Trivia / Willy's Chocolate Experience

• Absurdly Short Production Time: All signs point to the event being thrown together on an extremely short notice. The website was registered on the 22nd January for an event held on the 24th February, with most of the promotional artwork and text, along with the script, being outsourced to generative AI tools. The show's staff have suggested that they were given a day or two at most to prepare for the event, with costumes being delivered to them last second and there being virtually no rehearsal time. The scenery used at the event, despite the production company implying that it would be bespoke and handmade by them (even using stolen pictures of an artist assembling a sculpture on the event's Instagram; the artist was later identified and confirmed she had no involvement), was instead traced to the inventory of a local prop rental company, indicating that not much time had been spent on that either.
• Creator Backlash: All the actors who spoke of the event admitted to how disastrous it was. In particular, Willy McDuff actor Paul Connell stated that he felt he was miscast in the role and that "people who wanted Timothée Chalamet [...] got Timothée Charlatan".
• Referenced by...:
  • The February 27, 2024 episode of After Midnight featured a segment where the panelists poked fun at it ("The asbestos tastes like asbestos!" "Instead of bringing your beloved grandparent, you have to bring your creepy uncle").
  • The March 2, 2024 episode of Saturday Night Live had a Parody Commercial for a pair of interior designers (played by guest host Sydney Sweeney and cast member Chloe Troast) who specialize in tacky decorations for Airbnb houses, and they also cite "The Wonka Experience in Glasgow" as one of their previous jobs.
  • The March 6, 2024 episode of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering did a segment directly about the show.
  • The March 9, 2024 comic of Square Root of Minus Garfield has Garfield looking for chocolate. He stops by Willy's Chocolate Experience, then exits again looking for chocolate, referencing that the event actually had none to hand to participants.
  • The Jenny Everywhere short story A World of Pure Unimagination parodies the experience, featuring Jenny discovering the Illuminati were behind it, referencing the real world organisers the "House of Illuminati".
  • One segment of AI Sponge Rehydrated has Mr. Krabs rebrand Krabby Land to a "Willy Wonka theme park" and create A.I.-Generated Artwork for it.
  • It became the subject of a Channel 5 documentary titled Wonka: The Scandal That Rocked Britain.
  • Freddie Highmore, guesting on the April 9, 2024 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, did a Role Reprise in a sketch that purported to be a trailer for a sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the sketch, a grown-up Charlie Bucket offers some lucky kids a tour of the factory, which turns out to be the Chocolate Experience, complete with the Depressed Oompa-Loompa/Wonkidoodle at her chemistry set offering the kids "some yummy methamphetamine", The Unknown showing up (and shedding a Single Tear as Charlie talks about his impoverished youth), and Charlie admitting that he used ChatGPT for all the artwork and songs, before confessing that he was in over his head running the factory as a 10-year-old after Wonka gave it to him, and he let it go to seed over the years.
    AI-generated lyrics sung by Charlie:
    Candy is good
    Candy is mouth
    Sweet is fun
    And we love to imagination!
• Troubled Production: Enough to have its own page.
• What Could Have Been: Before being cast as The Unknown, Dawkins was initially approached to be one of the rotating Willy McDuff actors, but turned it down when she read the script.
• Working Title: The event was apparently originally titled Willy Wonka Experience (or "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory Experience" in the picture).
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: From all appearances, the script was quickly spit out by generative AI. Beyond that, Billy Coull apparently threw the whole thing together on short notice. On the day of the event, Coull told the cast to not bother with the script and just make up a story and improvise everything else, with very minimal direction beyond that (Dawkins stated her only instruction on playing The Unknown was to "act creepy").

---