As a young child I vividly recall visiting the World Of Coca Cola Museum with enthusiasm and excitement. When I got the chance to visit Atlanta in October 2023 I decided to stop by. In this review, I’d like to show you a first-hand account of my experiences at the Coca Cola Factory (World of Coca Cola) from booking to the end. This review is divided into sections. At the end of the review I will also share my top tips to make the most of your visit to the World of Coca Cola. World Of Coca Cola is located in downtown Atlanta by Georgia Aquarium.
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Booking
I chose to go through tiqets.com to book my visit. This was my first time using their service.
As a software engineer, I like to pay close attention to websites. In particular I like to pay close attention to the user experience known in the business as the user interface to see if it is up to modern design standards. I was impressed with tiqets interface. The checkout process was easy and I soon received an email with my ticket.
A nice perk of buying the ticket online is you get to skip the line and head straight into the venue if you purchase your ticket from tiqets.
The Visit at World Of Coca Cola Factory
As mentioned it was nice to bypass the ticket line and enter the museum
After I got my ticket scanned I was led into a holding area waiting for others to join us.
The Loft
After a short wait we were taken to an area known as The Loft
The Loft had all sorts of artifacts from various time periods in Coca Cola’s history
Our host talked a bit about Coca Cola’s history and picked on the audience members who were not paying attention. After the discussion the guide led us to an auditorium to have us watch a promotional film about people drinking and celebrating Coca Cola.
While watching the film I was disappointed that most of the tour so far was guided. Yes I realize this is the first 15 mins but a guided tour is not what I signed up for! This would soon change, however.
Main Hall
After watching the promotional film we were soon let loose into a large hall with two floors consisting a variety of exhibits to visit. I decided to explore the lower floor first.
Lower Level
The two exhibits that were open were the milestones of refreshment & the vault holding the Coca Cola recipe. When I visited the Coca Cola Factory two exhibits were under construction and opening in Fall 2023. As this was October 2023 it was clearly behind schedule just like this blog post… (my poor attempt at making a joke…)
Milestone
Anyway onto the milestones of Refreshment. As the name implies it was a walk-through of each milestone in Coca Cola’s history. I will touch briefly on the highlights I saw while touring this exhibit.
Back in the 1800s soft drinks were typically found in drug stores.
Seen here is an image of mixing the coca syrup to serve to customers
What surprised me the most is that Coke cost only 0.05 at the time. My finance dept would’ve loved that… (finance dept is an imaginary dept that formed as a joke on my instagram… because everyone says bank accounts…)
The bottling systems is the foundations of how Coca Cola business works
They had this cool display of bottles with all their brands that were best sellers. The display was called Our Best Selling Brands.
After visiting the milestone exhibit I went into The Vault. I was not deterred by the long line to enter the Vault.
The Vault
Upon entering the vault we went through additional prep before we were granted access into the vault.
Once inside the vault it looked similar to a bank vault. What proceeds next is a series of exhibits before we finally get to see the secret formula.
The Coca Cola Company used a variety of techniques to protect their brand. One such technique is displayed below by offering a $500 reward
The suspense was building as we got closer to the secret formula
Unfortunately Coca Cola did not want us to compete with them so they conveniently did not let us touch the vault. We warned to keep our distance from the formula. Otherwise guards would come out of nowhere and there would be punishments. They seemed pretty serious so I did not try this out.
Otherwise we would get into big trouble.
Conveniently one of the screens had an out of memory exhibit
The out of memory error added to the mystique of not knowing the recipe
I’m joking out of memory errors happen when a computer reads information from the wrong slot upon realizing it basically says oops….
The lower floor certainly didn’t feel like it was worth it in my opinion.
Second Floor
Other Exhibits
Let’s move onto the second floor. There were a couple of areas I decided to skip namely I wanted to move into something else. I skipped the imax movie show and getting my picture taken with a polar bear mascot. That did not seem interesting to me. I am a nerd after all… In this upper-level Coca Cola also had pop culture (more history of Coca Cola) & scent discovery. Scent discovery basically explores the connection between smells and memories. Scent discovery had a long line when I went So plan accordingly
Taste it
My favorite exhibit is taste it! Where you taste drinks from all over the world They seem to have different flavors every month Check the latest flavors here.
You can buy a cup for $5 (at the time of this visit) to take your favorite flavor home!
Museum Gift Shop and Exit
As customary in every tourist area there was a museum gift shop. I decided to pass.
Is the World of Coca Cola Worth it?
it’s worth it for all age groups and it made for a fun afternoon.
The second floor was much better than the first floor as it had better activities
It took me about an hour to complete, however please note I did not visit all the attractions.
5 Tips maximize your visit to World Of Coca Cola:
- I would recommend purchasing the ticket through tiqets.
- Depending on the size of your group and how long you want to take reading exhibit I’d estimate 1-3 hours for adults. For families with children I’d say around 4-5 hours. Weekends may increase these estimates.
- I would prioritize visiting the upstairs attractions first (but don’t go through taste it as you exit the museum save taste it for last)
- Some exhibits will have long lines so I’d advise visiting the ones with shorter lines first.
- While in Atlanta if you wish to visit more than one attraction I’d recommend buying the city pass as it’s a cost effective option than buying a ticket separately:
Other packages to make the most out of your visit while in Atlanta
