Prologue
Nauseous. Light-headed. Never want to be within 20 feet of chocolate again. There are many ways to describe how I was feeling after a recent trip to Chocolate World, USA — but I think Longfellow said it most eloquently when he wrote, “I wanted to puke.”
I recently celebrated a birthday. To mark this occasion, my wife Julie planned a surprise getaway for us to Hershey, PA (motto: “We’re the Chocolate Capital of the World!”). So Julie and I (motto: “Cover it in chocolate and we’ll eat it!”) packed our bags and drove up 95, heading towards our chocolate-covered utopia.
Bernice!
You know you’re in Hershey right away. Giant Hershey’s Kisses sit atop power lines and streets have painfully cute names like Cocoa Avenue and Chocolate Way. There's also the subtle detail that every building in the town has been named after the "cocoa bean king" himself, Milton S. Hershey. You've got the Milton S. Hershey School, the Milton S. Hershey Hospital, and of course, the Milton S. Hershey Center for Diabetes.
Now Hershey, like any good tourist trap, has plenty of hotels for visitors to choose from. We selected the (Milton S.) Hershey Lodge and walked inside. At the registration desk, we met Bernice, a tall, thin woman in her 30s who was very, very, very, very, very cheerful. Her smile was enormous, revealing twice as many teeth as your average T-Rex, and every sentence she spoke ended in cheerful exclamation. Had this been a foreign film, the subtitled exclamation points would've had little smiley faces on the bottom.
“Welcome to the Hershey Lodge!” “It’s so wonderful to have you here!” “Oh, you’re celebrating a birthday! I celebrate birthdays, too!”
I gave Julie’s hand a little squeeze, the not-so-discreet married couple code for “this person is nuts,” an interpretation easily confused with the slightly harder hand squeeze which means “how many shoes does one person need?”
As Bernice continued to talk, her smile somehow managing to expand beyond the boundaries of her faces, I saw several cases of Hershey’s bars on the floor. Bernice noticed my drooling and shrieked, “We go through about ten cases of delicious Hershey’s milk chocolate bars every day!”
“That’s too much for me,” I said jokingly.
“IT'S NEVER TOO MUCH!" Bernice barked. "Er, what I mean is that Hershey’s milk chocolate is wonderful!"
Julie let out a weird, nervous laugh. I quietly wondered if there was an Oompa Loompa crouching behind the desk, pointing at gun at Bernice’s calves and threatening to shoot unless she did exactly as he said.
Finally, Bernice handed me our room key — along with four Hershey's bars. “Here," she said with a grin. "These should get you hooked!”
And the brainwashing begins…
You know the old 50s song, “I-I-I-I want candy! Ba ba ba. BA BA!”? Well at Chocolate World, USA, there’s a slightly different version: “I-I-I-I want HERSHEY'S! Ba ba ba. BA BA!”.
We first heard the song as we walked from the registration desk to the main lobby. We also heard it in the hallway, elevator, and the corridor leading to the rooms. By the time we reached our room, we had a sudden and unexplained urge to eat Hershey’s bars, not to mention an equally sudden and unexplained desire to sing 50s doo-wop.
We walked into our room, where the Hershey’s Kiss wallpaper and Hershey’s Kiss pillows served as a sexy reminder that “I-I-I-I want Hershey’s! Ba ba ba. BA BA!”. Nevertheless, the mood was right; I dimmed the lights and smiled at Julie. She smiled back. Then we proceeded to do what any self-respecting newly married couple would have done: we devoured the chocolate.
Now I’ve been eating Hershey’s bars all my life, but for some reason, this time, the chocolate tasted so…so…DELICIOUS. The crazed gleam in Julie’s eye, a look usually reserved for “Buy one pair, get the other 50% off Day” at DSW, told me she felt the same way. We each wolfed down another bar; though in fairness I should mention that Julie did take the time to unwrap hers first.
The sugar rush was immediate and within minutes we were speaking in smiley exclamation points. Eventually we crashed and went to bed. And even though the sugar rush would wear off, our craving for delicious Hershey’s milk chocolate was just beginning.
