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Zombies And Factories Just Go So Well Together, Especially In Columbus

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

In this year's surprise horror comedy hit "Zombieland," a college student attempts to find out if his parents in Columbus, Ohio are alive. If you find yourself in the position of having to flee from a zombie invasion, you may want to hide in these Columbus-area factories—so take the tours now, just in case.

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Take Some Louisiana Flavor Home From A Tabasco Sauce Factory

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

Put some spice in your next trip by seeing the forest preserve where the multi-plumed Tabasco bird romps and plays. Okay, that's not really how Tabasco sauce is made, but if you never visit its Louisiana factory, how will you know for sure? No wonder it made Travel and Leisure's list of the coolest factory tours in the world.

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Tour The Boeing Factory And Enter The Largest Building In The World

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

We'll admit, today's featured factory tour may be more of our dream than yours. After all, you can ride in airplanes constantly without needing to know where they, so to speak, come from; it's that old saw about watching the sausage get made. But we've always wanted to go to the Future of Flight, and we envy the lucky travel writers who have already been to Boeing's pricey but exciting factory tour.

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Eat Your Olympic-Rejection Feelings At Eli's Cheesecake In Chicago

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

Sorry, Chicago, your fifteen minutes of fame are up now that you weren't chosen for the 2016 Summer Olympics. We made your senator a President and your talk show host queen, but it's time to go home. It's not you, it's us!

But on the bright side, you have Eli's Cheesecake World to comfort you in your hour of need. President Obama enjoyed a slice of a 500-pound cake at his inauguration in January; now maybe he and Oprah can split a pie together.

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Hershey's Adds Make-Your-Own Chocolate Tour

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

The branded town of Hershey, Pennsylvania already contains an amusement park and Hershey's Chocolate World, perhaps the closest analogue to Willy Wonka's factory after Cadbury World. But the American brand may have just pulled ahead with its newest attraction: Make your own chocolate!

Two new classes a day at the Hershey Chocolate Lab get visitors up close and personal with the company's tasty treats. Learn about the different varieties of cocoa beans and global tastes for the sweet stuff at "Planet Chocolate," or design your own blockbuster in "Build a Bar." (It's just like Build-a-Bear, but way more delicious.)

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Head To Cape Cod To Crunch On Potato Chips Made In Town

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

Why settle for sitting at home on your couch eating chips when you could be out seeing where they come from? We'll spoil the ending of the Cape Cod Chips' factory tour and say that yes, it does end in a free bag of golden salty deliciousness—but consider making this a detour on your obligatory fall foliage tour.

The Cape Cod company was founded in the '80s with an eye to creating a healthier potato chip (Ed. note: hah!) by cooking in a shallow vat of oil instead of a giant tub like the big guys used. You can still see this process, producing what we call kettle chips, at the company's Hyannis factory, where it all began with a storefront for tourists and a guy who had taken a potato-chip-making class.

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Head To Atlanta For All The Coke You Dare To Ingest

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the Best Factory Tours the world over, and let us know if we missed any.

The World of Coca-Cola is probably the closest real equivalent to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, except you don't need a Golden Ticket to attend. The Atlanta tourist attraction re-opened in 2007 after the company dropped $97 million on a facelift, and even if you don't particularly enjoy its sweet ambrosia, it's worth a visit.

Originally invented as a medicinal tonic, Coke is now the biggest-selling soft drink ever, and the World of Coke is the golden altar to that success. Watch the bottling process, then check out antique Coke ads that reflected how the beverage was sold to us until we learned to love it. The international bottles display showing what the rest of the world is drinking (from Coca-Cola Inc.) and a "4-D" film will take you, no, not back in time, but on a jolting trip through distribution. To go back in time, check out the shrine to New Coke.

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Fore! Play Through The Home Of Ping Golf In Arizona

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the Best Factory Tours the world over, and let us know if we missed any.

Ever heard the urban legend about how peeling the top layer of a golf ball will cause it to explode? Us too! We expect a tour of Karsten Manufacturing, maker of Ping golf balls, to clear this mystery up for us.

