Sneak Peek: Crayola Experience Will Reopen in May

Ink that puffs up when you heat it. A 40-foot wall of crayon bins. An 85-foot water attraction. 

Those are all among the new features kids will be able to see and take part in when the Crayola Experience reopens in May.

Easton's main tourist destination closed for renovations in mid-February, but on Tuesday, the company gave a tour of its soon-to-be-upgraded building to members of the media and local officials.

"This really is going to be a reimagined facility," said Victoria Lozano, Crayola's VP of corporate strategy and development, who led the tour.

Stops along the way included a look at a new two-story playground, and the Water Works, an 85-foot-long table featuring a small river running through the city of Crayonopolis (where Crayola's characters live when they're off duty, of course).

There are stations where kids can work with clay, make their own personalized crayons, and use spray-can-like marker guns to stencil illustrations.

And then there are slightly more advanced technologies, such as a new type of ink that gets puffy under heat, turning two-dimensional drawings into 3D. There's also going to be a station where kids can draw illustrations on iPads that are then projected as 15-foot pictures on a wall.

Even the Crayola Store is getting an upgrade, Lozano said, with the installation of a 40-foot wall of giant crayon bins featuring 75 different types of crayons.

All of this work is aimed at boosting Crayola visitations by about 150,000 people a year.

Last year, Easton City Council bought out the McDonald's on Northampton Street to allow the expansion to happen. Crayola is important to Easton's identity as an "arts center," Mayor Sal Panto told visitors Tuesday, and to the city's health.

The Crayola Experience is scheduled to reopen May 24.