Willy’s Chocolate Experience... Welcome.
I am Willy McDuff. My God. It's absolutely... It was a wreck. It was just awful. There was this
demonic character, terrifying
the children you saw
just every parent, just like kind of that look at shock
on their face, like, what is this? The parents are
just like, well, this is $h!te One of them called
me a “Willy Wonka
from TEMU” You've probably
heard about Willy's Chocolate Experience in Glasgow,
Scotland. I decided to get
the inside story from the parents who were there, as well as
Willy McDuff and a Wonki-Doodle. What's this event
actually called? It seems to
keep changing. It was called
Willy's... So it’s had... It’s actually had
three different names. I think the first
one was like Willy Wonka’s Experience or something
like that. It was.. initially advertised
as Willy Wonka’s Chocolate
Factory Experience. The website looked you know... actual Wonka
branding and stuff. I'd like to think
that I'm pretty clued up on
scams and things, and to me
the website looked
perfectly legit it was describing
this fantastic immersive
experience The ticket price
was like £35 which again
you're kind of thinking, well, at that cost,
you know, it must be must be pretty good. The kids
absolutely love Wonka,
especially my son. He has autism. It's very much
a special subject for him
at the moment. You know, he’s a little bit obsessed with it. So I thought,
do you know what, we’ll splurge, we’ll get
the tickets, we’ll go. It's probably
a kind of one of these things. That's not going to come along
very often. And then it changed to the Wonka
Experience. Then it changed a
Willy's Experience. So I think they had
some things where they were going to get sued
or whatever. So I was a bit
at that point, I kind of started
to smell a rat, but I thought,
right, keep an open mind. Can you explain where
this artificial intelligence
component has come
into this? All the images
and stuff were all ,
like all these posters Were A.I.
generated this guy obviously
seems to know what he's doing
with the A.I. sort of stuff, and he's taken
advantage of it. We booked and then midway
through last week, we saw some posts
about concerns being raised, about the event,
about the person, about the A.I.
images and things. I managed to get a phone number for the the MD of
the company he assured
that it was going to be something that would blow
your socks off. West End /Broadway level theatrics. And you'll have to see it
to believe it. This was just like
the total polar opposite of
what was described The thing with You know, with kids
with autism like, they can be
very unpredictable with how they're
going to react, particularly
if it's, you know, if it's one of their
special interests. If they have an idea in their
head what it’s going
to look like he was counting
down sleeps, you know,
he's saying Oh, three
more sleeps til
Wonka's Factory and I'm going to be like
Augustus Gloop I'm going to drink the chocolate out of
the river And I'm saying.. It might look
a little bit different. I'm Michael
Archibald. I'm 18 years
old. I'm estranged. So I've been
living alone since I was 17. I was playing
Willy Wonka. Technically, it's not even Willy
Wonka. It's supposed
to be Willy McDuff at the Willy's Chocolate Experience
in Glasgow. Or as some people have been calling
it, the Wonka Gate. Hi, I'm Jenny, and I was an
Oompa Loompa at Willy’s Chocolate
Experience. Technically, I wasn't an Oompa Loompa I was a Wonki-Doodle. So they didn't get sued. How do you
get cast as an
Oompa Loompa? Well, I’m 5’3” So that helps. This was your first
ever acting role? Yes, it was
my first gig. I'm skint. I'm in Scotland. I live on my own. I'm 18 years old and I'm like,
I need a job. I'm going to look up
acting roles. And then it was
right there, this magical
world of wonder. So your role... you're supposed
to show all of these kids
like a great time, you're going
to give them a really magical experience as Willy Wonka
or Willy McDuff. They asked
for a head shot. So looking at
my gob they went,
That's the one. I got hired by
phonecall on the
Thursday night and asked to come in
for a costume rehearsal on
the Friday evening. And when I went in
on Friday, there was
no costumes. They hadn't
arrived yet. That was probably
the first red flag. The warehouse