Karsten Manufacturing founder Karsten Solheim got into golf as a young engineer when his coworkers at General Electric strong-armed him into joining their foursome; the putter he subsequently designed first made a big splash when a winner at a Phoenix PGA tournament used it. At Karsten in Phoenix, you can watch club heads being molded in a machine and later, real-life orders personalized for golfers around the world.

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Crunchy, Salty, and Fried Await You At The Herr's Snack Factory Tour

If you find yourself in Philadelphia and are coming up short on new things to do, you can always search for the origins of tortilla chips outside of the city. The Herr’s company in Nottingham is happy to show you around their digs—just think of it as a very technical episode of MTV Cribs. Discover where the fake cheese comes from and how it’s sprayed onto the chips. Best of all, the tour is totally free.

All tours last for about an hour, and all you have to do is call ahead and let them know that you are coming. They take a break for lunch everyday, so it’s best to schedule your trip for the morning or in the early afternoon. Oh, and Fridays are hit or miss, since they can’t guarantee that they’ll be making stuff on those days.

This isn’t some fake themed tour either; this is the real deal. There’s the authentic machinery and the people throwing your chips, pretzels, and other snacky goodness into their boxes for shipment. We aren’t sure if you’ll need to wear a hair net, but we can only hope that’s the case. Maybe if you’re polite they’ll even let you jump on the line and inspect the potatoes.

Related Stories:
· Herr's Snack Factory Tour [Official Site]
· Three Times The Fun With Blue Bell's Ice Cream Tours [Jaunted]
· Food Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: typicalgenius]

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Three Times The Fun With Blue Bell's Ice Cream Tours

Believe it our not, summer is quickly winding down. We’ve only got a few weeks left to gorge ourselves on hot dogs, hamburgers, and ice cream—then we’ll start dieting for the 2010 beach season, we promise. If Ben and Jerry’s isn’t in your neck of the woods, chances are you might be closer to one of the factories that produces Blue Bell Ice Cream. Empty cartons of their flavors can usually be found on coffee tables throughout the southeast.

The creamery opened its doors in 1907, and has been going strong ever since it named itself after the Texas bluebell wildflower. Expect more exciting facts like this when you take a tour of where the ice cream is made. They’re churning out the sweet flavors at three locations: Brenham, Texas, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and Sylacauga, Alabama.

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A Vegas Detox For The Whole Family With Ethel M Chocolates

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

Get off the Strip for a few hours on your next Vegas trip to stop and smell the flowers -- and the chocolates! Indie chocolate company Ethel M. offers free self-guided tours in their Henderson, Nevada factory, which shares grounds with a botanical cactus garden. Live flora in Vegas? Stranger things have happened.

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The Modern Birds' Nest: Take the Airbus Tour

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over. This week, go international!

Missed Airbus' periodic tours of its newest planes? Visit the birthplace—or as the natives say, crèche—of the A380 and other magnificent flying machines in Toulouse, France.

Aerophile visitors are taken in a bus around the Airbus compound, named for French air entrepreneur Jean Luc Lagardère, and shown the testing sites and runways where both parts and finished planes get the full quality assurance treatment.

Then, joy of joys, you get to play plane voyeur and watch the actual assembly process of one of these megaplanes from high above the assembly floor—acrophobics need not apply!

Tours are offered Monday through Saturday from 9am to 6pm, at €14 a head for the A380 tour (€11 for ages 6 to 18, free for kids under 6). You must however call them (+33 (0)5 34 39 42 00) and specifically request a schedule for tours in English, normally offered during the summer only; make sure to call at least 2 days before you plan to visit and be ready to offer up your full name, birthdate and nationality. Bring your passport, but leave the camera at home as photography while on the tour is not allowed—quelle merde.

Related Stories:
· Jean Luc Lagarde Tour: A380 Site [Taxiway.fr]
· Tour an Airbus A30 at JFK [Jaunted]
· Airbus A380 Flight To Nowhere: Peter Greenberg Addicted To Hot Tail Cam Action [Jaunted]

[Photo: flavio_ferrari]