My wife and I visited World of Coca Cola a few weeks ago. I was definitely expecting something different, which is why I am giving this place a 3 star review.
The line to get in was disorganized, and we were not exactly sure where to go in the waiting area. When we got in, there was a very enthusiastic employee that went through some trivia about Coke in a room that had a mix of memorabilia on the walls and ceiling. It was just a few facts and didn't really contextualize the history of Coke or anything like that.
We were next led into a theater where they told us we would watch a 10-minute video. I thought "ah, here is where they would go through some of the actual history of Coca Cola." I was wrong - it was a modern, 10-minute advertisement for Coke. It was way too long and super obvious what they were doing. I also didn't understand why they were trying to sell me something I was already sold on - I got tickets to the museum, clearly I like or am interested in Coke! It felt like being in a Coca Cola re-education camp. That definitely set a weird and unsettling tone for the rest of the visit. They could have done so much with that section, like a historical video or a montage of Coke ads over the years. What they did with it was just plain strange.
After the commercial was over, we finally got to see the main exhibits. We went through the bottling exhibit, but there were no bottles running through the machines. So it was very difficult to tell what each piece was doing. The historical exhibits were not organized in an intuitive way. For example, there was a whole exhibit on pop culture when the other historical exhibits had plenty of pop cultural memorabilia. There was definitely some cool stuff there - the original patent for the now-famous Coke bottle design, production tools from the 19th century, different bottles by state. In addition, I also learned some things I didn't know, like that Coke company invented the six pack. The advertisements from around the world were interesting to see, too. There was definitely interesting stuff here, but it could have been organized better.
We enjoyed the smell room, and there were all sorts of different aromas that go into Coke and Coke products. It was neat to see what they are and where they come from.
I had been most excited about the tasting room, which also ended up being the biggest disappointment for me. Twenty years ago, I had a flavor of Fanta in Eastern Europe that does not exist anywhere else. It was one of the best sodas I've had in my life, and I was looking forward to having the opportunity to taste it again. What I had envisioned from the tasting room was that you could try flavors of sodas and Coke products from around the world. That is not what it ended up being. You only had eight options of international Coke product flavors to try, not really much of a choice. One of them is Beverly, which is a discontinued aperitif soda from Italy. Get ready for a taste similar to carbonated angostura bitters. So there were really seven options for drinkable soda. We tried all of them, talked about which ones were our favorites, and that was it. Then we went through the gift shop, and out the door.
I had a hard time believing that was it, but there we were. In hindsight, there were some cool things in World of Coca Cola, but it was underwhelming and more than a little disappointing. We had a couple of hours to spend in Atlanta, and we agreed that going to the aquarium again would have been a better use of the time.