The premise of the event was that Real Life families were being given a tour of the wondrous factory of a famed whimsical illustrious chocolatier, "Willy McDuff", led by himself and his green-haired assistants, the "Wonkidoodles". But they come into conflict when his nemesis, an "evil chocolate maker" known only as The Unknown who lives in the factory's walls, manifests himself, leading to a climactic battle.
The show's website touted "an array of themed rooms like the Enchanted Garden and the Vision Room and Lemonade Gallery, each offering unique and delightful surprises. Not only will you witness the magic of chocolate, but you'll also have the chance to taste it! Prepare for a journey filled with delicious treats, enchanting adventures, and moments worth capturing." Instead, what it delivered was a few sparse dioramas spread across a grungy warehouse, decorated with rainbows, lollipops and candy canes that looked like they'd been swiped from a parade float, a "factory" consisting of a glass chemistry set on a table, loads of unintentional Nightmare Fuel, and "rivers of sparkling lemonade" that turned out to be a table of half-filled plastic cups of store-bought lemonade. Oh, and no chocolate; young patrons each received one or two jelly beans and a quarter-cup of lemonade. With an atmosphere that more resembled a job fair than a luscious confectionery wonderland, it quickly devolved into chaos, with crying children and angry parents (who'd paid £35—about 45 USD—for tickets), and police were called out to investigate. Coull closed things down and refunded tickets (though the actors hired for the show were left in limbo over whether they'd get paid the £500 they were promised).
The show made global headlines, getting frequently likened to "a Fyre festival for kids", but as more details emerged, the absolute comedy of errors surrounding the show delighted social media, especially once photos and videos of the shoddy spectacle began circulating. Also, the show's website
, a farrago of wild AI-generated art and breathless prose, was widely perused and dissected. The show's cast began granting interviews, admitting that the whole thing was just as bizarre and darkly comedic for them as participants as it was for everyone else hearing about it. The Unknown's performer, Felicia Dawkins, has since found employment at the London Dungeon, reprising her character there no less.
The show's script has been posted online by Gizmodo and TMZ (among others), though the performers say that Coull ultimately had them toss it and told them to improvise.
Cartchy tuns, exarserdray lollipops, a pasadise of sweet topes.:
- Ambiguous Syntax: The notion of The Unknown being an "evil chocolate maker" has led to tongue-in-cheek debate over whether that means the character is an evildoer who happens to make chocolate, and/or if the chocolate itself is somehow evil.
- The Artifact: In the script, The Unknown is a speaking role ("with a voice both smooth and sinister") and is presented as a cartoonish Pantomime antagonist for Willy McDuff. After the script was dropped, there was no longer any explanation for who the character was supposed to be, so The Unknown was reduced to a menacing figure in a mask and black robe who was now scaring children for absolutely no reason. One clip shows Willy (as portrayed by Paul Connell) mentioning something "full of scary faces that can scare The Great Unknown", hinting that the actors came up with the idea to have the kids defeat The Unknown by making scary faces of their own.
- Audience Participation:
- The most bizarre feature of the leaked script is that it includes stage directions and even dialogue for the audience, dictating exactly how they are supposed to respond to each beat of the story. This was considered the "smoking gun" when accusations of the script being AI-generated came up.(The audience, now relieved and rejuvenated by the whimsical turn of events, follows Willy into the Bubble and Lemonade Room, laughter and chatter filling the air once more, as they immerse themselves in the joyous, bubbly wonderland.)
- Judging by one clip from the event, one aspect not in the AI-generated script that was added by the actors was to have the children in the audience defeat The Unknown by making scary faces of their own.
- The most bizarre feature of the leaked script is that it includes stage directions and even dialogue for the audience, dictating exactly how they are supposed to respond to each beat of the story. This was considered the "smoking gun" when accusations of the script being AI-generated came up.
- Canon Foreigner: The Experience invented an Arch-Enemy for Willy, a black-clad rival chocolate maker referred to as The Unknown, who wants to steal Willy's "Anti-Graffiti Gobstopper".The Unknown: Yes, you will assist me in acquiring this precious sweet. Together, we shall rewrite the rules of cleanliness and order.
- Captain Ersatz: According to the AI-generated script, the characters aren't supposed to be the actual Willy Wonka characters, but thinly-veiled, renamed substitutes; it's unclear whether these names were Coull's creation or yet another AI eccentricity. The actors didn't seem very much in the know about this, and tend to simply call their characters by their official counterparts' names in interviews. Not helping matters is that one of the AI art pieces on the website somehow features Gene Wilder as Wonka from the 1971 adaptation.
- The script reveals that, instead of Willy Wonka, the star of the show is legendary candy maker Willy McDuff.
- But, oddly, despite avoiding the name "Wonka" for Willy, the Oompa Loompas were conspicuously renamed the Wonkidoodles.
- A giant chocolate bar decoration is styled after the Wonka Bars in the 1971 adaptation, complete with the same font, but it simply says "Chocolate Bar".
