The World of Coca-Cola kinda blows
Posted on | May 31, 2007 | 4 Comments
Later I’ll give a fuller report from our Southern Road Trip, but while it’s fresh, I thought I’d report on our visit to The World of Coca-Cola, a new Atlanta tourist destination all about, well, Coca-Cola.
I’ve been to a similar, though much smaller, attraction in Las Vegas, which I enjoyed. I have a strange respect for Coca-Cola’s business history, which I learned through the fascinating book, For God, Country, and Coca-Cola. I say this to suggest that I don’t simply pooh-pooh such brazen attempts at marketing-through-theme-attraction (and really, isn’t that just what Disneyland was, anyway?)
Speaking of Disneyland, though, Coca-Cola could have learned something from Disneyland. And that thing, that one simple thing, is quality. Particularly of the two specially-made film (well, probably digital video) entertainment, The Happiness Factory, and The Secret Formula 4-D Theater. The first is a film that *all* attendees much walk, a 7-minute (though it felt like 15) “documentary” of what happens when you put a coin in a Coke vending machine. It cops the style that Nick Park created for his Creature Comforts short (and which has been used by Chevron in their teevee ads) — interviews with various folks about what it’s like for them to do what they do. The Happiness Factory is hackneyed and not particularly inventive, and it was interesting to see just how little the audience reacted to the “spectacle” and the “jokes.” The second was a quasi-ride, similar in some ways to Star Tours at Disneyland/world, where you sit in a theater and “experience” what is happening on the screen. The acting was *so poor*, the story such a repeatedly pathetic sop to the Magic of Coca-Cola, and the seat effects *so annoying* that I simply couldn’t wait to leave.
I’d love to know more about how these two features were created. They felt *very much* like the products of committee, where any truly interesting idea was filtered out as it passed through too many hands, until all that was left was bland, inoffensive, rah-rah with no charm nor personality whatsoever. What’s strange is that Coke *can* produce good video — their recent “videogame” ad is brilliant.
Anyway, there is some decent stuff — the historic walkthrough has cool old stuff, the bottling works actually works (if you end up seeing stuff oddly out of order). Oh, and drinking flavors from around the world is a blast. But, in the end, we both felt like we’d wasted our time and money.
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May 31st, 2007 @ 10:25 pm
World of Coke in Atlanta isn’t new, though. It wasn’t new when I first moved there in 1995.
If you know what you’re getting yourself into, it’s not quite as bad. Take a pack of cards with you and play some games with friends in the tasting room at the end, and it becomes somewhat more worthwhile. But don’t, under any circumstances, drink the Beverly!
June 1st, 2007 @ 1:36 am
The World of Coca Cola has moved from where it used to be (near Underground Atlanta) to a shiny new building near the Georgia Aquarium. It opened May 24. So while the idea of the World of CC is not new, this incarnation is.
June 1st, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
Oooh… so sorry that you chose TWOC for an Atlanta sight to see. I haven’t visited the new one yet, but the old one was so extraordinarily lame that it will be a loooong time before I even entertain the notion of going back. I hope you found some better things to do in our fair city while you were here!
I really just dropped by, though, to say that I attended the talk you gave at CHIA and it was really great. I don’t often attend things like that, and it was largely just dumb luck that led me to that one, but I thought it was time remarkably well spent. So, thanks for that…
November 26th, 2007 @ 10:57 pm
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