Are you a fan of Willy Wonka? That seems unimportant if you were at a Willy Wonka-themed event in Glasgow. The event turned out to be so dire, so terrifying, and so extremely unsettling that the attendees actually called the police.
Last month, Glasgow, Scotland, hosted an unlicensed event called Willy’s Chocolate Experience, which was based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The objective of this event was to provide an ‘immersion experience’ into the world of Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory. It was promoted with AI images and advertisements that promised an ‘enchanted’ day at the Candy Man’s factory.
Ultimately, as we now know, it turned out to be something seriously disappointing. Families shelled out more than $40 for a ticket to explore a warehouse full of cheaply decorated sets, actors who looked disheveled, a terrible script, and worst of all, no chocolate! On the internet, a thousand new jokes and memes surfaced after angry attendees called the cops.
Now, Billy Coull, the man in charge of organizing the event, is coming out to lament how much this debacle has “ruined” his life.
The Sad Story of Willy Wonka Experience’s Organizer
The director of the House of Illuminati group, Billy Coull, who orchestrated the Willy Wonka-themed event in Glasgow, Scotland, was featured in a documentary that chronicled the entire episode. In the interview, he bemoaned the situation and explained why everything went wrong. He began claiming that he had been getting “hundreds and hundreds” of hate mail since the catastrophe.
Coull responded in the Channel 5 special Wonka: The Scandal That Rocked Britain, which aired on March 16.
“My life is ruined. I have lost my friends. I’ve lost the love of my life. I was made out to be the face of all evil. And genuinely, that’s really not the case.”
He continued by outlining the errors that caused the event to fail, such as scheduling an excessively large venue and ordering projection equipment that was never delivered:
“I was gutted. But I believed that we could push on.”
Coull also referred to his reactions to the early shutdown of the event—during which he angrily snapped at disgruntled patrons—as the “worst versions” of himself. He continued:
“The last thing I wanted to see was children to be upset.”
Glasgow’s Willy’s Chocolate Experience went viral in late February due to its fraudulent-looking advertising that contradicted the actual event’s conclusion. House of Illuminati’s website advertised “enchanting environments”, “interactive adventures”, and “sweet delights and confections” as part of the £35 (approximately $44) ticket price.
The attendees were let down by the poorly decorated warehouse, the sparse candy available for the kids, and the actors who read lines that appeared to have been generated by AI. Coull eventually explained that, even though he used AI to run his scripts, the main objective was to make sure all of the lines were spelled correctly and consistently.
Billy Coull Had Hoped For A ‘Joyful, Happy’ Event
The event was supposed to run the entire weekend of February 24 and 25, but a few hours after it opened, attendees demanded their money back, so the police were called. Shortly after, the encounter ended, and the House of Illuminati formally apologized. “Today has been a very stressful and frustrating day for many, and for that, we are truly sorry”, the message began with an apology (we learned from Time).
Billy Coull accepted the repercussions and admitted (via Wonka: The Scandal That Rocked Britain):
“I was sick to the pit of my tummy. I was hoping for an event that would be joyful, happy. I wanted people to experience happiness.”
Attendees and the staff members who worked there came together in a Facebook group to air grievances and devise a resolution. Jenny Fogarty (hired to play an Oompa Loompa) told The Scotsman that her costume arrived an hour early and that she was given a fifteen-page script to read the night before the event.
“The wigs were very cheap. We were just handed an Amazon box that probably arrived that morning.”
According to The Mirror, the disastrous Willy Wonka Experience will be made into a stage musical in the US. Leading Broadway songwriters and producers have disclosed that they are writing a musical parody of the viral phenomenon.
