This post is brought to you by Turkey Hill Dairy. Regardless, all opinions belong to me and my family that traveled to the Turkey Hill Experience for the day.
Living in PA, one thing is for certain, you know where the closest Turkey Hill store is located, you have your favorite flavor of Turkey Hill Iced Tea and even better you can visit any grocery store and buy Turkey Hill Ice Cream. One thing I didn’t know about Turkey Hill Dairy is that they offer The Turkey Hill Experience. The Turkey Hill Experience is full of interactive exhibits to allow learning about dairy culture, the Turkey Hill family and legacies, plus how the company’s ice cream and iced tea flavors are selected and created.
We weren’t sure what to expect taking 15 year old girls with us on our day at The Turkey Hill Experience. I was afraid it would be geared more toward young children, but boy was I wrong. And just like the title of our post says, it’s family fun for all ages.
My hubby is a huge history buff and he got his fill. There was lots of information to read in each section. Not only the history of Turkey Hill, but area history, indians, machinery, vehicles and more. He was in heaven and spent a lot of time looking at displays and reading.
You can find plenty of interactive displays, too. Listen to stories told by the milk man and see the truck he drove and the bottles he delivered to each doorstep along his daily route. Ahhh…the good old days!
Anyone can learn how to milk a cow. Getting your own hands on experience can you turn you into a cow milking pro. I even gave it a try. You can’t visit a dairy without seeing a few cows.
The Turkey Hill brand is displayed in so many creative ways. The theater was shaped like an ice cream container. A timeline wall displaying the changing ice cream storage containers brought back many memories for the visitors that stopped to reminisce. You could visit the deep freeze and feel like ice cream, you even had a chance to make your own commercial and create your own virtual ice cream flavor.
Entering the Taste Lab and learning how to mix up your own ice cream flavors was an additonal part of the tour. Everyone started by learning some food safety tips and washing your hands to begin.
We each got a pint of vanilla Turkey Hill Ice Cream. Next you picked your flavor from an assortment of extracts. You could add your add ins, which included anything from cookies, gummie bears, chocolate chips, graham crackers and more. Then you even had additional topping to stir in. The ice cream was gathered and put into a hardener for 5 minutes. After that short wait you had your own custom ice cream flavor to eat and enjoy. During the process we learned about the science that goes into making ice cream. It was tough deciding to what to add to our creations, but it sure was easy to eat it all!
After making our ice cream we still had places to visit. There were more displays, games and fun to be had! When you visit The Turkey Hill Experience plan to stay for several hours. As I said in the beginning, Turkey Hill Experience is fun for all ages. There is a ball pit, slide, games and displays geared toward young kids, too. Your entire family is going to have a great time!
Don’t forget to visit the gift shop, enjoy some ice cream samples and bring home your favorite Turkey Hill drinks. The Turkey Hill Experience is located just outside of Lancaster & York, in Columbia, PA. It’s literally 2 minutes off the interstate and you are in the parking lot.
Be sure to connect with The Turkey Hill Experience on Twitter and Facebook to make sure you don’t miss any exciting news or upcoming events.
About Michele Brosius
What a great tour! I love taking factory tours when we are on vacation and will be putting this tour on the agenda when we make it to the Lancaster area. There are so many great tours in the area and I can’t wait to go!
I have family in PA and we would love to visit Turkey Hill. It sounds fun and my preschooler would love it.
I would love to tour Turkey Hill! My husband tells me all the time how much he LOVES their ice cream and this looks like so much fun!
This looks like a really fun way to spend a summer afternoon. I would love to do this tour with my family.
This looks really cool, especially the taste lab! I would love to do that.
Wow this looks like so much fun.I would love to go some day!
That sounds like tons of fun! My boyfriend is really into the the history thing too, so I know he’d love that aspect.
Looks like a lot of fun. I love history behind a company and their products.. this is super cool.. thanks for sharing, would love to go one day and see it, too.
Wow. How cool. I love Turkey Hill
We saw that a few years ago. It was lots of fun!
That looks like a blast! I’d love to check out the Taste Lab!
Looks like fun! My mom lives near Lancaster, I will have to see if we can stop by next time we are there, because I think the kids would enjoy it
How fun!!! That ice cream looks so good, too! What a great experience.
Turkey Hill sounds like such a fun experience! I love all the hands on options for learning about it’s history. And the treats are an added bonus to help the kids remember it all.
Oooh oooh oooh! I want to go to the tasting lab! That would be sooo much fun!
How fun is that? What a great experience!!!! I want to take the kids there.
REally cool! I wish this was close to me it would make an awesome homeschool field trip!
That looks like a lot of fun. It’s so neat to hear the personal stories behind the making of the products that we enjoy.
I am in love with Turkey Hill’s all natural ice cream!! So cool that you got a behind the scenes look at it!
What fun! My family would love this (Especially learning to milk a cow!!)
I’ve never had anything Turkey Hill but it sounds like a popular brand and that ice cream looks delicious!
I love taking tours of places and especially factors that I purchase their food. Look like you guys had a great time.