“Immerse yourself in a world of sweet wonders.” Giant candies, river of chocolate and colorful flowers: the organizers of “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” in Glasgow (Scotland) had promised “memories that will last a lifetime” with the visit to an immersive experience based on the film Wonka with Timothée Chalamet and the work of Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, on February 24. But for the families who paid 35 pounds for the entrance ticket (41 euros), the experience turned into a fiasco, reports The Guardian.
If the website praised the visit to the “enchanted garden”, the “imagination laboratory” and the “lemonade gallery”, with lots of images generated by artificial intelligence (AI), visitors discovered a austere, almost empty hangar, dotted with a few shoddy decorations. Tarpaulins hanging on the wall, poorly assembled cardboard rainbow arch, a few giant plastic candies scattered around, actress disguised as Oompa-Loompa who seems desperate behind the steam emanating from the flasks in her chemistry workshop… The images of the shipwreck made the rounds on social networks.
“What a waste of money!” laughs yellow, a mother who came with her two children, who filmed their journey. In the photos and videos, the children seem sometimes cautious, sometimes terrified, like in front of this man dressed in a black cape and a silver mask who emerges from behind a mirror. This character, who does not appear any more in the original work than in the film, is The Unknown, “an evil chocolate manufacturer who lives in the walls”, explained on TikTok Paul Connell, who presents himself as a hired actor to play Willy Wonka.
He says he received a script of “15 pages of monologue generated by artificial intelligence” and was sorry to the families. The immersive experience was so cheap that the kids didn’t even get chocolate, or even a whole glass of soda. “We were told to give the children a piece of candy and a quarter of a glass of Tesco lemonade [a distributor brand, Editor’s note],” says Paul Connell.
While some parents were amused by the situation, others expressed their anger at having been abused in this way. The police had to come to the scene after receiving complaints, she confirms to The Guardian. The event was stopped during the day. The organizer, House of Illuminati, apologized and promised refunds, claiming to have been “let go at the last minute on several points of the event”. “Don’t wait to hear about it afterwards!” he urged in his communication before the event to encourage people to buy tickets. On this point, it was successful: the immersive experience went beyond the borders of Glasgow.
