There is a long history of slightly shoddy kids’ entertainment in the UK. This week, BBC Radio 4 re-aired a 2022 show about “Blobbygate”, the scandal surrounding the Crinkley Bottom theme park in Morecambe that closed after just 13 weeks in 1994, following complaints that the attractions were rubbish and it featured an “underweight” Mr Blobby. But, from half-term at Butlin’s to a day at Shrek’s Adventure in London, companies know that love, nostalgia and desperation can drive parents to accept a mixed bag of quality.
Willy’s Chocolate Experience, however, seemed to push people over the edge. It is outrageous that parents were charged £35 a pop for an AI-scripted event in a grim setting that, perhaps most memorably, featured a gangling evil chocolate maker who lived in the walls (played impeccably by a teenage actor named Felicia) and an “experiments table” that has been compared to a “meth lab”.
Despite reports of some children crying with disappointment, one thing I noticed from footage of the Willy event was that when the actors were interacting with the kids, they often looked delighted. Children, as I remember from my own childhood, can be entertained just as much by a cardboard box as by a flashy toy, under the right circumstances.
Undoubtedly Willy’s was a rip-off, but aren’t most forms of branded children’s entertainment? When I visited Universal Studios on a searingly hot day in LA last October, I was grimmed out by everything, from the price of a “butterbeer” to the queues, to poorly made merchandise. It could maybe make for a fun day trip, but it came with so many buy-ins that I struggled to leave without feeling icky.
There is clearly a lot of pressure on parents to overspend on splashy experiences. For all its sins, could Willy’s be a reminder that, sometimes, something simpler, plus a good dose of Scottish humour, is all that’s needed to create memories to last a lifetime? Perhaps we shouldn’t forget one of the messages from Roald Dahl’s original book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: children don’t need to be spoiled to be happy.
• Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff is a freelance journalist
