The posters for the event were done in AI and vastly overpromised what attendees could expect to see at the venue. When we say customers were disappointed, we really mean it: police were called.
The whole thing was less of an “immersive experience” and more of a very sparsely decorated warehouse that people paid £35 (NZ$73) per person to visit.
Kids were reportedly in tears during their visit which, one could argue, made it all the more Willy Wonka-esque.
The event opened on February 24, in a warehouse in Glasgow, and has since been cancelled.
Why did it go viral?
The Willy Wonka Experience in Glasgow used AI-generated posters in what has been (accurately) described as vastly misleading advertising. The “expectation v reality” type photos, showing the poster next to actual photos of the venue has gifted us internet users many, many memes, uniting us all in a time of need.
Here’s a list of things attendees were promised, according to the event’s website, which described it as “the whimsical of Willy’s Chocolate Experience!, a place where chocolate dreams become reality”: an enchanted garden, an Imagination Lab, a Twilight Tunnel, and captivating entertainment. Here’s a list of things people got instead: a sparsely-decorated warehouse, one or two jelly beans and a quarter of a cup of lemonade.
The website for the event is also riddled with typos and appears to have been written by ChatGPT, in yet another cautionary tale of letting AI do the job.
Okay, show us some of the memes.
Oh, with pleasure.
Sounds awful. Has anyone involved in it spoken about it?
Yes. Two of the actors hired for the event have spoken about it. To be clear, these actors were not involved in organising it and were as shocked about it as everyone else.
In an interview with US-based Vulture, Kirsty Paterson, the woman who performed the role of the now-viral Oompa Loompa said that unexpectedly going viral “has been quite a lot” for her.
Actor Paul Conell, who played Willy Wonka at the event, has posted about the experience on TikTok and revealed further details of the fiasco, including that he had to learn “15 pages... of AI-generated gibberish” in just one day for the role.
He also added 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 said.
He also said, in another video, that the actors saw how dismal it all was but thought the event would go ahead with or without them so they stuck around to try to make the best of it.
The director of the company who organised the event, House of Illuminati, has apologised, telling STV news they were “shocked 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 reportedly been refunded.
Funny memes aside, what has the fallout been like?
There’s been quite a bit of it but one could argue a well-run event would not have had this much publicity. In fact, people can’t get enough of this whole fiasco, which has been compared to the Fyre Festival, but for children.
A petition was started yesterday to “Reopen the Beloved Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience” and it has already collected more than 4000 signatures. The people want this. The people need this.
Come on, was it really that bad?
Yes.
