Parents lured to immersive Willy Wonka experience by AI ads show up to near-empty warehouse with no candy

No one wants a golden ticket to a Scottish Willy Wonka-inspired experience.

Police were called to Willy’s Chocolate Experience in Glasgow, Scotland, on Saturday after parents felt scammed by the “absolute shambles of an event” and gathered to demand refunds.

Tickets for the barren event, which cost $45 a person, promised a “paradise of sweet treats,” South West News Service reported. Instead, children were brought to tears as they were greeted by a scarce warehouse with a printed AI background, a sad bouncy castle, lackluster props — and virtually no candy.

Parents complained that they waited for more than an hour for an experience, coordinated by an organization named House of Illuminati, which was less than 10 minutes long and did not include the advertised chocolate fountains, decor or handcrafted candy drinks.

The advertising claimed the space would have an “enchanted garden,” “imagination lab” and twilight tunnel.”

“Underwhelming was an understatement. Embarrassing doesn’t even cut it. I paid for Willy Wonka and got Billy Bonkers,” one angry mom wrote on social media.

“Took 2 minutes to get through to then see a queue of people surrounding the guy running it complaining. The kids received 2 jelly babies and a quarter of a can of barrs limeade.”

Paula Graham came with her husband, 8-year-old daughter and the girl’s friend. She said she felt cheated by the AI-generated advertising.

“Their page and their advertising looked very professional. They made out as if it was going to be this really special experience — a one-off,” Graham said, according to The Sun. “In my eyes, I thought it was going to be some kind of light show with actors.

“You couldn’t even call it an event — it was terrible.”

“It was shocking for the money you paid,” she added. “There were kids coming away crying. There were families from all over … They put out a bit of cardboard saying ‘event canceled.’ “

“It was as if the chocolate factory had been shut down,” an attendee commented.

Some families complained that there was no communication that the event was canceled until they arrived and were only informed by a cardboard sign outside. They felt like the lack of communication justified a refund and travel costs since many drove or took trains for well over two hours.

Jenny Fogarty was hired to portray a “Wonkidoodle,” the event’s version of an Oompa Loompa, and was shocked when she was given an inappropriate costume from an Amazon box that only arrived an hour before the event opened.

“I noticed that the costumes we were given – all of them were female, and we were given the sexy version as opposed to the traditional ones,” Fogarty wrote on Facebook group House of Illuminati Scam. “Some people had T-shirts underneath to give it a bit more modesty. I just had a lacy shirt underneath.”

Fogarty also claimed that she was given a 15-page script one day before the event but was told to improvise instead since the actors had no rehearsal time. She added that she has yet to be paid for her work.

“It was shocking. It was embarrassing, to be pretty honest. We were trying our best, all the actors, to make it work, but we were given just 12 hours to learn our script and told to just improvise. It’s not easy to improvise a whole show,” she said.

“When we went back to get to our cars, that’s when we saw the police had showed up,” Fogarty added about the eventual shutdown.

House of Illuminati apologized in a statement in which it acknowledged that its “fabulous event” failed to meet expectations and had devolved into a “stressful and frustrating day.”

“Unfortunately last minute we were let down in many areas of our event and tried our best to continue on and push through and now realize we probably should have canceled first thing this morning instead,” the statement said.

Billy Coull, director of House of Illuminati, blamed the disaster on “holographic technology” not arriving on time, bizarrely claiming that the event would have looked as promoted with the tech.

“My vision of the artistic rendition of a well-known book didn’t come to fruition. For that I am absolutely truly and utterly sorry,” he said. “There was every intention to hold the event, from the pictures, despite not being in the best light; hopefully you’ll be able to see that there was every intention to hold the event.”