Over the past year, my PA’s who usually support me at Leicester and in university have come to support me at home in Birmingham.
As these PA’s are from Leicester and would like me to of not visited Birmingham before, I was in charge of being their personal tour guide. I enjoy showing them around, particularly in the city centre to go shopping.
The first time, one of my PAs from Leicester came to Birmingham to support me, was in the Easter holidays.
At the time, we didn’t know whether this PA would be able to assist me in the summer and therefore, I tried to cram in everything I wanted to show her and everywhere I wanted to go with her.
One of the places where I take them is Cadbury World, it is a great place for a day out, plus there’s lots of chocolate to be had.
We had a great time and my PA loved it, I also enjoyed it a lot as it was a while since I went and the tour had been updated and things had changed.
The tour was fantastic, It was the things afterwards which put a downer on the day. As it was the Easter holidays, the tour times were in high demand, we had very limited choices as to what time we could go on the tour.
We chose the tour at 16:15. The tour takes roughly an hour and a half, which gave us very limited time to browse the Cadbury Shop as the attraction closed at 18:00.
Thankfully we arrived early for our tour and we were able to view what was in the shop so we could easily go in after the tour and buy what we wanted fairly quickly.
After gathering our things, we stepped outside and ordered our taxi to take us back to my house.
Having no trouble ordering a taxi and getting to Cadbury World, we assumed that we would have no problem getting one back.
I would say that we ordered one at 18:00 and sat for a very long time for it to arrive. As we were waiting the doors of Cadbury World shut for the day and people were passing us going home.
A number of staff members from Cadbury World pasties on the way towards their car and asked us if we needed assistance, but we reassured that we were fine and we think the taxi will be arriving shortly.
But after waiting for a while, we became a bit discouraged and phoned the taxi company up again to see whether there was any progress on the availability of the taxi to take me and my PA home.
Finding the booking, the worker on the other side of the phone told us that a ‘disabled taxi’ isn’t available yet and as soon as one becomes available.
We told them how long we had waited, but they dismissed this and said they will send one as soon as one because available.
We sighed and continued waiting, constantly checking the time. It was reaching about an hour since we had finished the tour and had been waiting for a taxi to pick us up and still we heard nothing or they have not come.
While we were waiting outside Cadbury World, a lot of the workers passed us on their way home.
They showed us their concern for how long we had been waiting and their anger at the taxi company that they hadn’t come yet.
We appreciated their concern but dismissed this as we were sure they would arrive any minute.
As the time reached the hour mark, since we first ordered the taxi, I rung my dad up and asked if he could collect us.
Luckily my dad was just at his office and had finished his meetings for the day. I was grateful for this and cancelled the taxi. I was glad that I phoned dad and was so glad that he managed to pick us up.
I was starting to worry as my phone was running out of change, due to the number of phone calls I made.
After a while, my dad phoned us to say he was at the gate, waiting. Relieved, I and my PA went to meet him.
Moving to the back of Cadbury World, we saw that dad standing by the car on the other side of the gate. We waved at him and pulled on the gate to open it, but it was locked.
We stared at the locked gate in disbelief. I can’t believe we were locked in Cadbury World.
After the disbelief wore off, I started to get really angry. After the disbelief and anger, panic started to set in.
It was now past 7pm and very late, all of the Cadbury world staff had left for the day and there was no one around. It hit me then that we
Should have been my fault when we watched members of staff leave and dismissed all of their worries for us, but I couldn’t do anything about that now.
I tried to find another way in which we could get out but there is no way to slip the side of the gates and there wasn’t another entrance in which we could see. I tried to Google a security number for Cadbury World to see if they could help us at all, but my phone I didn’t have much signal, nor did I have much phone battery after making all of those phone calls.
Thankfully my dad remembered that there was a security office nearby, near where I used to have physio, dad drove there and went to see if they could help.
Anxiously I and my PA waited for him to come back, all the time trying to see if there was another way out.
Then I saw two cars follow each through a hidden entrance into the Cadbury World car park. Dad pulled up and loaded us in and relieved we drove back to the house.
Mom, who was in London at the time this happened did not believe us at first. I guess when you hear it out loud, it does sound ridiculous and far-fetched, but it really did happen.
The following day, I found out that she has phoned up Cadbury World to get there take on what happened previous night.
While she was on the phone so it finds her to email her written complaint and then someone would get back to her as soon as possible, but mom wasn’t having this, I think she wanted to make sure she spoke to the right person who could deal with it appropriately and in a good amount of time.
This method of context and persistence worked really well as a man who worked quite high up in Cadbury World called her back almost immediately. He was really nice and sincere as he could see everything that happened on CCTV and apologised profusely about what happened.
We both appreciated this as he was honest and told us that he would look into it himself.
A short while later he phoned us up again and offered us compensation for what had happened and to tell him what we would like to do. I
was really grateful of the offer of compensation and seized the opportunity to treat my mom.
On our last mother’s day, I created a voucher in which entitled mum to an afternoon tea for two.
I was really struggling for ideas of where to take her for afternoon tea and had heard from others that the afternoon tea at Cadbury World was really good. It was a win-win situation.
We asked and enjoyed a Cadbury World tour and an afternoon tea for two!
The Life of Sophie 