Chapter 32: Wonka Airlines
Author's Note: Hello, everyone! I'm back, and I'm alive! I'm dreadfully sorry that I made you guys wait an entire year plus for this chapter, and I won't keep you guys waiting that long again. After sorting out my life, fixing my mental health, and recovering from writer's block, I'm finally back! I promise that this chapter will be worth it. Due to my length of time being gone for this chapter, I don't want to keep the Author's Note any longer than it should be, so there will be no review responses, but they will happen in the next chapter.
This chapter also contains several ideas from MysteriousMaker1185, as three years ago almost, he helped me develop ideas for this story. You already saw some of them with Mindy's demise, and this chapter will include more of them. He even allowed me to use some of his rooms in this story, one of which you will discover in this chapter! The credits will be located at the end of this chapter this time, in order to prevent spoilers.
Without further ado, enjoy, everyone!
As the roller coaster came to a stop, Tyler and Kitsune began to awaken a second time.
"Is...is it over?" Kitsune mumbled as she sat up.
"We...we've stopped…" Tyler mumbled, sitting up with his mother.
"All passengers, exit with the rest of the group!" one of the ride operator Oompa-Loompas said, walking over by the duo and unbuckling them. "Next stop, Wonka Airlines!"
Tyler and Kitsune moaned and gripped their stomachs, nearly wobbling over several times as they met up with the rest of the group.
"No more thrills, no more heights, no more tossing and turning…" Tyler murmured as the group began to walk away from the roller coaster towards their next destination.
"Well, that's too bad, my dear boy!" Mr. Wonka said, looking down at Tyler. "Our next stop is the Wonka Airlines! Up, up, and away we go to the next room!"
"Dear Fickelgruber, when will it ever end?" Kitsune moaned. Mr. Wonka and Charlie Bucket guided the tour group towards another medium-sized corridor, and at the end of it was a pair of clear automatic doors with the words, "WONKA AIRLINES" written on them.
"We have arrived, my dear friends!" Charlie Bucket proclaimed as the remaining guests went through the doors.
"Oh my gosh," Jenna gasped. "This place is huge!"
The room that everyone found themselves in stretched as far as the eye could see. It resembled an airport, but even bigger. Oompa-Loompa adults, as well as their children, could be seen everywhere, and some were even conversing with each other. A female voice was announcing various flights, times, and announcements on an intercom, and some Oompa-Loompas were eating from food courts that could be seen nearby.
"The 1 PM flight to New Loompaland leaves in ten minutes!" a female voice was heard on an intercom nearby the tour group.
"It's already past twelve o'clock?" Mr. Adams questioned. "Time sure has gone by fast! I wonder where we're headed next."
"All in due time, my dear sir!" Charlie Bucket smiled. "All in due time! For now, let's take a break, then get our plane tickets!"
"Plane tickets?" Mr. Sparkman asked curiously. "What do you mean?"
"But of course, Mr. Sparkman!" Mr. Wonka smiled, tapping on the tip of his cane with a gloved finger and moving a foot up and down ever so slightly. "For organizational purposes! As you can probably tell by now, we have so many Oompa-Loompas in the factory that it'd be chaos if everyone rode around all willy-nilly! So the plane tickets help with that!"
"No, I mean we're going on a plane soon?" Mr. Sparkman remarked.
"Precisely!" Mr. Wonka chuckled.
"What is New Loompaland like?" Mr. Davidson asked Mr. Wonka and Charlie Bucket.
"You'll find out when we get there, my dear sir," Charlie Bucket told Chris' father. "This room means a lot to us, so we'd rather keep it a surprise."
"I love surprises," Tyler Smith smiled. "Especially if they're on teachers. That gives it the best shock factor, especially if the class's attention was gotten beforehand."
Mr. Wonka, Charlie Bucket, and the rest of the group decided to ignore Tyler's remark, and Mr. Wonka decided to break the silence several seconds later.
"Now, we mustn't dawdle, doodle, or dodle!" Mr. Wonka grinned, hoisting his cane high up in the air. "There's so much time and so little to see! Wait, no! Strike that, reverse it. Let's move along!"
Mr. Wonka guided the remainder of the group towards an enclosed desk that was positioned directly across from them. The receptionist behind the desk was a female Oompa-Loompa wearing a pink shirt and thin, black glasses.
"Hello, Doris!" Mr. Wonka waved at the Oompa-Loompa, and Doris waved back.
"Here to purchase tickets, Mr. Wonka?" she asked. "For which flight?"
"The one o' clock flight to New Loompaland, please," Mr. Wonka responded, and Doris smiled.
"You got it, Mr. Wonka!" she said. She then went to a computer that was near her and began typing on it. A couple minutes later, ten slips of paper came out of a nearby printer. She wrote on them, then handed them to Mr. Wonka and Charlie.
