The Scotch Whisky Experience lies in the center of some Venn diagram of things that are embarrassingly touristy, goofily hokey, and actually pretty cool.\n\nThe Experience (which seems to also be referred to as the Scotch Whiskey Heritage Center) consists of a few different elements: \n\na. A tour you can take that teaches you about whisky.\nb. A bar/tasting room you go to at the end of the tour.\nc. A gift shop where you can buy bottles of whisky and various souvenirs. \nd. A restaurant (which I did not go to). \n\nThe tour itself is a combination of interesting and cheesy. It starts off with an \""educational\"" amusement park-style ride that you might find in Epcot Center. You sit in a barrel-shaped cart that goes down a track while a hologram explains the process of making whiskey to you in the language of your choice. No, I'm not making this up.\n\nFollowing that you go into a room where an actual non-holographic human being gives you scratch-and-sniff cards and teaches you about the four regions of whisky-making in Scotland. I am not making this up either. \n\nYou then get to choose which region you want to sample whiskey from (hint: if you've never had whiskey before go with Speyside or Highlands malts. They tend to be the sweetest and smoothest. Islays are the harsh peaty whiskeys) and your host pours you a small tasting glass. \n\nThe next step of the tour is the largest collection of whiskey in the world. It's an impressive collection and very well presented. I believe you can pay more to take the last tour of the day which allows you to spend more time in the collection room. I found it interesting, but didn't feel like I was missing out on anything by mainly looking at the collection as a whole, and not examining each individual bottle. \n\nFinally, the tour exits into the tasting room. If you paid for the \""silver tour\"" you are now done. If you bought the \""gold tour\"" you get a flight of whiskey from the tasting room. This flight is chosen by the museum and will generally consist of a lower-end whiskey from each of the four regions. Please do not ask the host to give you top-shelf 30 year malts instead. \n\nYou can also purchase glasses of whisky in the tasting room. I found if you sit at the bar and wait until the wave of people from the latest tour group have trickled out, the host will have time to talk to you and make some good recommendations based on what you've tried that you like. \n\nThe hosts were all very friendly and very knowledgeable.\n\nWhen you decide you're done there, you can go to the gift shop and buy whisky to take with you or any number of little tchochkes.\n\nI wouldn't say I learned a ton at the Scotch Whisky Experience, but I found the tour design to be fascinating (you can tell some serious money and thought went into it - even if it is hokey), the large whisky collection to be impressive and getting recommendations from the hosts to be worthwhile. All in all an enjoyable way to spend part of an afternoon if you like whisky.