Sexy Oompa Loompa and AI-generated 'gibberish' turn Wonka experience into viral joke
It was meant to be a magi‐ cal, chocolate-filled, im‐ mersive journey into "pure imagination."
Instead, the much-hyped Willy Wonka and the Choco‐ late Factory Experience in Glasgow, Scotland, last weekend left children in tears, parents demanding re‐ funds and social media in stitches, as photos, videos and memes from the event went viral.
In a series of TikTok videos, Paul Connell, the ac‐ tor hired to play Willy Wonka at the event organized by the London-based House of Illu‐ minati, said he felt for any‐ one who bought tickets to the "fiasco." His job had been to recite from a 15-page script sent to him that he called berish."
"People were expecting a magical chocolate experi‐ ence, and got me in a top hat in a dirty warehouse in Glas‐ gow," Connell said in a video posted Wednesday.
"We were told to hand out one jelly bean per child," he said of the event, which promised to be an "adven‐ ture in every bite," featuring "sweet delicacies to choco‐ latey wonders."
Photos, videos and ac‐ counts from the event posted online show a very different experience from what was advertised.
British news agency SWNS shared pictures of a sparsely decorated warehouse, fea‐ turing a few mushrooms and a rainbow arch. A TikTok user claiming to be an actor hired "AI-generated gib‐ to be an Oompa Loompa at the event shared a video of the warehouse, writing in the description that "there's very little chocolate in the choco‐ late factory."
Jenny Fogarty, the actor behind that TikTok video, told the Daily Mail she and two other female actors were giv‐ en "sexy" Oompa Loompa costumes to wear for the children's event.
"It was horrendously em‐ barrassing. We didn't want to walk out, just because I feel like that would make it even worse," Fogarty said.
"There were supposed to be bubble machines, there were supposed to be projec‐ tors, there was supposed to be so much more that was promised."
Another video posted to X shows an actor popping up from behind a mirror dressed all in black, face cov‐ ered in a lifeless silver mask, as another actor says, "it's the Unknown!" In the back‐ ground, a child can be heard whining "no!"
Police were eventually called to the event, as angry parents demanded refunds for the 35 pound ($60 Cdn) tickets and children cried with disappointment, the BBC reported.
In a post on Facebook Wednesday, House of Illumi‐
nati said it wouldn't be hold‐ ing "any other event in the foreseeable future."
"This was an event gone wrong."
A Facebook group set up for people seeking refunds has more than 3,000 mem‐ bers.
#WheresKate?
The Wonka experience played out over the weekend but picked up speed online on Wednesday as it twinned with another trending social media topic: conspiracy theo‐ ries about the whereabouts of Catherine, Princess of Wales, who has been recov‐ ering from abdominal surg‐ ery and has not been seen publicly since Christmas Day.
As the hashtag #WheresKate and the terms "Kate Middleton," "Willy Won‐ ka" and "Wonka experience" all took off on X at once, many users joked they were, somehow, connected.
Catherine is not expected to return to public duties un‐ til after Easter, and Bucking‐ ham Palace has been tightlipped about her condition. In late January, the palace said in a statement that she was making "good progress" and was back at home in Windsor.
On Thursday, a spokesperson for the princess made a statement to several media outlets to dispel the rumours, saying she's "doing well."
"We were very clear from the outset that the Princess of Wales was out until after Easter and Kensington Palace would only be providing up‐ dates when something was significant," the spokesper‐ son told People magazine.
A brief history of disap‐ pointment
Of course, the Willy Won‐ ka event isn't the first time people have been outraged over events that didn't live up to the hype.
There's the infamous Fyre Festival of 2017, promoted as a luxury music festival bigger than Coachella on an island in the Bahamas. In reality, festival-goers arrived to find that the acts had cancelled, and their food and accom‐ modations consisted of sand‐ wiches and leaky tents.
In 2020, children were again left disappointed - this time by Santa. A mall in Ade‐ laide, Australia, promised that "Santa's Winter Village" would include a snowy trail through an enchanted forest, a Polar Express train and Santa's workshop.
According to ABC, it actu‐ ally consisted of "a sleigh at‐ tached to a mobility scooter, a foam mat path surrounded by paper lights, a cardboard hut decorated with dispos‐ able plates and a maze, made from crowd fencing and covered in tinsel."
A social media user at the time called it "the Fyre Festi‐ val of kid's Santa events."
Speaking of Christmas, Canada put itself on the map of blunders last December, even making it into a seg‐ ment on The Tonight Show, for an anti-climactic Christ‐ mas tree lighting ceremony.
The ceremony in Orillia, Ont., was meant to kick off the magic of the holiday sea‐ son. Instead, after the crowd counted down, only the trunk was lit, and a viral video cap‐ tured the moment.
WATCH | Canada's worst tree: