As a child, I’ve always loved reading Enid Blyton books whether they were the adventure stories, boarding school tales or fantasy fables. One of the places where I’ve always wanted to go to was the Land of Goodies where everything was edible from trees that sprouted hard boiled sweets to houses made of marzipan. I’ve always thought of it as a predecessor to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. For those of us with a sweet tooth, I imagine the Land of Goodies and the Chocolate Factory is our version of porn and we all habour a desire to visit this place in real life. Who’d have thought that of all places to make this dream come true, it’d be in Beijing via the Chocolate Wonderland Park which opened last week?



Located next to the Bird’s Next Olympic Stadium, the theme park features five pavilions: the World’s Chocolate Hall, World’s Candy Hall, Wonderland Theme Hall, Sweet Experience Hall and the Sweet Gift Hall. The 215,000 square foot park also includes the Sweet Stage and Sweet Shopping Street where chocolate makers are on hand to teach children how to make their own chocolate.

The chocolate park showcases artifacts made from about 80,000 kilograms of real chocolate including miniatures of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, as well as life-size chocolate replicas of the Terra Cotta Warriors. The park will stay open until April when the weather will be too warm for the chocolate. Come January 2011, it will reopen with all new displays.

Now my question is, when they dismantle the displays, will they hold an all you can eat buffet?