Cadbury World, April 2025

Not gonna lie, I didn’t know Cadbury World was a thing up until a year or so back. After then, it was always on our radar as somewhere to try one day. And as it’s included in the Merlin Annual Pass, today was that one day!

We’d seen videos about Cadbury World on YouTube while we were watching some of our favourite vloggers visit. We’d seen they had some fun activities, some rides and shows that the kids would enjoy, and also chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

So, on a grey Sunday morning in April, we ventured out on the hour-and-a-half drive from Wrexham to Brimingham to visit the home of Cadbury’s chocolate. We were out early doors and managed to avoid any traffic and arrived with time to spare at the big purple building. Parking is free at Cadbury World too, which is always a cheeky bonus for us drivers.

Cadbury World opens at 9am and entry slot times are every 15 minutes. We’d managed to get an early slot for 9.30 entry, but we’d arrived a bit quicker than we’d thought so headed to the café to check that out first.

The website shows entry costs from £19 per person, but they do offer family tickets from £68 for a family of four and adult and toddler tickets from £19. Other multi attraction tickets are available , where you can combine with one of the other local Merlin attractions (Legoland Discovery Centre Birmingham, Sea Life Centre Birmingham and Warwick Castle) at a reduced rate, so worth comparing the offers on the Cadbury World website if you do plan on visiting more than one. They even do an afternoon tea package!

They had plenty of choice in the café, and not just chocolate-based treats. Well, they were mainly chocolate-based treats, but not all.

At Café Express they serve hot food like sausage rolls, pasties, hotdogs and burgers, soups, filled paninis (and yes one of them is chocolate), sandwiches and kids lunch box deals, snacks, cakes and crisps, hot and cold drinks alongside their custom ‘Freakshakes’ – including Jiggly Jelly Babies Strawberry & White Chocolate flavour, and ‘Cadbury Hero’ hot drinks like the Caramel Bunny Latte.

The Cadbury World Café serves hot meals like fish and fries, chicken goujons, 12” pizzas (including a chocolate BBQ chicken pizza with peppers and onion – nope), jacket potatoes, sides, desserts, kids’ meals, desserts, hot and cold drinks, plus the freakshakes and hero drinks.

It’s not often the kids get to have a milkshake for breakfast, but when in Rome… Elliott opted for a 9am Oreo Freakshake, while Evan had the Freddo Hot Chocolate.

Once our slot was being called on the screen, we headed to the queue and scanned in, where they gave us a bar of Cadburys Caramel and a Twirl each. That was 8 bars of chocolate in the bag before we’d even started. I know you have to pay for entry, but it’s still nice getting free stuff!

The first area of the tour is the history of chocolate, starting from the Aztec jungle and Cocoa Tree Forest, transporting cocoa beans across the sea, though to a reconstruction of the J. Cadbury Tea Dealer shop front, with interactive areas, screen-based info, some projection/set pieces and shows along the way.

Into the 2 small theatre rooms. Room 1 was a small stage with a street setup, with video displayed on a screen behind the window, narrated by Mr Cadbury about the company’s history, growth and future.

On Into room 2 where you follow the production of the chocolate on a video wall. Watch out for the shaking seats as they’re explaining how they get the cocoa beans from the shell. We weren’t expecting it, and it made us all jump!

This room featured several giant arcade style machines with screens and info, where you could select one of the available Cadburys products and you’ll see a video on how it’s produced.

In the next section, we were treated to a demonstration of how the chocolatiers temper and make the chocolate shapes, using paddles to move the chocolate around, filling the moulds, tapping out the air and the cooling processes that the chocolate has to go through!

We followed the corridor along past cabinets designed to look like they were covered in chocolate, showing products and items available in the gift shop, along to the tasting area. Here, we found the item they’d had created just for easter: the words largest Crème Egg. It was massive. Weighing 45kg and standing 91cm tall, this goliath Crème Egg would need an army to eat it, but I’m sure Evan would have a go. He loves a Crème Egg.

Along the sides of the room were a series of windows where you could watch the chocolatiers of Cadbury at work, they were making and decorating chocolate eggs and lollies on one side, whilst across was a factory room where staff would collect chocolate from a tap (imagine that in your house) and pour it into moulds and add to a slow turning machine to allow them to make the hollow shaped easter eggs, teapots and shoe shapes.

But the star of the room was the chocolate tasting counter. You were given a small pot of melted chocolate and could choose 2 toppings to add to it from fudge, Oreo crumb, white chocolate buttons, mini marshmallows or jelly babies. I opted for fudge and chocolate buttons. A classic combo.