Hooked, line, and sinker
We woke up early the next morning, agitated and craving another fix. I searched the room for anything chocolate and panted happily when I came across the crinkled wrappers from the night before. We licked them as best we could but it wasn’t enough; we needed more chocolate. And I knew just the person to get it from.
We scrambled out of the room and into the hallway where we were immediately greeted by the familiar tune of “I-I-I-I want Hershey’s! Ba ba ba. BA BA!”. By the time we reached the registration desk, Bernice was standing there, smiling with an “I've been expecting you” look on her face.
“Sorry!” Bernice shouted when I asked for more bars. “You’ve already had your freebies!”
“But I-I-I-I want Hershey’s!” I said.
And just like any reputable drug dealer, that’s when Bernice dropped the ax. “You can BUY delicious Hershey’s products in the Hershey Lodge Chocolate Cafe!”
I knew it was wrong. I knew it was immoral. I knew we’d be disappointing Nancy Reagan. But we did it anyway. We went to the café and paid $6.00 for two bars of Hershey’s chocolate.
Clearly, we had a problem.
Meet The Ritalin Gang
One chocolate breakfast later, Julie and I wandered outside the Lodge where we joined a line of other guests in waiting for the Hershey Park shuttle. A man in front of the line, wearing sandals and a World’s Greatest Dad T-shirt, stood trance-like, tapping his foot and chanting, “I-I-I-I want Hershey’s! Ba ba ba. BA BA!”.
The faces in the crowd were desolate. Eyes were glazed over, likely a combination of high sugar, high stimulation, and high prices. For these people, the chocolate couldn’t come soon enough. For others, the sugar rush had already begun.
Directly in front of us was a group of three mothers and, what sounded like, 200 eight-year-old boys. There were really only six of them but their collective screams helped make up the difference.
They were loud. There were obnoxious. They were everywhere. Climbing trees, wrestling with each other, screaming things like, “My Pokemon can beat up your Pokemon!” and "My scab is grosser than your scab!"
As Julie and I stood in line, waiting for the shuttle to come, I gave her hand a little squeeze, meaning “just watch; we’re going to be stuck with these kids the whole entire day.” She, in turn, gave my hand a little squeeze, meaning “stop squeezing my hand.”
“I’ll take a large food court with a side of roller coasters, please.”
The shuttle dropped us off at Hershey Park and the Ritalin Gang pushed their way out first. We walked past enormous plastic Reese's Cups and huge styrofoam strands of Twizzlers while giant, plastic Rolos blasted “I-I-I-I want Hershey’s! Ba ba ba. BA BA!”.
If I had to describe Hershey Park in two words joined by a hyphen, it’d be: carny-like. And if I had to describe the contents of Hershey Park in one word, it’d be: food. Serious food. Pizza, hot dogs, cheese steaks, various meats on sticks, the grease went on and on. It was actually nice of the park designers to sprinkle in a few rides between the food vendors.
By 11 AM, we had eaten our way through three quarters of the park and devoured everything from a chocolate-encrusted funnel cake to chocolate-covered potato chips. Naturally we decided this was a good time to explore the rides. There were rickety, wooden roller coasters with names like “The Comet” and high-tech, triple loop, upside-down, ‘zero to 90 in two seconds’ death machines with kid-friendly names like “Satan’s Delight.” Of course there were also standard offerings like a carousel and those swing set seats that hang from a long, rusty chain that’s attached to a tall, rusty pole. Which reminds you, you've never experienced true hell until you've gone on this ride with all six members of the Ritalin Gang.
"I can burp louder than you!"
"You wish!"
"Shut up, losers. I can burp louder than both of you!"
"Whatever. I can burp louder than all you put together!"
"Oh yeah? Let's hear!"
With the ride in full swing and the Great American Burp-Off well underway, I returned my focus to the mission at hand: finding more chocolate.
Julie drops a bombshell
We disembarked our swings and wobbled to a nearby bench to sit down. A nearby speaker blasting “I-I-I-I want Hershey’s! Ba ba ba. BA BA!” reminded me it was time for another feeding.
