Chaotic off-brand Willy Wonka pop-up exhibit ends with police intervention
An immersive faux-Charlie And The Chocolate Factory event in Scotland has become the Internet's new favorite scam
“Willy’s Chocolate Experience,” the knock-off Wonka immersive event in Glasgow, was indeed a world of pure imagination—if you were imagining Fyre Festival-meets-DashCon. This Scottish scam is going viral for how utterly ridiculous it turned out to be, and how upset attendees were when it turned out to be nothing like it was advertised. In fact, police were called to the scene as disgruntled ticket holders sought refunds for the disappointing experience, which was abruptly canceled midway through the day, according to BBC News.
The event was hosted by “House of Illuminati,” which made a lot of promises about what “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” would look like. (“Any resemblance to any character, fictitious or living, is purely coincidental,” a disclaimer on the event website reads. “This experience is in no way related to the Wonka franchise, which is owned by the Warner Bros. company.”) Exhibits supposedly included “an enchanted garden, with giant sweets, vibrant blooms, mysterious looking sculptures, and magical surprises,” the trademarked “Imagination Lab,” which “invites you on a surreal journey where the boundaries between reality and fantasy harmoniously merge, resulting in an enchanting and visually striking encounter,” and the Twilight Tunnel, “a dimly lit passage adorned with captivating projections, enigmatic sounds, and surprising turns.”
Except the website had no pictures of previous events held by House of Illuminati, and instead features images and text that is clearly generated by artificial intelligence. A graphic for the Twilight Tunnel teases “enigemic sounds” and “ukxpected twits.” Another graphic advertising “encherining entertainment” lists spectacles such as “Catgacating,” “Carchy tuns,” and “a pasadise of sweet teats.”
Obviously, when the poor Charlie And The Chocolate Factory enthusiasts showed up at Box Hub Warehouse, the event looked nothing like what the event description suggested. Instead, they were confronted with a sad-looking, mostly empty warehouse with a bouncy house and some ramshackle decorations. Jack Proctor, a dad who took his kids to the event, told STV News that “we stepped inside to find a disorganized mini-maze of randomly placed oversized props, a lackluster candy station that dispersed one jelly bean per child, and a terrifying chrome-masked character that scared many of the kids to tears.”