- Even the superficially out-of-place Unknown, a fellow candy-maker whose endgame is to steal one of McDuff's inventions, fits the role of Wonka's jealous business rivals like Slugworth. The Unknown "living in the walls" even resembles Slugworth's "paintings on a brick wall"-based Disney Acid Sequence rendition of "I Want it Now" in the Tom and Jerry adaptation.
- Card-Carrying Villain: The Unknown plans to use the Anti-Graffiti Gobstopper specifically to cause chaos.
- Crappy Carnival: Despite its lofty ambitions to provide a magical, Willy Wonka-ish experience, the whole thing ended up as a prime example of this.
- Cross-Cast Role: The Unknown is referred to with male pronouns in the script, but the performer in the role in the viral video where the character emerges from behind a mirror was a 16-year-old girl.
- Distaff Counterpart: The Wonkidoodles are all female, as opposed to the male-only Oompa Loompas.
- Eccentric A.I.: The show's promotional material and script appear to have been AI-generated, and are all utterly bizarre, with spelling and grammar errors, Purple Prose, outright gibberish and strange concepts like a wall-dwelling villain. The script specifically contains weird oddities including writing stage directions for the audience, and demanding a level of action and special effects that would be impressive for a professional big-budget theatre show, nevermind a simple walk-through attraction.
- Funetik Aksent: The infamous reference to "cartchy tuns" on the website seems like it's just a transcription of "catchy tunes" as spoken in a heavy Scottish burr, leading to speculation that, besides the many A.I.-generated spelling errors, there was also some faulty speech-to-text involved that had trouble parsing a Glaswegian accent.
- Inside a Wall: The Unknown is said to live in the walls of the factory, which got represented in the Experience by the actress playing the character hiding behind a full-length mirror then popping out at the appropriate moment.
- Lovely Assistant: The Oompa Loompa equivalents got turned into this, being played by attractive young women. Said women noted that their costumes looked more like something for a "hen party"note than for a performance for kids; as can be seen in the footage, they mostly wore their regular clothes beneath said costumes.
- The Mockbuster: It was intended as a completely unauthorized replication of the Willy Wonka universe, being held only two months after the release of Wonka. Even its logo uses the font based on the 1971 adaptation's logo.
- Non-Indicative Name: Despite it being named Willy's Chocolate Experience, no chocolate is involved outside of an oversized decoration of a chocolate bar.
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: A common pitfall of generative AI artwork is that the generators struggle to spell and display letters, something that is on full display on the event's website:
- The main digital flyer promises that the Experience will feature "encherining entertainment", "catgacating", "cartchy tuns", "exarserdray lollipops" and a "pasadise of sweet teats".
- Another flyer for the Twilight Tunnel is pretty much unintelligible, promising "lightng", "dim tight", "dippractions", "vivue sounds", "ungirevel", "emprety", "dimdicli", "twdrding", "dodjection", "enigemic sounds", "sviide", and "ukxepcted twits".
- Sexy Whatever Outfit: The actresses playing the Wonkidoodles were given sexy Oompa Loompa outfits.
- Somebody Named "Nobody": A truly wild example with the show's villain.Willy McDuff: My dear adventurers, we stand on the precipice of a discovery most wondrous and perilous. For within these ancient walls lurks a tale not yet told, of an evil chocolate maker known only as the Unknown.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Willy claims to have this ability in the script.Willy: Now, a crucial question—does anyone here speak fluent Squirrel? No? Shame, they're the best conversationalists in the Garden. But worry not, for I am a certified interpreter of Squirrel, Duck, and on special occasions, Bashful Tulip.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Possibly the best-known clip from the event is of The Unknown emerging from behind a mirror, dressed in all-black robes and a creepy mask, to greet some very audibly terrified children. The character could've perhaps been fine in a different context, but the event being advertised as a wholesome family day-out, the script that would've properly given warning about The Unknown's existence being jettisoned, and the lack of separation between the performer and the families they are interacting with, makes it easy to see why it wasn't the best idea to keep them around. At least at some point, the actors seemed to have gotten the idea to have the kids themselves defeat The Unknown by making scary faces.
- Tyop on the Cover:
- The title header for the event's website misspells the event's name as "Willy Choclate Experience."
- Because AI generators struggle with coherent text, the website flyer touts the Experience's "cartchy tuns" and "pasadise of sweet teats". It also manages the amazing feat of an ambiguous typo — it's not clear if "performances" was wrongly rendered as "perforrmances" or "perfornmances", thanks to the letters getting bunched together.
- The Imagination Lab image is spelled Imagnation Lab in the AI image.
- Very False Advertising: The show's webpage features incredible vistas of candy and chocolate... which are all very, very blatantly AI-generated images (complete with obvious misspellings, as AI generators aren't very good with text at this point).
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The Unknown, a figure clad in a black robe and silver mask who was "an evil chocolate maker lives in the walls", was meant to be the sinister antagonist of the otherwise-whimsical experience.
