Perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise that the UK, home of the disastrous £85 Grinch, was recently home to another chaotic child-oriented event. Enter: Willy's Chocolate Experience in Glasgow, an experience based on the children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which has recently been adapted into a Wonka movie starring Timothée Chalamet.
In a series of wild blunders that have rocked the Internet, the £35 event — which advertised "an enchanted garden, with giant sweets, vibrant blooms, mysterious looking sculptures, and magical surprises" on its site, along with "mind-expanding projections, optical marvels, and exhibits that transport you into the realm of creativity" — appears to have delivered a significantly different experience than some of its customers expected.
Where customers may have expected a Roald Dahl-worthy bounty of cocoa-based delights in the supposedly "immersive" event, they were actually given a couple of sweets and some fizzy drink in a near-empty warehouse, one customer (Stuart Sinclair) said.
Parent's reactions ranged from hysterical laughter to rage; someone called the police on the event; a Facebook group has been formed; and image after Godforsaken image of the cursed event has gone viral online.
The viral video revealed that the actor, who referred to himself as "Timothy Charlatan," had to learn "15 pages... of AI-generated gibberish" in just a day for the role. He shared that one of his "favourite" lines included "there is a man who lives here. His name is not known. So we call him The Unkown. The Unknown is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls."
“The script had a moment where I was supposed to suck up The Unknown with a giant vacuum cleaner," he added. "I asked about that, and the people running the event were like, 'we don't know what to do with that, just improvise that.' I can't improvise a vacuum cleaner."
He also shared that actors were asked to hand out "one jelly bean and a quarter of a cup of Tesco's own-brand lemonade per child" at the event. "No chocolate — there was no chocolate to be had at this chocolate factory," he added.
In a later video, Paul added that "we all got together as actors, and we were like, 'look, it is unlikely that we're gonna get paid for this event. However, they're gonna put this event on with or without us... let's just stick around, let's do our best to make sure the children have some kind of experience.”
After eventually getting his lunch break, which he spent in his car "star[ing] into the void," Paul says he came back to carnage. "There was shouting, people were filming things on their phone, there [were] things [that had been] broken, things [had been] stolen," he alleged.
Also, might I interject at this point: I haven't seen anyone talk about the company's SEO headline, which reads, "Willy Choclate Experience [sic]."
The creator of the event and director of the company behind it, House of Illuminati, told STV news, “I’m really shocked that the event had fallen short of the expectations of people on paper. My vision of the artistic rendition of a well-known book didn’t come to fruition. For that I am absolutely truly and utterly sorry.” All customers have been refunded.
