The reviews for this nearly put me off visiting, b...

The reviews for this nearly put me off visiting, but in the end we paid our $17 each and went in.

First we met security who were not checking for weapons as much as drink products by competitors! My bag search revealed a bottle of water, which I was allowed to take in, but only when the label was removed.

We then entered a sort of holding area, and told we had to wait until the big red numbers had reached zero (about 5 minutes for us, but other people looked like they had been waiting for a while). There was a bar, and we were offered a complimentary coke. There were 4 flavours offered but when we asked what the green one was, the server looked confused and muttered something about being made with sweetener not cane sugar. All the staff were very jolly, and spoke in loud sing-song voices but we had gone off-script and he seemed uncertain.

The numbers reached zero, the double doors swung open, we were ushered into the first room (another holding area). An enthusiastic guide pointed out several artefacts from the early days of coca cola advertising while we stood in the room. He sounded rather like a tv evangelist. All the guides were very enthusiastic and jolly, I wonder if they are forced to drink vast amounts of coke every morning and are on a constant sugar/caffeine high. Personally, I just wanted a chair!

I was given a seat in the next room, a little cinema. We watched a short film, about people around the world having special times. It was very well done, a sort of longer version of the tear-inducing adverts that appear on telly at Christmas time, a nice happy advert for coca cola. I ve watched worse things.

The next part of the tour was free time so we could wander at will. I guess the early stages were more about crowd management than anything, and at busy times you might find it rather tedious and slow. It reminded me of how Disney does queues, so you re hardly aware that you re queuing. (Not quite the same amount of content at the end though I felt like Coca Cola World was thinking big, but not quite managing to deliver. )

This is a fun place, when not busy, to visit. The displays were well done and attractive, you just couldn t look too deeply. It s a place best visited after a couple of glasses of wine, then you ll love it! In many ways, you are paying simply to see adverts but those adverts are very well done!