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Turkey Hill Experience: A Taste of Local History (and Ice Cream!)

This post may contain affiliate links. View my disclosure policy for details.
I received complimentary tickets to the Turkey Hill Experience to facilitate my review and this sponsored post. The opinions in this post are 100% mine. You can read my full disclosure policy here.
Turkey Hill Experience
Living in Lancaster County, PA, Turkey Hill is a household name. We have loved their ice cream for years and I remember growing up with it as a kid.  It’s just the best!  As a response to the tons of requests for plant tours they’ve received, Turkey Hill Experience was opened a few years ago and has since welcomed over 300,000 through the doors to get a taste of their company’s history, our local flavor, and yes, ice cream!  My family had the opportunity to visit a couple of weeks ago and we had the best time!  It’s not only fun but it’s very educational for kids and adults alike.
Turkey Hill ExperienceLet’s get right to the best part: free ice cream samples.  As many as you can eat.  My kids were all over this!  And there were some flavors in that case I hadn’t seen before so we had fun taste testing.
Turkey Hill Experience
Turkey Hill Experience includes 26,000 square feet of exhibit space that’s packed with colorful, fun and interactive activities for everyone.  Every corner we turned we found something new to play with!  There’s lots of signage to learn about the history of Turkey Hill Dairies in our local community and how ice cream and iced teas are made.  The kids enjoyed the more hands-on learning experiences.  After my daughter Lily got behind the wheel of this authentic, vintage Turkey Hill delivery truck I shot up a quick prayer that 16 never comes.  Scary, folks! Look at her face!   😉
Turkey Hill Experience
In addition to the free ice cream samples, there are also free drink samples! Turkey Hill makes the best iced teas and lemonades. I discovered a new coffee drink they have too.  It was amazing!

Turkey Hill Experience

In this exhibit you could mix and match your own tea aromas. Lily really got creative with this one!
Turkey Hill Experience
The kids had a blast playing in this ball pit. Not only is it clearly right up any kid’s alley, it’s also how they demonstrated how milk is homogenized.  Clever!
Turkey Hill Experience
Did you know that the freezer room at Turkey Hill Dairy is kept at -40 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of -70 degrees?  Brrrr!  This freezer that my kids were in wasn’t actually that cold but it was chilly! Their faces crack me up. We had so much fun learning about how ice cream is made!
Make your own ice cream
Not only did we learn about how to make ice cream through the interactive exhibits and displays, but we got to give it a go!  There’s a 3-step create-your-own process and you can use the computers to create you own ice cream flavor by choosing lots of mix-ins! Then you move on to designing the packaging.  Finally, create a commercial for your delicious new flavor. All of this can be shared on social media and is emailed to you to look at again when you get home. We had a great time doing this!
Turkey Hill Experience
Once you virtually make your own ice cream flavor, you might want to make it for real!  For a small additional fee you pay upon admission, you can visit the Taste Lab and actually make your own ice cream…and eat it!  And just FYI, it’s a decent sized cup of ice cream.  Skip lunch, is what I’m sayin’.  Ice cream is your meal that day.
Turkey Hill Experience
The Taste Lab experience is about a half hour or so.  You start with an ice cream base, add your flavors (I chose coffee!) then add in your mix-ins. This is where it can get a little crazy and seriously fun!  My kids added in things like sprinkles and gummy bears.  I put some graham crumbs and mini peanut butter cups in mine.  Then you add in the syrups and swirls.  Stir it all up and they’ll stick your creation in the hardener for you. While it’s hardening you get a little Ice Cream 101 class from the employees which is really educational (and only a few minutes if you have kids that are antsy to get their ice cream back!).  There are over 25 mix-ins to choose from and the combinations seem to be endless! SO much fun! Don’t miss this part of the Turkey Hill Experience.

Our ice cream creations were delicious! One little boy got a case of brain freeze and was forced to slow it down.  Hey, that happens when you have too much of a good thing!

Turkey Hill Experience

Turkey Hill Experience is located in Columbia, PA and admission prices are all under $10, under $15 with the Taste Lab portion (which I highly recommend). Kids ages 4 and under are free!

The Turkey Hill Experience is SO much fun (all the ice cream samples you can eat, hello!) and really educational. I love when learning is made fun like that for the kids. Be sure to explore their website for tons of info on the attraction, and follow along on Facebook and Twitter to be the first to hear the latest!

Turkey Hill Experience is generously offering one of my readers a family 4-pack of tickets and I’ve teamed up with my friend at Coupon Cutting Mom to make it a twofer! So two winners each get 4 tickets. This giveaway is open to US residents, anyone that can get to the Turkey Hill Experience so please make sure you’re either local to Lancaster PA or within driving distance. Must be age 18+ to enter. It ends on Friday May 16, 2014 at 11:59pm ET.

Good luck!
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About Lindsay Frank

Lindsay is the Owner/Editor and Content Creator at See Mom Click, a family travel and lifestyle blog based in Central Pennsylvania. She is a wife and mom of two kids and a handful of fur babies.

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