I really, REALLY hate to have to do this with a stomach full of delicious chocolate of every…read moreconceivable variety, but I must be honest, and let the cynic within speak...
I went with a group, and did not have to pay admission. Admission is ~15 Euro for an Adult.
For a non-chocaholic, without small chocolate-loving children, this is a bit excessive. Admission to the edible zoo (a petting zoo really) is included, but we did not go there.
*** There is a TL;DR / SUMMARY at the bottom...
Anyways,
You start in a room with candy-coated popcorns, worms (yes, WORMS) with sauce... a window into the factory, and a picture on the wall with a bunch of fully nude people (mostly women) lying in a grassy field... (what is the point of this?)
Then you go into the theater, where you have undergarments rationing above the screen - as the owner put it, for no reason.
You see two short films (or one two part film). I will summarize:
The owner is a really nice, slightly eccentric family man, who loves his family, workers, animals, the environment, and chocolate. He buys only the very best chocolate from another really nice man in a really nice place in Belize. This partnership ensures an exchange of fair-trade, organic cocoa for a good sum of money (because the costs are really high - as the two nice men are shown sitting together adding up costs)
You then have an option to take an audio guide (all options I believe will take an hour and a half to hear) - I did not listen to very much...
You get to see a large part of this building, where there are machines, labs, storage, and so on. It seems, however, that the machines are there for our benefit. They were not in use, workers were nowhere to be seen. And, the machines were awfully clean. I am not saying they have to be dirty, but they did look like they have not been used...
Maybe the audio-guide explains how the chocolate is made, but without seeing machines running and the intricacies involved in the production, it is not the same.
You really do get to try a tremendous amount of chocolate though, through all stages of production, of all varieties, and get to taste sugar (and smell other ingredients) that go into at least one variety of chocolate.
They have it in drums, containers, chocolate-bar-breaking machines, conveyors, more drums. Just when you think you've had all ~300 varieties, there is another room with stuff to try.
You are given a spoon to try stuff, but no way to wash it so when you try a certain chocolate, you won't contaminate your next tasting (don't worry, you dispense chocolate into your spoon, there is no dipping or contamination of general chocolate "tub") Also, they say you should have sips of water to clear your palate... but water is seldom provided.
There is a station where you can choose a chocolate to dissolve in hot milk to make your own hot chocolate. It is delicious, included in admission, but you are allowed only one, and I don't think you can buy at the "bar" either...
That's not it, there is more tasting afterward.
Now you enter the gift-shop... guess what? More tasting!
Here you can buy all the delicious stuff you have just tasted going through the "factory".
When you exit, you have a nearby Bathroom, with Bose speakers playing tropical sounds, and a urinal that looks like a fountain built into the wall... and is a tremendous waste of water I think.
If you left your stuff in the coat check, now you have to make a short walk back there. There is another staircase outside that must be climbed during the tour.
If you want to try more chocolate that you dreamt of, and then buy it
You don't get to keep the spoons
TL;DR/Summary:
1. "Factory tour" exists only to advertise by luring people to taste everything and then hopefully buy something
2. Barely about chocolate production, I didn't see a single machine running or person working in the building we were in.
3. Chocoholics' and children's dream
