factory tours in the U.S. ??

Can anyone recommend a list of factory tours located in North America? I am hoping to find a book or a website listing factory tours I can attend on vacations. For example: Fenton Glass factory in Ohio, Jolly Rancher Candy factory in Colorado, etc.

I'm looking for fun things to do so that my family will branch out and vacation in new destinations. We love to see how things are made and my children are young (2 & 4 years old)....so I'm thinking candy factories and toy factories would be highest priority.

Thank you!

tours

Both the Food Channel and Travel Channel have shows devoted to this. I love this myself and tried to do this on past vacations.
http://travel.discovery.com/fansites/worldsbest/funfactories/funfactories.html


http://travel.discovery.com/fansites/worldsbest/kidsfactory/kidsfactory.html

www.factorytoursusa.com - click on a state

book

http://www.factorytour.com

The Jelly Belly factory is just South of me in Fairfield, California. They give tours and kids especially love it. You can buy big bags of "Belly Flops".

Nissan, Saturn, Corvette, and Toyota all do tours of their manufacturing facilities - Nissan in Smyrna, Tennessee (about 25 miles southeast of Nashville on I-24), Saturn in Spring Hill, Tennessee (about 30 miles south of Nashville on I-65) Corvette in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Toyota in Georgetown, Kentucky, near Lexington - which is also in the middle of Kentucky horse country and home of the Kentucky Horse Park, which has a lot of horsepower of the original variety.

Not candy and toys, but still very interesting.

Our favorite factory tour is Anchor Brewing in San Francisco. :whoopie: It's free, and after the tour they open the bar for about an hour, for unlimited sampling. It's so popular that you have to make a reservation. http://www.anchorbrewing.com/about_us/tourinfo.htm

The Crayola Factory in PA is great for kids, but it's not so much of a factory tour anymore as a hands-on experience. Same for the chocolate tour at Hershey. In Lancaster County you can also tour the Herrs Potato Chip factory, the Wilbur Chocolate factory, and the Sturgis Pretzel House.

Great question Laurel.

Thanks for the links, pcgirl54. I went into the factory tours web site. Last year when we drove from Massanutten to Toronto, we stopped in Grove City PA on the way back because someone on TUG recommended the outlet mall located here. Little did I know that we could have toured Wendell August Forge. Next trip I will definitely check out the factory tours first.

Tours

One of the best tours we have taken is the Boeing Plant near Seattle.

Andi

Kids that age would enjoy the Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory tour in Waterbury, and the Vermont Teddy Bear factory tour in Shelburne. Both are easy trips from the Stowe area or Smuggler's Notch.

Thank you!

Thank you for all of the wonderful suggestions!

Laurel

Jeni said:

The Crayola Factory in PA is great for kids, but it's not so much of a factory tour anymore as a hands-on experience. Same for the chocolate tour at Hershey. In Lancaster County you can also tour the Herrs Potato Chip factory, the Wilbur Chocolate factory, and the Sturgis Pretzel House.

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If you are in the Pennsylvania area, "Just Born" gives tours. They make jelly beans and those marshmallow "Peeps" candies. You get to eat warm Peeps on the tour, which are supposedly very good. This is near Crayola. Also in that general area (not so interesting for kids) is the Yuengling Brewery tour. This is the oldest operating brewery in the US and the tour is pretty interesting. THey have 2 every day as something like 10AM and 1PM.
Hopewell Furnace is a tour of an 18th century forge/foundry. This is down in the general Reading/Lancaster area. They operate this thing for tourists, and it was a major player in the Revolutionary War.
If you are really into it, PP&L (Pennsylvania Power and Light) gives power plant tours, too. You have to set this up in advance, but that is really interesting for everybody. This is just some stuff that I am familiar with in Eastern PA, and since Crayola was mentioned.