"There's ten tickets," Doris told them. "One for each of you. Enjoy, everyone!"
"Thank you, Doris!" Charlie Bucket waved as they began to guide the group towards their next destination. "Have a good day!"
As Mr. Wonka and Charlie Bucket guided the group to the next spot on the tour, each group member was given their plane ticket.
"Don't lose them, my dear children!" Mr. Wonka said. "Put them somewhere safe! We'll need them for our upcoming flight! For now, just look around, ladies and gentlemen!"
"Does this factory even have any kind of non-candy related food?" Daniel Sparkman said in curiosity.
"But of course, Daniel!" Charlie Bucket replied. "You know, fish and cabbages and potatoes, that kind of stuff."
'Who eats fish and cabbages and potatoes in this factory, I'd like to know?' said Daniel Sparkman.
"Me and Charlie do, of course,'' answered Mr Wonka. "You don't think we live on cacao beans, do you? But don't worry! We have many other kinds of food as well." He pointed over towards a segment of the room with his cane.
Following in the direction of Mr. Wonka's cane, the group glanced around at their surroundings. As well as various restaurants, there were also souvenir shops, pamphlet stations, lost-and-found booths, garbage and recycling bins, bathrooms with water fountains nearby, and other stations typically found in airports.
"Look at that restaurant, Dad," Chris pointed, getting Mr. Davidson's attention. Jenna and Mr. Davidson looked at where he was pointing, and they saw a logo that was a simple "W." The word next to it said, "MᴄWONKA'S."
"I've never heard of that restaurant before, Mr. Wonka," Mr. Davidson remarked to the two chocolatiers.
"It's relatively new, my dear sir," Charlie Bucket answered, overhearing his remark. "We just added restaurants here in order to imitate a real airport. Look, over there! Check that one out."
Mr. Davidson, as well as Mr. Adams and Chris and Jenna, looked at where Charlie was pointing. The restaurant logo this time looked like a cocoa bean, but cut in half from the middle. In between the two halves were the words, "BUCKET KING" in brown letters.
"McWonka's?" Mr. Adams asked. "Bucket King? Why do those names sound...strangely familiar?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, my dear boy," Mr. Wonka smirked. "Now, we must hurry if we want to make it to our flight in time!"
As Mr. Wonka and Charlie Bucket guided their remaining group members towards the airport terminal, small conversations began taking place between everyone.
"Today has been a crazy day, hasn't it, dad?" Chris Davidson remarked, turning to his father, who responded with a smirk.
"It's a dream come true," Mr. Davidson said happily. "I'm so excited that I finally got an opportunity to come in here and visit this place."
"And your day will only keep getting better, sir," Jenna Adams smiled.
"I wonder who will be the winner of the tour," Mr. Adams said, turning to Mr. Davidson. "With only one who can come out on top, you know."
"Well, that was back in my day," Mr. Davidson chuckled. "We've had a pretty diverse tour compared to the rumors I heard about the first one, so who knows, maybe they'll change their mind?"
"I still don't get how any of this candy is being made," Daniel Sparkman remarked. "None of these methods have even a thread of logic in them."
"Son, I would have thought that you would have realized by now that not everything goes by the laws of logic in this factory," Mr. Sparkman told Daniel. "I certainly...found that out as well during this tour."
Daniel sighed, and just barely, looked down at the floor.
"Mindy…"
"When can we stop acting all goody two-shoes?" Tyler Smith complained, whispering secretly to his mother.
"Soon, my son," Kitsune smiled mischievously. "Very soon."
Tyler replied back with a mischievous smile of reassurance, and the two continued on their way.
Several minutes later, Mr. Wonka and Charlie led the group into a square-shaped area full of seats, a desk with several female Oompa-Loompas behind it, and a flat-screen television. This area had an exit which continued towards the airport terminal.
"Tickets, please," one of the female Oompa-Loompas replied. She had on a shining gold name-tag which read, "LICCY."
Mr. Wonka and Charlie handed Liccy their tickets with a bow, followed by each member of the group, then they went on their way towards the next section of the airport. As they exited the waiting room towards the terminal, everyone in the group was eager to see what was going to happen next.
"What does this airplane look like?" someone asked.
"Not airplane," Charlie Bucket smiled, overhearing this remark. "Airplanes."
"Huh?" Chris Davidson asked curiously. "What do you mean, Charlie?"
"You'll see," the chocolatier responded. "Right…now."
The remaining party was so caught up in following the two chocolatiers that they completely neglected to look around at what was in front of them. With Charlie's remark, the group noticed that they were now standing in front of a grey airplane hangar. Oompa-Loompas wearing vintage-style pilot goggles were in front of it, and they opened the hangar door for the party, and motioned to follow them inside.