already looks really drab. I'm like oooh this is going
to be fun. Upon reading
the script, after looking at the website,
I was like, This is a A.I. I've read online
that it looked like the script was was
kind of like an A.I. generated... Oh yeah,
I've got it here. It has
guest reactions. as like
parts of it. So it says that the
guests gather round the television
watching themselves and laughing
together, united in a sense of wonder
and discovery. Willy watches
over them a satisfied
smile on his face, knowing that the spirit of adventure
and imagination has kindled
in their hearts. There's an evil, “Unknown”
chocolate maker that lives
in the walls. We're going to have a battle scene
at the end. We're going to do physical magic
on set because they wanted us to catch a bubble and have sparkles
fly up. I was thinking
to myself, I'm going to hold
a bubble. Nobody can hold
a bubble. They just pop. But you hold a bubble,
you release it. And then magical
sparks were just supposed to fly out
of our hands like some kind of
voodoo-hoodoo and going to
the ceiling. I was like, that is
not happening. And they were like, Listen,
we've had this all thought through. I was like,
No, you haven't. He was like,
see, I’m imagining, like,
this one really like eccentric character, you know,
a mix of Einstein and a little
bit of... It's like basically just Willy
Wonka, man. Just tell me
it's Willy Wonka, the great,
great, great, great, great grandson
of Willy Wonka. But, you know, due to copyright issues,
we can't give out golden tickets. “Golden Ticket”
is copyrighted. So there is no mention of a golden
ticket anywhere. Run me through
the Saturday? So we arrived
at half-8 and there was
like nothing really around. I walk in
and I'm like, this looks like a really crappy
Comic-Con. It’s grey... It's all grey. And I was like,
oooohh... I think it opened
to the public around 10 a.m. There is this huge and I mean, like
absolutely massive queue of parents
and their kids When I was,
you know, showing up
to the event and I'm driving through and I'm
thinking to myself, please
don't be a scam. Please don’t
be a scam. Because, you know, the kids
will be so upset. They're so excited. and then... when I got
to the venue and saw all these
people queuing, I mean, way
down the street So I’m like,
that's a good sign. That's a good sign. There's something
actually happening. So we were
there as a family with my
three kids the total cost was around
about £130. We went to the door. There was a slight
queue As we were
driving up. There was just
crowds of really bamboozled families
walking back who had just been in
really looking quite bewildered and a little
shell-shocked, I think. So we were like, okay, that's
that's not good, that's
not promising. And we went through the door into the hall
and it was like, What the heck is
this? Ladies, gentlemen
and esteemed guests of all
ages, welcome. I am Willie McDuff,
your humble guide to this journey to
the extraordinary, the spectacular
and downright magical garden of
Enchantment. We were met with a bridge
that was over What had been
pitched as a sort of magical,
mystical chocolate river, which was just like a strip
of brown carpet or brown flooring
that they’d put a bridge over. So that was, that was
that was a red flag. Nothing could have
prepared me for for it being
quite so bad. You know, I thought
there would at least be chocolate. But there wasn't Four or five props
just like nothing. There was there was nothing
really to do. There's nothing
for them like, what were they
paying for? Nothing made sense.
So it all fit together,
you know? So it was. It was it was just a really
strange, surreal experience. I moreso so got parents
being very confused. And.. coming up to me
and being like, is this
all there is? A half inflated
bouncy castle in the corner,
maybe 20 chairs, a couple of tables,
and it was like so underwhelming. And there were just
some randomly placed
freestanding mirrors about the place. And there was this
demonic chrome-faced character
jumping out from behind
these mirrors, terrifying
the children. The actress
for “The Unknown” Felicia, she's 16 years old
and she's still in high school. And then
“The Unknown”
comes out from behind the mirror and like,
scares the kids. And then I'm like, Don't worry, guys,
that's nothing. Anyways...
