Touring Cadbury World

Let me preface this by saying that our expectations were ridiculously high. I imagined frolicking in a room made entirely of edible treats and had the tune from “Pure Imagination” running in my head upon arrival.

Andy put it this way: “You go there expecting to find something on the scale of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. You end up experiencing something a bit more down to earth, but it is still interesting to see the industrial production process...”

With that said, here was our experience:

Only a couple blocks from the Octagon, the white Cadbury building with its purple accents was easy to find. At first I thought we must be at the back of the building, but soon realized that this facade was the actual entrance:

Underwhelmed by the exterior, we entered the building to discover that the inside was an entirely different story! We were immediately dazzled by a golden mountain of sugar-infested goodies and moving animatronics. To the left was a giant chocolate bunny and straight ahead was a retail shop stocked full of Cadbury treats.

To the right was the visitor center which we were eager to explore, but were quickly whisked away by our tour guide: an older gentleman in a purple hat and overalls. Our tour was about to begin!

We were led into a back room with a group of about 20 others, and given small bags of chocolate to munch on while we watched a short dvd about the history of chocolate and the beginnings of Cadbury. Afterwards, we were led outside through a back door where we had to store all of our belongings into lockers (unfortunately, we weren't allowed to bring cameras with us on this tour).

We were shown a few of the old Cadbury trucks and taken into a separate building where we walked up and down stairs and through a number of white corridors, stopping every now and then to watch a short video on a tv screen or to learn how chocolate was made through visual diagrams on the walls. Throughout the tour, we would be quizzed on what we learned from the initial dvd and rewarded with even more chocolate!

There were a few highlights on this tour. Towards the end, we got to see a few of the machines they used to create their confections and also to sample some of their fresh liquid chocolate (so good!). And of course we saw the chocolate waterfall (or “chocolate fall” as they call it). If you ever wondered what one ton of liquid chocolate looks like (falling down 5 stories), this is the place to be. :)

At the end of the tour, we retrieved our belongings and were able to get a few pictures of some of the attractions out in the courtyard:

We then took the opportunity to browse the visitor's center, which honestly was the best part of Cadbury World, in my opinion. There were a few samples to try (i.e. raw cocoa beans) and a number of rooms and sets to walk through, each one filled with interesting information about chocolate and its evolution over the years. This area reminded us of the Small World ride at Disneyland ("...without the awful soundtrack" -Andy):

All in all, the tour wasn't bad- it just wasn't all we expected it to be. Part of that could've been that we were there on a Saturday and had to go with the shortened 45-minute tour, which did not include the factory/manufacturing area (the full 75-minute tour that allowed you to see the machines in action unfortunately did not operate on weekends). A bigger part was most likely that we came in with unrealistic expectations (where are the oompa loompas??).

Maybe we didn't see a colorful room full of edible plants and mushrooms or ride in a boat on a chocolate river... but we did learn a lot about the history of chocolate and were left with tasty treats to last us the long journey home!