EVENTS | Halloween 2023: Inside Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory
Updated with photos and tidbits, Nov. 1, 2023
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| Welcome to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory! |
It's been years since we last decorated our office for Halloween. Although our company continuously held office decorating contests up until the pandemic, it was in 2018 when we last joined (and won!) with our Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures Halloween office decor.
Now the annual contest is back and they've expanded it to multiple office locations. We've since moved to a new office and despite everyone being very busy with work, we still managed to execute our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Halloween office decor theme. Here's a quick, albeit shaky, tour.
I set out which parts of our office we were decorating, one that wasn't too big to cover and one that facilitated a single traffic flow. As in the past, we divided the area into sections after the movie, each with its own activities for kids where they earn candies. We also made use of recycled materials from old newspaper and boxes to used plastic bottles and whatnot. Somehow, we did it despite cramming everything into just a day or two.
The Chocolate Garden
This was where Willy Wonka and the Oompa Loompas treated visitors to a dance number as a way of welcoming them to the factory. And of course we had an arch, fashioned out of boxes, newspaper, and whatever else we could find in our stockroom. I know we didn't quite nail the chocolate waterfall but we did what we could with brown cloth and an electric fan blowing behind it. Perhaps if work didn't get in the way of Halloween fun.
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| It's not just a garden, as it sure looks like a jungle in here. |
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| Candy canes made out of rolled newspaper and crepe paper, with a walis ting-ting (broom) as support |
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| We used umbrellas for our oversized mushroom candies, fluffed with newspaper, covered in crepe paper, and topped with used paper cups. |
The Inventing Room
This is where all the good stuff gets made, tested, and perfected before they're sold commercially. Call it the factory's R&D lab, if you may. Cardboards, plastic bottles, balls, deflated clappers, flasks, and what-have-you were employed in making this room come to life. Here the kids got to experiment with mixing colors and even "making" their own candy.
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| Inside the Inventing Room. |
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| Just pull the lever, and out come your candy. Amazing, right? |
The Nut Sorting Room
Unlike in the movie, we didn't have to throw any kid down the garbage chute. We borrowed a tarp and painted a swirling design on it. Kids got to play with makeshift board games fashioned out of pizza and spaghetti boxes, paper straw, etc. The squirrels here were gigantic, though.
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| No squirrels were harmed in the making of this attraction. In fact, they all seemed to have run away to go trick or treating at the other floors. |
The Television Room
In the movie, this room was where they were still perfecting an experiment about transmitting chocolate to customers through their TV sets. Let's just say that a naughty kid was unwittingly shrunk and could not be restored to his original size. Now we don't want that happening here, now do we? Besides, everything sounds so complicated. Decked in white cloth and white paper, with plastic water gallons for cameras, we made this room our photo booth then. Photos were uploaded to a shared drive that they can access via a QR code. Neat, huh?
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| The all-white (well, almost) Television Room. |
The Great Glass Elevator
Although we never really made it fly like in the movie, we did our own version of this flying elevator anyway, using pandemic-era acrylic sneeze guards and recycled plastic. In the film, Willy Wonka and Charlie took off in this elevator and crashed into Charlie's house.
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| We jokingly call it a couple's shower room. Look at the plastic bottle engine above, though. Yes, this piece was a labor of love. |
Inside Charlie's Home
We decided we'd end the tour inside Charlie's humble abode. What better way to end the experience than with a warm, cozy atmosphere and comforting hugs from Charlie's grandparents? And oh, this was a lot of work as well and plenty of attention to detail.
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| Who doesn't want a nice, warm bed? And look, it's snowing outside! |
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| Doesn't it feel absolutely homey in here? All the effort put into this room is palpable, is it not? |
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| 🎃🎃🎃 |
And that's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed as much as we did. Again, Happy Halloween from us!
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