Scanning the area for the closest chocolate dealer, I asked Julie, "What do want, a chocolate-covered donut or a chocolate-covered grease bowl?" And then the unexpected happened.
Julie turned to face me, took my hand, and uttered the words a husband never expects to hear.
“I’m done. I can’t eat any more chocolate.”
I was stunned. “What? Why?"
"I'm sorry."
"But how could this happen? Things were going so well!”
“It’s not you, it’s me. I just can’t do this anymore.”
“But…but…what about all our plans? What about Chocolate World?”
“Look, I just need a little time away from the chocolate. But I want you to be happy. Go on without me.”
Unfortunately, there comes a time in every man’s life when he has to make a choice between his marriage and the world’s largest supply of chocolate. It wasn’t easy but I knew what the right decision was. So I walked Julie to the park entrance where we waited in silence for the hotel shuttle. When the bus arrived, we kissed and I watched her get on. Standing on the top step, she turned and smiled weakly.
“Please...be careful.”
The Final Frontier
I walked over to Chocolate World, a gigantic building where, according to the brochure, you can tour the famed Hershey factory and see firsthand the chocolate-making process. Once inside the velvet rope, I was mesmerized by the neon lights, bright colors, and the strongest damn chocolate smell you’ve ever encountered. Seriously, one whiff and I was three sugar sheets to the wind.
Much like the Hershey Lodge and Hershey Park, Chocolate World was well staffed with smiling employees who were, at the risk of generalizing, drugged out of their minds on a chocolate high. One of these employees, a gangly teenage boy, walked over to me.
“Have you been on the factory tour yet! You’ve got to do the tour! You get FREE samples!”
"YES! THERE IS A GOD!," I thought as I kissed his hands in appreciation. I followed the signs to the tour and walked past a giant wall of black and white photos of the Hershey factory. Finally, I entered a large circular room where I boarded a giant Hershey's Kiss.
The so-called tour through the factory turned out to be a Disney ride through a mock factory where mechanical Hershey’s Kisses demonstrate the process of converting cocoa beans into Hershey’s chocolate. It was lame, but I didn’t care. I was getting more chocolate!
The tour ended and I followed my fellow junkies down a long, winding hallway. At the end of hallway, a glassy-eyed, smiley woman with a fanny pack sat behind a table, handing out Hershey’s miniatures.
The woman, who was openly operating under the principle of “one goes to you, five go in my pack,” gave me a knowing smile, which I returned. Just one addict to another.
The beginning of the end
With the sweet sounds of “I-I-I-I want Hershey’s! Ba ba ba. BA BA!” filling the air, I inhaled the tiny chocolate bar. The miniature piece of chocolate sparked something inside my body; suddenly my hands were shaking. I needed MORE. I ran to the Kit Kat Café and surveyed my choices. Bag of chocolate kisses? Nah, too small. Triple chocolate chip milkshake? Ha! Child’s play. Hell, not even the World’s Largest Hershey Bar — a five-pound monster selling for $30.00 — would satisfy this craving. No no, this fix had to be something special. And it had to come from the make-your-own cupcake booth.
“Gimme a large chocolate cupcake!” I barked to the cupcake clerk, in a voice that was equal parts Exorcist and Gilbert Gottfried.
“No, that’s not big enough. Large, DAMMIT! Cover it in icing, too! I don’t want to see ANY cupcake showing, you hear me?!? Now roll the cupcake in chocolate sprinkles. MORE! And throw five Hershey’s Kisses on it! No stop! Make it SIX! What’s taking so long! I WANT HERSHEY’S!”
It took about five minutes for the frightened employee to prepare the custom-made cupcake. Forty seconds after he handed me the cupcake, it was gone.
Bleech!
It was wonderful. And then it was very, very, very bad. Twenty-four hours of chocolate decadence had caught up to me. The cupcake was the final insult. The good news was that my chocolate craving had finally been satisfied. The bad news was that I spent the final moments of my special birthday weekend hovering over a toilet, giving something back to Hershey.
Can you guess what song was playing over the bathroom speakers?
© 2005 robbloom.com.
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