Down the corridor with some more crazy chocolate sculptures, down the stairs and into the next area.

Through the giant whisk and into a room you’d expect to see in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, with machines int the middle and giant pipes all around. In here, there were several stations set up for you to ‘play’ with chocolate. On station one you were given some squeezy bottles and a clean table where you could write and draw using the squeezy bottle. This was a good bit of fun, trying to write your name or draw a dinosaur with melted chocolate. The next section was the tempering station, where you could use your spatula and scraper to smear the chocolate along the tables as we’d seen them do in the previous demo. Messy, but fun. And don’t eat it, it’s not ‘proper’ chocolate.

There were sinks at the end in case you made a mess!

We made our way outside into the 4D Cinema area, where you go first into a small pre-show fake elevator scene, before entering the main cinema area. The Cinema experience was fun, travelling with the Caramel Bunny and Freddo on a 3D motion simulator adventure.

Back inside for the 2^nd half of the experience and we were in the museum area. With a full model of the Bournville estate and factories, a timeline of the Cadbury’s history, walls and cabinets full of advertising, posters, magazines, packaging, toys and much more from through the years. It was fun seeing things that I remember as kid, such as some of the easter egg mugs, toy cars and promotional items.

Remember the Cadburys ad with the gorilla playing drums to the classic Phil Collins track “In The Air Tonight”? Well, they have a full size animatronic of that very ad here at Cadbury World. Press the button and watch the gorilla smashing the skins. Classic.

Duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh, tsss. “I can feel it…”

Yes, they have a ride here at Cadbury World! It’s not quite Velocicoaster at Universal Islands of Adventure, but a fun addition, nonetheless. Chocolate Quest is an interactive trackless dark ride, where you use your blaster to shoot screens and collect ingredients to make a chocolate bar. Blast the milk bottles and cocoa beans, then help get them into the machine read for production. Its mainly screens, but there are some physical sets included too, with the conveyor of dairy milk at the end. When you get off the ride, you’re also given a bar of Dairy Milk! So that was another 4 bars in the bag.

It was a fun ride to do, nothing re-rideable, but fun while you’re there. We’d never ridden its predecessor ride but hear it was a much better experience, but for what it was Chocolate Quest was good.

Chocolate. Everywhere. Not wholly unexpected in a gift shop in a chocolate factory! The shop also had some Cadbury World related souvenirs: magnets, keyrings, pens, plush toys (they were out of drumming gorilla teddies, so we’ll have to go back), t-shirts and hats. The show was mainly sweets though. Some were Cadbury World items like the chocolate shoe and teapot, but mainly it was the sort of thing you’d find in most shops at lower prices. They did have some offers on some of the lager bars and multipacks, though, and Merlin Annual Pass discount can be used here too.

After leaving the main building you can head back around to the outside section, where you’ll find a large play area for the kids to extend the fun of the day. Lots of climbing frames and slides for them to explore, and for the adults, there is a café for snacks and drinks and picnic benches for a well-earned rest!

Cadbury World has some shows for the kids too. We completely forgot to check them out on this visit, which at this time was the Mr Cadburys Parrot Easter show. It’s an indoor stage show with a host and some of the Cadbury’s characters, usually Freddo I think, to entertain the kids. We’ll catch one next time we’re there.

Aside from the Mr Cadburys Parrot show that we missed, we did spot Freddo walking across the gift shop, but we must have missed him out and about for a photo. We did however manage to catch Mr Crème Egg outside, so grabbed a photo with him! Not every day you meet an adult sized Crème Egg with arms and legs, is it?

We really enjoyed our first ever visit to Cadburys World. There was plenty to see and do and eat. Interactive fun, shows, rides, cinema, eating chocolate, playing with chocolate, history and much more. Is it somewhere you could come to regularly? Probably not unless you’re REALLY into the history of Cadburys, but as a day out once or twice a year, I’d highly recommend.

Considering it was easter though which you’d think would be one of the biggest times of year for a chocolate maker, there wasn’t much easter-y around. Nothing extra in decoration, an easter egg hunt or such. Missed a trick maybe? We’ll see if they do anything for Christmas.

It’s a short experience. We were there for around 2 hours, and didn’t feel like we particularly rushed around, so not somewhere that’s a full day experience. If you’re close by or have something else planned for the afternoon, it’s great for part of the day. For us it was a 90-minute drive, and we had ideas for the afternoon if we were done quickly. It was only a slight detour on the way home to take us to Alton Towers for a quiet Sunday afternoon!

More info and pricing? Head over to their official website at CadburyWorld.co.uk