Tuesday, February 19, 2013

World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, GA

Coke Rewards. They are the codes hidden somewhere on the packaging of Coke products that you accumulate and can trade in for stuff. I don't drink much soda, but I've amassed lots of these points over the time period that Coke Rewards have been offered. My problem is that I don't want the majority of the stuff that I can get by redeeming my points. When I knew I was going to Atlanta and saw that tickets to the World of Coca-Cola were available, I decided to trade in some of my points for a free visit to the soda museum.
I really didn't know what to expect with the World of Coca-Cola. I figured the museum would be a big advertisement for Coke, but advertisements disguised as museums are fun sometimes. The World of Coca-Cola started with a weird animated movie that seemed to have very little to do with soda, besides giant Coke bottles in the background. There was a 4-D movie that was so unpleasant that is seemed like whoever made it went to the Orlando theme parks and took the worst parts of all of our 3d movies and combined them into a horrible eight minute show. There were disappointing exhibits like an example bottling plant that wasn't working and an exhibit about the top-secret Coke recipe that showed you absolutely nothing. The only exhibit that I actually found interesting contained lots of Coke memorabilia. This contained stuff like the actual Coke dispenser that once rode on the Space Shuttle Challenger.

On the way out, they had one final exhibit. It featured kiosks supplying Coke products to sample from each continent. It was very similar to Club Cool at Epcot, only with more flavors. This was by far the best part of the whole museum! Sampling foreign sodas is always fun. Here's the Asian sodas:
 I enjoyed the bright green Melon Frosty flavored Fanta from Thailand.
Europe has some interesting Coke products including the very tasty Kinley (England) and not so tasty Beverly (Italy)...
South America/Mexico:
African soda:
This pine nut flavored soda called Bibo from South Africa was interesting. I wouldn't think that pine nuts would make a popular soda flavor, but it was tasty. I was trying to think of something similar that I could relate it to but it had a pretty unique taste.
Right before you got to the exit, they gave everyone a glass bottle of Coke with special labels from the World of Coca Cola.
After seeing the museum, I realized that I'd be very disappointed if I spent the full $16 admission for the place. Trying all of the foreign Coke products was fun, but the rest of the museum didn't do much for me. It seemed like they spent large amount of money on what potentially could be really nice exhibits, but in the end they came off as sort of anti-climactic advertisements rather than actual informative exhibits. It didn't have to be this way either. Hershey has their chocolate museum in Pennsylvania complete with 4D movies, dark rides, and free chocolate, and I enjoyed that. World of Coca-Cola was free, so it was no loss for me, but I feel bad for the people that actually spent money on this place...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I actually really enjoyed my visits to the older World of Coke museum and look forward to going to the new one on my next visit to Atlanta. The highlight is obviously the tasting room but if you let yourself get sucked into the propaganda its a great time.

Skyline SFL said...

The older World of Coke museum had some really great exhibits. Thanks for the memories.

Anonymous said...

The Coca cola museum must be on your top list to visit when you're new in Atlanta. atlantalandscapeco.com

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