what was that? Every child
that saw it just ran off
screaming, crying. There was tears
everywhere. We were like,
these kids are going to
start crying. And they did. It was
just awful. And the parents
are just like, Well, this is $h!te One of them
called me a “Willy Wonka
from TEMU” I was there watching children with like Happy
Birthday badges looking like
they're about to cry because
they were expecting all this stuff
that was promised to them. There was this one
Oompa-Loompa girl. She was like
dressed up fully and everyone knows about her
because like, she's
had photos of her and she was like
this. She started
crying I was like, I'm
so sorry, honey. Do you want a hug? There was a lot of
grandparents in particular
who showed up and like with the
pictures being like, like this is
what was promised. We don't think
we're expecting exactly
what was said, we did expect
things to be slightly less. But definitely
not what it was. There was
nothing there. It was there was a handful of props
that was it. And then we were
led through a checkered flag
tunnel. I don't know
what what that was
supposed to be. There
was this big ball on the ground
and it was called the Anti-Graffiti
Gobstopper identity A.I. generated backdrops that were just like
pinned to the wall. The whole thing
was just weird. Could kind of see
from like, especially
kind of older kids, you know,
they were sort of unimpressed
would probably be or underwhelmed, would be
the right way to describe it
to me. Some of the older kids, especially the ones that had been
dressed up in things, you could just see
the disappointment. And yeah, there was there was lots of tears, but we don't know if that was the
disappointment or the chrome-face
demon that was
chasing them about. There was
numerous things that could
have caused tears in that venue. We were kind of all
sort of, you know, kind of glancing
and looking at each other
as if to say What on
earth is this? You saw
just every parent just like that look of shock on their face, like,
what is this? And there is no music playing
by the way. We could kind of hear all the other
kind of families and like people
just talking amongst themselves
saying, Oh My God,
this is terrible. We then went
through to I mean I’m
making it sound bigger
than what it was. It was very small
through to another open area and that just
had randomly placed pipes
and mushrooms, a little corner station with two
Oompa-Loompas And like a... Oompa-Loompa
meth lab, who these test tubes
and stuff getting getting smoke
bellowing out. This is where
that iconic like meme image
was taken of Kirsty where she is
looking miserable behind this stupid
jelly bean stand. No jelly beans
to give out Each test tube had like gummy
sweets and they were just
calling the kids over and giving them gummies in
their hands, each kid got
a jelly bean each or a gummy. And then there was a lollipop station
that if there was any left you could take one but only the kids, the adults weren't allowed to
touch the sweets because
there wasn’t enough to go around. You got two jelly
beans per child. They ran out of
sweets. No one got any more. And I think, to be
perfectly honest, the reason for that was probably
because the people who are working at
the event were probably like, Let's just get them
loads of sweets so that they don't
complain because it's so bad. It was so crappy. Like I actually can't even lie. I was like, This is embarrassing. There
was also in the corner like a little a table with plastic cups with a
supermarket brand Lime-aid It's like literally,
you know, the cup is like that and there's like that much lemonade
in the cup A quarter cup of that
for each, each kid. And that was,
that was what you got. And then you
go to your right and there's like some really sad
like benches that you're supposed
to sit at until like,
you know, the Willy Wonka
comes on stage. Willy's costume
was just terrible. I know they maybe had to watch for copywrite and all that
sort of stuff, But I mean,
I've seen better Halloween
costumes. Let's see
the costumes. I have got like the actual,
like Willy McDuff quote-unquote And it's
clearly like from a Halloween shop. I think they were the real victims of all of this
because they I mean, we subsequently leaned that they were given
this script you know,
a day or two before they showed up on the Friday
for the dress rehearsal and given
these really awful costumes to wear. So I have called my Wonki-Doodles My Wonk.. my two
Wonki-Doodles that are
on the stage. And I'm like, guys, I don't know
what's going on. And then
they're like, Before we proceed, a few formalities. Well, not so formal if I have anything
to say about it, and then I'm
supposed to wink... He really, really
did his best, you know, to make it
as kind of exciting for the kids
as he could. You could tell
he was utterly mortified. And then I stride
downstage, closer to the to the audience
with the mischievous
twinkle in my eye. You see, the Garden
of Enchantment isn't just any
garden, oh no... It's a place
where the trees whisper secrets of old, the flowers
sing in harmony. My God. It's absolutely... It was a wreck. They were broken,
you know, there was
nothing left to give And so when we got... there wasn't
much interaction. Willy Wonka was just like, do you want a photo? and the Ooompa Loompas just looked really you know, very
they were they were broken in half,
you know, there was nothing
left of them. They'd given
everything they could give. They did
try their best. A lot of them
came over and kind of spoke
to the kids and tried to help. But
they were that shocked as well
with everything. I mean, I think
all the actors, we tried our best like we've..
