate more than 1000 people simultaneously. It felt somewhat awkward then, that there were less than 100 people in the place on the day that we visited, making the vest facility seem sort of barren and empty.
When you enter there are machines where you can create your own personalized crayon, a very nice touch, you use a token that they provide you with admission to put into the machine color of your choice and print out a custom label that you can put your name or whatever you'd like on. A nearby station allows you to apply the label to the crayon and this is one of the keepsakes that you can take back with you. If you want to buy additional tokens to make more custom crayons they are $.50 each.
Many other activities in the experience are unique, like melting down crayons to make artwork, or to melt down crayons to form different shapes in a mold. The most notable was the live show which they present to every hour which actually shows the creation of a crayon from scratch from the mold process to the packaging which was actually very fascinating.
Many other activities though are lackluster. Simple things like playing apps on what are essentially heavy duty iPads, or applying Snapchat filters to your face, or unremarkable experiences that could easily be duplicated at home. Much of the experience hinges on you actually coloring on pieces of paper and then scanning them into some sort of apparatus, novel but on your fifth coloring sheet you begin to wonder why you paid more than $20 to come into a room to color.
In the middle of the experience is a large multi level tube style playground which was the highlight of the trip. This is arguably a value in and of itself because the facility is indoor and climate controlled, important for people here in North Texas. Still, there is nothing really Crayola about this other than the decorations, this was just a indoor playground.
The facility is filled with upsell opportunities, like a candy shop, ice cream shop, a snack bar and restaurant. There's even an arcade and a station for wax dipping. All of these were for additional money. Imagine paying $21 to get into a Chuck E. Cheese and then having to still pay money to play games. If that makes sense.
Most of the included experiences were pretty simple, some of them were manned by staff, but most of them were self guided experiences. After approximately three hours we were ready to go, and of course our daughter wanted to play games, eat ice cream, get souvenirs or spend more money which we had to convince her otherwise.
The experience empties into a large branded gift shop, which you can access separately from inside the mall without buying admission, and they do have a very large assortment of interesting Crayola branded items including large tins that you can fill with hundreds of unique colors. I should be used to exiting through the gift shop by now.
Coming out I didn't feel like this was an incredible value or an outstanding experience I would necessarily recommend to others. They asked me several times if I was an annual passholder, and looking back now the notion of going to this place several times a year seems especially funny to me. Three hours was certainly enough.
The value of a giant indoor experience center might be better for someone who lives in the immediate vicinity was looking for a summertime activity, but as for us having a 35 minute commute from Rockwall I don't think it's a place that we will be visiting again this year.
3/5 read more