Cadbury World | Photo Diary

I’m going to start this post with the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of chocolate, however, when I was at a meeting with a bunch of girl guiding leaders and they were asking what to do with 200 girls, I was racking my brain for something fun to do with girls ranging from 7-18! After a few suggestions being thrown around the table, it suddenly came to me, Cadbury World. Cadbury World is basically a museum all about Cadbury. The museum is on the site of one of the original Cadbury factory, however they no longer make the chocolate there. The site is based in a little village called Bourneville in Birmingham. Bourneville was built by the Cadbury family for the workers which is a lovely little side note that I learnt whilst at Cadbury World. I thought to mark this I would do a little photo diary documenting the events of the day. You can check out similar posts here.

We arrived at Cadbury World and you are greeted by some characters. The two that were there when we arrived was this parrot and Bertie Basset. There was also the option of meeting Freddo and the Caramel Bunny, but unfortunately every time I saw them I was busy and couldn’t run and get a selfie!

When our time slot began we went into this area that was like the Amazon I guess. It basically explained where chocolate came from. After moving from this area, we enter into the bit all about John Cadbury himself. You enter this little almost like street of London where you can see the original Cadbury shop. I learnt that originally John Cadbury was a tea and coffee importer, however after the increase in popularity of chocolate houses, he started to sell chocolate in his shops so that the masses could take part in this popular trend of drinking chocolate. Cadbury also decided to develop chocolate that you could eat as well and sold that.

There is a little show about how the factory started and how that it was a family run business. It was pretty awesome as there was lots of history about the family and also lots about the invention of Dairy Milk, which I believe is a firm favourite chocolate amongst the masses! After this first show, you go into another show which tells you all the ingredients that go in to make the Dairy Milk bar. It was really cool and it made you feel like you were a cocoa bean, as it was pretty interactive. Whenever the beans were heated, the room was heated. Whenever the beans needed shaking, the actual seats would shake from side to side. It was really fun and so unexpected!

After this, you head round to the circus area. They are supposedly changing this and having a new area put in. This was slightly random and Mum and I didn’t stay here long. You then go round to the green screen and have some photos taken. You can puck your photos that you want. We had one of my Mum, my niece Lily and myself surfing on a Dairy Milk bar and we also had us printed onto a Dairy Milk bar, so I now have a chocolate bar with my face on, which is a little weird!

You then go round onto the Cadabra ride. This, in my opinion, needs a lot of work. The ride was very tired and it just needs some TLC. This could have been amazing, however I just feel that it was very old. They need to go and look at It’s a Small World in Disneyland Paris for some inspiration on how to make this ride awesome. You go round and there isn’t really a storyline like there is with Disney rides. It’s just cocoa bean characters moving backwards and forwards a little.

After the ride you are able to retrieve your little pot of melted chocolate and add toppings to them. Also in this area you can see workers place melted chocolate into moulds and see them decorate these items. When we went, they were decorating chocolate shoes for the factory shop down stairs. In this area there is also a chocolate demonstration. This shows you how they temper the chocolate and place it into the moulds. You are not allowed to eat this chocolate though!

After this you enter the last phase which is about advertising. There is so much about the different advertising at Cadbury World. I didn’t recognise many of the Cadbury adverts as they were before my time. However my Mum recognised most of them and it was apparently quite nostalgic for her.

After we finished the attraction, round the corner from the entrance is a massive play area which is great for children. There is also the Bourneville experience which explains about the little village the Cadbury built surrounding the factory that the workers lived in. The last thing there is to do (which I think was the best bit) was the 4D cinema. This took you on a little journey and it was just nice. It wasn’t too overpowering, which always worries me about these 4D rides. The seats moved only a small amount and you don’t get wet! Only bubbles came floating out! I thought they had done this really well!

Is it worth it?

A lot of people messaged me on Instagram during the day asking about whether it was worth going as quite a few people haven’t done this. If I’m being honest with you, I would give this a 3/5 stars. The girls that we took had an incredible day and kept telling us that it was one of the best trips that we had been on, so from that aspect, that made the day amazing! However, I feel that the attraction itself was a little tired. They could do so much more with the place, especially the Cadabra ride, I thought that was pretty poor. It just needs a little TLC to make the place perfect. The attraction is only really lasts for 2 hours, then there are the bits outside, however, if you have bad weather it’s probably only half a days worth of activities. I mean the 4D cinema was incredible! I thought they had done that really well and the girls really enjoyed this!

If you would like to see the day in vlog form, I vlogged it as part of my weekly vlog, which you should check out.

Even though I don’t like chocolate, I still had a really good day and what made it even better is the Brownies and Guides really enjoyed the experience.