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Three photos from a mostly bare event space with gray floors and white walls. A few colorful candy-shaped props are placed throughout the room.

Stuart Sinclair

The website for Willy’s Chocolate Experience <a href="https://willyschocolateexperience.com/" target=_blank>promised</a> a world of pure imagination: an immersive children’s event with attractions to rival even the creations of Willy Wonka, the fictional chocolatier. Illustrations on the website advertised lush gardens with giant lollipops and swirls of colorful candy.

When Stuart Sinclair arrived with his family at the event in Glasgow, Scotland, on Saturday, they found something very different. Willy’s Chocolate Experience, for which Sinclair paid around $45 per ticket, was a brisk walk through a barren event hall dotted with folding tables, the occasional candy-themed prop and passageways covered in black tarps.

It wasn’t quite enough to immerse Sinclair’s 4-year-old daughter, Nevanah, in visions of a candy world, he said. She was given two jelly beans and half a cup of lemonade before the family left.

“The worst part is there was no chocolate,” Sinclair told The Washington Post.

The lackluster event left parents outraged, shuttered early and led some attendees to call the police. Images of Willy’s Chocolate Experience quickly spread on social media. Commenters rushed to lampoon the gulf between the lavish illustrations that House of Illuminati, the event’s organizer, advertised online and the underwhelming event that it ultimately staged. Some drew tongue-in-cheek comparisons to the disastrous 2017 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/04/28/the-complete-and-utter-disaster-that-was-fyre-festival-played-out-on-social-media-for-all-to-see/" target=_blank>Fyre Festival</a>.

House of Illuminati, an events company <a href="https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/15295572/filing-history" target="_blank">first registered</a> in Britain in November, did not respond to a request for comment. In a deleted <a href="https://www.facebook.com/houseofilluminatiofficial/posts/pfbid02u984YhSsv9CfHe6Eh5caS7XPKtuXUaHFbqzbPj8QKYwb5QzSrwcQV4b2nmHuwEqhl?__cft__[0]=AZVx9F5qQW70KnakQ56yU46WfB3cRWJ3QSlwMpBObp2wOtIP0AmqrqErIK2ERhsgF3-Yw7h9ImDXDkjsHQ_SEZ-wCX_vrrw9gylex8LwXIPR94qb9GepN-9ajj38Tmq--ciRrx3CmfFQ-_EV5p17bBSobQFF1okIcwywagX450W2Y92JuuLF1DDkeOafxV-TtK0&amp;__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R" target="_blank">Facebook post</a>, the company apologized for the event and said it would issue refunds to all attendees. House of Illuminati director Billy Coull said that the issue was hampered by “unforeseen circumstances” and that the company ordered “holographic paper” that didn’t arrive in time, Scottish news channel STV News <a href="https://news.stv.tv/west-central/willy-wonka-chocolate-experience-boss-truly-sorry-after-chaos" target="_blank">reported</a>.

“So, so sorry to everybody for the sheer and utter disappointment,” Coull said, according to STV News.

The event was not affiliated with the Warner Bros. movie or franchise, according to the event’s <a href="https://willyschocolateexperience.com/" target=_blank>website</a>.

Sinclair saw advertisements for the event on social media and signed up for what he had hoped would be a fun weekend outing, he said. He drove with his wife and three children about two hours south from Dundee to reach Glasgow.

A wall of black tarp leading to purple faux stone pillars and a golden gate with the sign 'Factory' set up in a warehouse/event space.

Michael Archibald

Performers hired by House of Illuminati for the event said the planning of Willy’s Chocolate Experience was in a poor state well before families arrived. Michael Archibald, a college student who was hired to perform as a stand-in for Willy Wonka, said he was given a role Thursday after signing up for the job on the career site Indeed. On Friday, a day before the event took place, Archibald was given a costume and a script that “wasn’t very human” and that appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence, he said.

Archibald said he was mortified when he arrived Saturday morning to see the setting he’d be performing in.

“This is a place where dreams went to die,” Archibald said.

The few attractions on offer at Willy’s Chocolate Experience included a bouncy castle and tables serving jelly beans and lemonade, according to Archibald and Sinclair. The rest of the event consisted of wide rooms and passageways divided by black tarps. A few small posters — “maybe half a bedsheet,” Sinclair said — hung on the walls with printed images of the fantasy illustrations that had been advertised on House of Illuminati’s website.

The mood was “dreadful,” Archibald said. Sinclair said the crowd — some of whom had traveled even farther, from England or northern Scotland — was fuming.

“Everyone was just walking in disbelief, shaking their heads,” Sinclair said.

Archibald said he dropped his act and began telling families to request refunds. House of Illuminati canceled the event early, at around 1 p.m., after attendees complained to Coull, who was present, Archibald and Sinclair said. Confusion grew as families who’d booked later timeslots arrived and gathered outside the event hall, Sinclair said, and Scottish police were called.

Police confirmed to The Post that they responded to calls from guests who showed up after the event was canceled. The officers left after giving advice to visitors, police said.

The event swiftly became the subject of ridicule on social media after posts seized upon the differences between the images used in ads and photos of the event. Many said the company’s illustrations appeared to have been generated by AI.

Daniel Bashir, a machine learning engineer and editor of an AI publication, said several of the images showed signs that they were produced by an AI image generator, including typos or misshapen letters in sections of text, which some image generators <a href="https://au.news.yahoo.com/ai-image-generators-smart-why-040439469.html" target=_blank>struggle</a> to render.

“The text is the main obvious tell for me with these,” he said. “ … Some of them are just kind of gibberish.”

House of Illuminati, which advertises planning services for “mystique galas,” “avant-garde art” and “secret soirees” on its <a href="https://houseofilluminati.com/?fbclid=IwAR02tjffWndqkoP5P7thdhbtW8qGUuMiArYe39VRgu-uIQlh6nLQTNjR1Ls" target=_blank>website</a>, will not be holding events “in the foreseeable future,” the company said in a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/houseofilluminatiofficial/posts/pfbid02RNGnk7U2dSArTeb3BEKUwSJjogtFVJcM2ESL3CEAzvsWrCvgKhzFASm5V2MBnsSTl?__cft__[0]=AZVWTDvPbNR--PFrmomuWxooT-qNM64WN3S7aQTFdK5XpZPhayhiKYwdYbfHN6wIZ1_cN9rBpjID9ZGKFH6Jio9INDN0H-3Sp2squdZITCL3k7DHQ9EXSDgTAy-nyK0v9BgwcxnOyETQKmnrokir4N2xgQbBT4IRX6szg6NRkb-Y1yc3qO7wmjyF2V8wEdQhPE8&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R" target=_blank>Facebook post</a> Tuesday. The company said in a previous post that it was issuing hundreds of refunds, but Sinclair said Tuesday afternoon that he hasn’t received his.

“I think we’ve all seen some things that were less than what we expected,” Sinclair said. “But this was just on another level.”

Sinclair said his two older sons found the underwhelming event hilarious. But his daughter, a big fan of Willy Wonka, was devastated. He salvaged the day by taking her to a Build-A-Bear Workshop instead.

Jennifer Hassan contributed to this report.

Stanford University, BA in History and MA in Communications

Daniel Wu is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. He joined The Post as an intern on the Metro desk in 2022 and previously worked for the Seattle Times and the San Jose Mercury News.

Daniel Wu

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‘Dreadful’ Wonka-themed children’s event leads guests to call police

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Three photos from a mostly bare warehouse/event space with gray floors and white walls. A few colorful candy-shaped props are placed throughout the room.

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