I've experienced working with kids
before. We were trying our best
to just make it a fun experience. But there's
only so much you can do
in that situation. You feel
for the actors because you just I mean, that
two hours that they were open
or maybe three hours It just had such
an impact on them. And I don't know
what impact beyond this will be, but it wasn't
wasn't pleasant. What was your kids
reaction to all of this? Did they
cotton on? Children with autism They sort of, you know, feed off of other people's reactions to social
situations. Their Dad and I and my friends
were very much like, you know, trying to,
you know... “keep the smiles
on your faces” and trying to be
positive and things just so that
they could they wouldn't sense that there was
anything wrong. And, you know,
so we were like, “Oh, look at that!” “Look its a big
Everlasting Gobstopper” Let’s go get your picture
taken with that. It was just
really bizarre. So that that was that was
the experience of Willy’s Chocolate
Experience. Then we we left just shortly
after that, just as they were turning people
away from the door saying that’s
now closed we’re having to cancel
the event, etc.. So it was starting
to kick off just as we were leaving. So we missed the actual police
getting called and things
like that. So the final scene,
everyone's like all over the place,
nobody's happy. I'm having to tell
parents, go through there
and get a refund. I think
we all kind of knew it had been a bust at that stage. It's not going
to keep going at this point
like there’s too many things
gone wrong. Like people, people are getting
really upset. You do not
anger Scots people Not at all. If you piss off
a Glaswegian, you're
going to be lucky if you make it
out alive. Angry Scottish families? You’re f@$king done. That's
when it became like a safety hazard
because they were all
looking for refunds. I just got told
by a security guard came up to me and said “look,
we're just going to
shut it down.” We were told not to let anybody else in. So they're telling
the security guards, get everyone
out of here. So we're
shutting down and this is around
4 to 5 p.m. And I'm like, what do you mean
we're shutting down The parents, they were f@$king raging. Because
downstairs now, the security
have been told not to let anyone in Everyone got kind of removed, told to get out, and they were
closing it down. We came out and there was a queue people like..
kids all dressed up and stuff. And it was like and some of them were
noticeably upset. They had stopped
people coming in. So obviously
they were getting
really frustrated they paid
a lot money. Some of them had
traveled three hour... journeys
to get there. They've
obviously traveled all this way
and they're not even getting in to see how bad it is. We all kind of left. And a group
of us then when we were going
out to our cars, that's when we saw
the police turn up. And that was because
just the amount of people
waiting to get in with tiny
children had just been told, no, you're
not getting in. And they were. Yeah, it was
it was messy. We're like, there's
police here now. And then eventually we all band together and we're like,
You know what? This is a
$h!teshow. Why don't we go to the Pub
around the corner and grab a drink? Overall, with this,
do you think scam or do you think he just had a very incompetently
organised event? Both. To be honest, I think it was
maybe a bit of both. I'm still I'm still kind of
of the opinion that it wasn't a scam. I think it was
an event gone wrong. There's a lot of
people calling out “It’s A.I
It’s A.I.” But that was
probably started with one or two people
saying that. And then two more
people said that because
they said that and then all of a sudden
it just snowballs and snowballs
and snowballs and it becomes
this big thing like “It was the
A.I. Scammer” When you
think about family
pop up events, especially the ones
that are maybe first time running,
it's not uncommon to see digital images. The use of A.I. whether it's this
or any other event or trade, it's
not a bad thing. I think it's because like Fyre Festival was such a
massive thing. So you've got that
on one end. And not to mention
to guess scammed with A.I. because A.I. is also really prominent
nowadays. Like, Artificial
Intelligence people
are talking about it and it's all really randomly relevant
topics, especially with the new Timothy
Chalamet Willy Wonka movie. It all lined up
and its just exploded. I don't think it was an out and out scam. There was effort
made for sure. I even
said this at the time. Like it
was a lot for a company's
first event to try aim this
this high. I've never seen
something like this. You know, usually when
you've been scammed, you get nothing. It sounds like
your kids had a reasonable
time? Yeah, I mean, they saw their friend,
had a little playdate and then went and got something
to eat afterwards. So it wasn't, it wasn't a write-off
of a day you know,
they saw some big props
and got a photo taken with
a big chocolate bar. They just ran
about and were silly and they had a big
open space to run around in so that was fine
for them. Because you hear the stories
right now going on
in the media and it’s like... “DAY OUT RUINED” My two boys
they found it hilarious
That it was that bad. And they're just
at that age where where
things like that he couldn’t... My oldest he was in
stitches with it. I mean kids
are resilient, a lot more
so than grown ups often are, so... yeah it wasn't
wasn't too bad. The kids
were just sitting eating their
sweets and going between
there and the bouncy
castle and stuff and then bless them,
like after... we left I said... “So, did you
enjoy that?” And my son
was like... “Yeah, we had
so much fun!”
