On Saturday, my mom invited us to a preview of the new World of Coke that is opening up some time in May, next to the Georgia Aquarium. Apparently, they may even use our feedback to adjust and make it better. I hope they do. I’ll go ahead and get my only major complaint out of the way at the start: From what it seems, the admissions price is going to be $15. This seems a bit steep for what basically amounts to you spending a few hours enjoying Coca-Cola advertising. The $9 kids price to me is what should be the adults price. I think I would even go so far as to make it free for kids (12 and under maybe?), after all… kids will be the future consumers of Coke and a place like this is very fascinating to them.
First of all, the coolest thing there is the mini bottling plant. They have a real, fully functional (but small and slow) bottling plant that makes real coke. You even get a free coke at the end that was made in the mini bottling plant. Even going very very slow, they still make more Coke than they can give away so sometimes it just runs in simulation mode where the bottles are emptied at the end and just re-filled over and over again. You get to walk through the whole thing and see all the machines working, it is exactly the kind of thing someone like me enjoys. It was so cool that I went through it twice and took more pictures, to include the labels on the glass.
The second best was the Polar Bear taking pictures with visitors. It looks to me like this is setup to exist the entire time, there was an area roped off to form a line to see him (for the kids) with a great vantage point for the adults to take pictures of the kids with him. Every young kid I saw was excited to do this, and a few of them just ran up and hugged him. They’ve also done a good job with him close up, I believe he must have animatronics in his head, as he could make his eyes blink and his mouth move a bit. One of the employees told us that it was designed by the Jim Henson company, so that might explain it.
The part that I think will appeal to everyone is the same as what was in the original World of Coke at Underground Atlanta. The tasting of all the various flavors of Coca-Cola beverages from around the world. They are setup very intelligently, with round sort of stations for each continent and there are about 4 sets of fountains on each station. All four fountains at each station seemed to be the same to me, but there may have been one or two unique drinks at each fountain. The first odd thing some of the people with me noticed was that there were no flavors of Coke at all in these stations! We asked an employee nearby and were pointed to an entire room we had simply not noticed that had all the flavors of Coke you could ever want to try.
On your way out, you are allowed to grab one bottle of Coke which as made there at the mini plant. Of course, as seems to be normal with new places of interest… to exit, you have to go through the store on your way out. At first I was a bit annoyed by this, but then I noticed they had chap stick flavored in various Coca-Cola product lines! Barqs Rootbeer, Fanta, and a few different Coke offerings. Of course there were lots of t-shirts and stuffed animals as well.
I did have a good time and since it is so close to the Georgia Aquarium, I think it is worth a visit. I believe that it might be part of the “City Pass” system (which allows you to get into a large number of places of interest over the course of a few days), so that would make it worth visiting along with the Georgia Aquarium for sure. If they lower the price and/or let kids in for free, I think it would be a great addition to an Aquarium visit. Or maybe if they had a lower cost when combined with the purchase of an Aquarium pass? So many things you could do.