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From: "Gary Webber" <gary@widow.ftech.co.uk> Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett Subject: [F] Cadbury World meet Date: 9 May 1998 17:07:11 GMT Message-ID: <01bd7b75$50e1b040$790dc8c3@widow.frontier> Just a quick note on the Cadburyworld meet. After seeing the cute Chocolaste bean village and all the cute beans ski-ing etc, I for one will never let a piece of chocolate touch my lips again. I'll just shovel it down wholesale....... Thanks Carol for organising it...Buglepants has consumed a weeks worth of chocolate at one sitting...hyperactivity follows very shortly. I am in the process of videocapping the few minutes of tape I took..anyone wanting samples e-mail me. Sorry to have had to cut and run....Bugles demanded seeing to. Gary The Hunter From: Carol <carol@wibble.org> Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett Subject: [F] Cadbury World meet - the report Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 22:38:09 +0100 Message-ID: <35561E41.1FD1@wibble.org> Hmmm, how to start this meet report.... Veni Vidi Vomiti perhaps.... although I don't think any of us actually ate that much chocolate and even Suzi only felt ill cos of the chilli in the drinking stuff. For me the whole 'cadbury' experience started fairly early in the day when we first filled the car with three over-excited children and set out for Birmingham... the journey was uneventful although we were passed by the delightful Dar-orang (Darren) who didn't even bother waving at the time but told us he'd seen us when he finally found his way out of Spagetti junction and into CadburyWorld. On arrival, we quickly discovered that no-one else had been quite so eager to get there as we had so the kids made use of the children's play area (after battling their way through the hundreds of Brownies and Boy Sprouts who had got there first) and we all had something to eat while the clock ticked round to the time we'd said we would arrive. It was at about this time that other people started arriving. Actually working out which of the people were 'ours' was quite a challenge in such a busy location, Angua (and her entourage) was identifed first because she was the person wearing a Pratchett t-shirt. Although I will admit to feeling a bit nervous about acosting her to begin with. Darren was spotted next - and here we had the advantage that we'd met before so the recognition bit wasn't quite so tricky. A bit of milling around happened, during which we underwent 'The Cadbury Experience' which turned out to be looking at some old photographs and reading some background information and going 'wow' at some old chocolate boxes and other normal museum-ish behaviour. This was followed by the now traditional afpfamily meet search for coffee at which point we commandeered the benches outside the cafe and started to amass numbers. Dave Le Good, Roland and Eric (I hope I've got the spelling right there) arrived next and were unfortunate enough to recognise us from previous experience so they added to the throng. More coffee was purchased and then the Warwick-mobile arrived in the carpark complete with both Mr & Mrs Warwick (Paul & Johanna) Darran & Nicky and the One True Relative (Thomas Pratchett). I seem to remember some hugging going on at this point, but I could be wrong. After a while a Gid was spotted which naturally meant a Suzi was not far off - more hugging took place. Which could well be how Gary (Hunter), Mandie and Buglepants managed to guess that we were indeed the afp-family contigent. We were still missing quite a few people, so I wandered over to a table full of likely looking strangers (who fortunately turned out to be Tim Bagot & friends) and wrested some money from their hands. People did more drinking coffee and eating cafe type food then the Family Vom (Hamster, Kayla, David, Katrina, Kayla's parents and Siggi) joined us in the company of the ever-popular Unca Muppie. This meant we were finally all gathered and could go 'do chocolate'. The actual tour started with a very nice man handing us a bar of curly-wurly each (I'm sure they used to be a lot bigger...), then there was a walk-through history of chocolate which started with the Aztecs (and their delicious spicey drink chocolatl), went on to the Cadbury Brothers and then told you all about Cadbury's Dairy Milk. >From there it was past the nice lady giving out Fuse bars and up stairs toward the packaging plant, then past the equally nice lady with the bars of Dairy Milk and on into the packaging plant itself - here another nice man played you a video and explained how to recognise the chocolate tasters before sending us on our way to watch bars and bars of dairy milk flow past us and dissappear into neat little boxes. The next stage was past the big chair from the adverts and on into the wonderful CADABRA where you ride a 'beanmobile' past the cute scenarios featuring a wonderful assortment of 'bean' characters in all sorts of situations - we particualarly liked the burglar bean and the choccie copper although all the beans were wonderful. Next it was in to the demonstration area where they handmake chocolates like they used to in the 1930s - yet another very very very nice man let us have one to sample Mmmmm! mmm! Mmmmmm!. This is also the part where they decorate beanieplaques - inevitably one was created with the legend "*bounce* *boing* *vom*". From here it was on to the Fantasy Factory, passing first through the advertising bit where you could discover how tall you were in fudge bars (I was 54), see how the coronation street in chocolate was created and watch various adverts from the 1950s onwards. In the fantasy factory itself you got to watch the cute little beanies get roasted, smashed, melted, bubbled, stirred etc etc etc - this bit had lots of buttons to press so we played for a while... Finally, you passed through Planet Astro and out into the chocolate shop where plenty of spending happened. Then it was back to the play area for those who arrived later to have a play on the Roses Slide and a scramble over the Creme Egg climbing frame or to wander sedately round the Cadbury Experience before heading off home or on to Gid & Suzi's Eurovision meet. All in all, I think it went rather well. The weather was georgeous, the kids behaved and we got to eat lots of chocolate... Mmmmmmmmm! <insert quotes here> Carol -- Carol Willis http://www.afawcett.demon.co.uk/carol/
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