Several YouTube exposes exist on the Glasgow, Scotland based WILLY’S CHOCOLATE EXPERIENCE fiasco that took place on February 24 and 25, 2024, but this 44-minute British TV documentary, which appeared less than a month after the event occurred, would appear to be the definitive account.
Appearing amid the successful theatrical run of WONKA (2023), WILLY’S CHOCOLATE EXPERIENCE was an immersive walk-through attraction based on (but not directly affiliated with) Roald Dahl’s CHARLIE AND CHOCOLATE FACTORY and its assorted film adaptations. Promised was “A Chocolate Fantasy Like Never Before” where “the boundaries between reality and fantasy harmoniously merge” in “an adventure that will leave you spellbound.”
That was according to the AI generated screed on a website filled with fantasy imagery that was also the work of AI. What greeted visitors was an inhospitable warehouse with scattered scenery of the cheapest imaginable variety: a cardboard “chocolate river,” a “twilight tunnel” consisting of striped curtains, and an “imagination lab” that turned out jellybeans. It was, as one cast member describes it, “the place where dreams went to die.”
The perpetrator of this mess was an organization called the House of Illuminati, which charged £35 a head and sold over 800 tickets. Many of those ticketholders never got a chance to see WILLY’S CHOCOLATE EXPERIENCE, as the event was shut down after just a few hours due to widespread outrage. The furor was such that the police were called, and within a day the story of this disaster was circulating worldwide.
This doc contains a great deal of cellphone footage taken at the event. We also get recollections by “Michael” and “Felicia,” two of the young performers who helped bring the attraction to non-life, and several disillusioned ticketholders. The true get is an interview with House of Illuminati head Billy Coull (who, as the narration takes pains to emphasize, “hasn’t been paid to appear in this film”). He has little to say of any real substance, tearily painting himself as a victim and offering up plenty of excuses: the venue was “too large for what I wanted to do” (a claim he later contradicts), equipment wasn’t delivered on time, electrical failures (which the venue’s owners dispute), etc.
In truth there’s no info here that you can’t find elsewhere, but the filmmakers deserve credit for providing an immersive step-by-step rendering of WILLY’S CHOCOLATE EXPERIENCE. The fact that this film was made so soon after the event results in a lack of perspective (it would have been nice to see how the participants fared over the following months, and whether the threatened legal action against Coull ever materialized), but there’s a ground-zero immediacy to the proceedings that after-the-fact recollections simply couldn’t provide.
Intriguingly, the filmmakers try to paint this event, and similar flops, as a phenomenon unique to the UK. A comparison is made to the Hampshire, UK based LAPLAND NEW FOREST attraction that landed its organizers in jail in 2008, but not the infamous American instituted Fyre Festival of 2017. There were also the more recent April 2024 Denver based READERS TAKE DENVER book festival and the Baltimore situated May 2025 A MILLION LIVES romantasy event, both of which have been compared to the WILLY’S CHOCOLATE EXPERIENCE and prove that American based event organizers can screw up just as spectacularly as those across the pond.
Vital Statistics
WONKA: THE SCANDAL THAT ROCKED BRITAIN
Mentorn Media
Directors: Tim Dowse, Dave Warren
Producer: Stuart Strickson
Editing: Neil McKeown, Damiel Pawle, Daren Tiley, Matt White
Cast: Kevin Eldon, Billy Coull, Felicia Dawkins, Michael Archibald