28th April 2011
Today was Cadbury World day! I was so excited when I woke up this morning, anybody would have thought I was going to Disney Land. We arrived at 10:20am, bang on time, and upon entering the Cadbury World lair, we got given a Crunchie bar and a Curly Wurly! A fantastic start I must say. It wasn’t at all like I expected, I thought Cadbury World was supposed to be mainly for kids. There was a story-like feel to it, but there were these big plaques to read every 5 steps! There were lots of wax figures in the form of cave-like people though which I suppose is pretty cool. According to these plaques coco beans used to be very valuable. For example 100 coco beans could be exchanged for a lifelong servant?! (there's a picture of the first plaque you come across at the bottom of this post, for some reason it wouldn't go where I wanted it to in this post).
Through there was a storytelling room. With rooms and houses made with mini figures of things and the people talking were little holograms. Pretty cool! Walking through to the next room we sat down and a George Cadbury hologram told us the story of Cadburys, and it’s pretty impressive. It started off as one shop and because of the good way they treat their workers, which were very different to how other people treat their workers, the company escalated. Cadburys were the first to introduce holiday pay and 5 day weeks as opposed to 7 day weeks ect. It also took them a while to figure out what to add to the chocolate to make it unique; they added milk.
Up some stairs there was a green screen where you can have a picture taken, but it looks like you doing things because of the green screen. For example you could be in a bath, or riding a Dairy Milk bar, or in our case winning a race. I bought my photo as a key ring. After
that we got a little tour of the actual factory. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in that part, I’m not sure why, but it was cool to see. When we saw the packaging happening it was incredible. There were massive reels of Dairy Milk wrappers, and the chocolate was been packaged in less than a second each. It was amazing. We saw some workers too, monitoring the machines ect, lets call them Umpa Lumpas, typically. After that we got a little tub of liquid Dairy Milk with a little spoon, yummy.
When it came to the end of the self-guided tour we conventionally ended up in a shop, where we all bought a few bits and bats. Like Cadbury World caps. And that was pretty much it for the day. I definitely learnt a lot more fun and interesting facts about chocolate and the Cadburys Company.
Random Fact of the Day: Cocoa beans used to be worth a ridiculous amount