We have been looking after Sarah's nephew this weekend, and given that he is 3 years old it gave me the perfect adult excuse to book some tickets to Cadbury world and get loads of freebie chocolate under the guise of it being an educational trip for him. I am not sure who was the more excited; me or him.
Getting to the factory started off straightforward enough as there were signs on the approach to Birmingham telling us which junction to get off at, but once we started getting in to Birmingham proper, when we really needed directions, all hints of where to go disappeared, leaving you to either follow the chocolate smell or hunt out large concentrations of Oompa Loompas.
Still, somehow we got there just in the nick of time, we had a 12.20pm time slot and were worried that they would be sticklers for punctuality and refuse us entry, but we needn't have worried for as soon as we entered the building, chaos reigned. The queuing system left a lot to be desired, and was clearly not set up by any god fearing Englishman, as it meandered around the entrance hall. There were multiple queues forming for different times and no one knew which queue they were supposed to be in. Still, it gave us ample opportunity to people gaze and I found some of the sights startling.
A particular favourite was the family in front of us who thought it was sensible to give their 2-3 year old a baby bottle full of full fat coke (presumably to help him wash down the vast quantities of chocolate he was about to consume!!!) - I bet they must have fun getting him off to sleep at night, although maybe thy replace the Coke with Tennants Super Strength at about 7pm.The queue was full of tears and tantrums, and I was thankful that Sarah's nephew was a cut above the normal Cadbury world child, and just waited patiently and politely until we got inside.
The tour itself was actually rather good fun, with a suitable mix of interaction and information, as well as plenty of free samples of chocolate. There is a walking time tunnel explaining the history of chocolate and how it got to Europe, then there was a couple of shows explaining how Cadbury's grew for a humble shop to a global brand, and we got a behind the scenes view of the factory where we could see the chocolate being made and packaged up including free samples of the still warm and melted chocolate they were using - which were lush!!
The highlight of the tour for me though was seeing the animatronic gorilla from the advert playing the drums. I tried to get a photo of it, but it was too dark and he was behind a protective, reflective screen.
Once the tour finished we went into the Cadbury shop and bagged ourselves a few chocolatey bargains - things like mishapes which you can buy a large bag of for silly money. We headed home feeling a little bit sickly, but still not sickly enough to nibble a bowl of mishapes later on that evening......
