Last weekend, Aaron and I took Turner to play at the new Crayola Experience at Willow Bend mall in Plano. It’s a 60,000 square foot space with TONS of fun things for kids to do. At the time we went, daily pass prices were $20.99 per person (discounted to $18.99 if you pre-purchase online). That seemed a bit pricey for a one-time experience, so we checked out their annual pass rates. In my opinion, the annual pass is definitely the way to go if you’re local. We paid $89 total for annual passes for our family of 3. The annual passes are good at any Crayola Experience location, so we may put them to use when we’ve got some time to kill during our next trip to Orlando this fall.

When we arrived, the line was a bit long, but that was to be expected with a brand new attraction like this. Our wait was probably between 10-15 minutes. Even though we had purchased our passes online, we had to wait in line to get our annual pass cards. We’ll be able to bypass the line next time and go straight in.

We were given 6 tokens to use at the various areas. We used our first couple of tokens to select 2 crayons and create our own labels. We let Turner choose the symbol he liked (alien face and smiley face) and then we helped him type in the name that he wanted for each one. Once the labels printed, we took them and the crayons to a machine to wrap our new labels around the crayons. It was easy enough for Turner (4 years old) to do on his own, and it was really neat to have custom wraps on our crayons.

We then went over to the Drip Art station where you can melt a crayon into unique artwork. The line was fairly long here, and our wait was 15+ minutes. It appeared as though this station was understaffed, as there were plenty of open machines to use, but not enough staff to supervise. Turner really enjoyed watching the crayons melt and controlling the speed of the spin of the paper. He was so proud of his finished artwork!

We then spent quite a while at the Color Playground, the play area with plenty of space for kids to climb. There were two slides that Turner enjoyed, but again, it was fairly crowded on the day that went went, so Turner complained that kids were being mean at the top and were cutting in line. So we left that area and went over to the theatre to watch a quick video on how crayons are made. We got to see the actual equipment used to make crayons and watch the process from start to finish. We were given another free crayon on our way out of the movie.

After the movie, we used 2 more tokens to get 2 packs of Crayola Modeling Magic from the vending machines. We sat at a table and used lots of cookie cutters to cut shapes roll out the “dough.” There were also lots of coloring sheets, crayons, and markers at this station. Although it was fun, it felt a bit disorganized there, as some tables didn’t have all of the supplies while others had extra. Again, this seemed to be due to a shortage in staff to keep things tidy. Turner didn’t notice or care at all. He had a lot of fun at this station!

We hit several of the other fun areas, such as Rainbow Rain, Stomp and Play, and Silly Selfies. At that point, we’d been there for a couple of hours and we needed to get back home for the day. There was still quite a bit that we didn’t get to see and do, so I’m glad that we got the annual pass and can go back.

We exited through a gift shop that had an amazing wall of candy and lots of fun, colorful toys and games to purchase. We managed to make it out without spending any extra money, even though I totally could have loaded up a bag or two of candy!

Even though the Crayola Experience was fairly busy and understaffed (in my opinion) when we visited, I would still highly recommend it for families with young kids. There was PLENTY to do to keep the kids busy, and a lot of it really was hands-on learning. The annual pass is a great value for the price. I grabbed a brochure about their birthday parties, and those seem to be very reasonably priced for what you get compared with some other party places in the area. We’d definitely go back to play and would consider this for our next party venue as well!