Chaotic off-brand Willy Wonka pop-up exhibit ends with police intervention

“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.”

House of Illuminati’s “director” Billy Coull took a “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” approach in his response to the controversy. “I’m really shocked that the event had fallen short of the expectations of people on paper,” he said to STV News. “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. There was every intention to hold the event, from the pictures, despite not being in the best light hopefully you’ll be able to see that there was every intention to hold the event. Unfortunately there was unforeseen circumstances and the event didn’t come to light. “These issues were technological in nature. We had ordered a holographic paper that didn’t arrive on time. The holographic technology in itself is absolutely fabulous technology and unfortunately there was a delay in postage.”

Would holographic paper have salvaged “the unsalvageable,” as Proctor described Willy’s Chocolate Experience? Hard to imagine so. Most of the members of the newly launched “House of Illuminati Scam” Facebook group have labeled Coull a scammer, identifying him as the author of a number of possibly-AI assisted books posted on Amazon. “I paid for Willy Wonka and got Billy Bonkers,” one attendee posted to the group. “Having now seen the posts on this page and stories about the event organiser, it’s clear the guy is a sandwich short of a picnic and has some sort of pathological disorder.”

According to the BBC, attendees were given “advice” from police on the scene—however far that might take them. Coull has promised refunds for all, but another attendee told the outlet that she’d heard “absolutely nothing” from the company and that she was “not very hopeful” she would get her money back. “Tickets are not refundable,” the event website states. “The terms and conditions of non-refundable tickets are agreed upon prior to purchase.”