The scale of the airplane hangar was absolutely enormous. Scattered throughout it were multiple biplanes, each of them red in color. On each wing, there was one symbol, such as a smoke bomb with smoke coming out of it, Mr. Wonka's top hat, Charlie's Whipple-Scrumptious Fudegemallow Delight Bar, a video game controller, among others. Each of them had room for either one or two riders each, and more Oompa-Loompas wearing the goggles as they saw outside of the hangar were busy polishing the biplanes for flight.
"Welcome to the Wonka Airlines Takeoff Center!" Mr. Wonka proclaimed. "In order to get to New Loompaland, each of you will take a neat lil' flight on one of these here biplanes! Each of these biplanes are specifically labelled for each and every one of you, and they're also mechanically engineered in order to prevent any hijinks. Get in, my dear children! The...parents have separate biplanes as well. Be sure to buckle up! …That's right, my dear Chris! That's the way! Is everybody ready?"
Everyone went and climbed into their designated biplane. Jenna Adams found a biplane with a bass guitar, and Mr. Adams found one with a guitar with a lightning bolt. Mr. Davidson found one with one of Mr. Wonka's "Welcome Song" dolls, and Chris was in one with Mr. Wonka's "W." Daniel Sparkman got into the biplane with the video game controller, and Mr. Sparkman got into one with a white skull on it. He winced when he saw his symbol, and Tyler Smith got into the biplane with the smoke bomb symbol, followed by Kitsune Kobayashi getting into a biplane with a fox's head.
"Ready!" Chris and Jenna called out in their respective biplanes, and everyone pulled down a lever then pressed a button in order to get the biplanes to start up. The Oompa-Loompas in the hangar opened up the back end of it in order to let the planes out, revealing a runaway, with a large hole near the ceiling of this area.
"Let'sa go!" Chris shouted happily, pumping a fist into the air as his biplane began to move, getting faster and higher every second.
As the biplanes continued soaring into the air, Chris Davidson had a huge smile on his face. He pulled down the lever in his plane in order to go even higher, he kept his eyes on the hole near the ceiling, eager to see what was coming next on the tour.
Jenna swerved past him with a grin and a wave, and Chris waved back. The Wonka-loving boy looked behind him, and Tyler was trying desperately not to look down. Chris zoomed through the hole and he was met with an astonishing sight. Below them was a large pipe which was coiled to look like a snake. A stream of white powder which resembled sugar was pouring out of it, and it landed in fish-shaped boxes that got moved along by a conveyor belt. The pipe also glowed and pulsated in different colors, similar to the Solar Swudge.
"People!" Mr. Wonka called out as the group was flying over this room. "Look down there!"
Everyone looked down, even Tyler and Kitsune with hesitation, and someone asked, "What is it, Mr. Wonka? It looks like sugar."
"This is Spotty Powder, of course!" Mr. Wonka smiled, "and it's a relatively new product which has revolutionized the lives of students everywhere!"
"Is it a prank candy?" asked Tyler Smith, his eyes glowing, and temporarily forgetting that he was in midair.
"One could say that," Mr. Wonka replied, causing Tyler to grin, but he continued, "but before you think of starting anything, Spotty Powder is already included in your lifetime supply."
"What does Spotty Powder do?" Mr. Adams asked.
"Well, ya simply take some'a the stuff, and pour it over your cereal at breakfast time, or your pancakes, or whatever you're eating, and then just five seconds later, your face and neck will be covered in bright-red spots!"
"What kind of idiot wants bright-red spots on his face and neck at breakfast time?" Daniel Sparkman asked, unamused.
"I'm not finished, my little mumbler," Mr. Wonka smirked, and Daniel frowned. "So anyways, your parents would look at you and say…"
'My dear child,' he continued, imitating Mindy Bell's mother, 'you must have chicken pox! Either that or mumps or measles. You can't possibly go to school today!'
"So, you stay at home," Mr. Wonka said in his normal voice. "The spots disappear by lunch-time, and you have to skip school! How's that for another child pleaser?"
"That's just what we need for when we have exams!" Jenna Adams called out, and Mr. Wonka and Charlie Bucket smiled.
"That is the ideal time to use it," Charlie Bucket replied, smiling at her, "but you must exercise caution with how often you use it, though. If you use it too much, your parents will notice, and the secret will be revealed."
"Wow, there are so many possibilities that I could do with this Spotty Powder!" Tyler exclaimed in his excitement. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank you for inventing this candy!"
"Well, I do make products that will please children," Mr. Wonka said, "and I don't care about the grown-ups. Your kind less so, but let's not get off track. An interesting fact about Spotty Powder is that while it was originally being developed, it was gonna be called 'Children's-Delight.' We're also considering remodelling this room into resembling a classroom for the Oompa-Loompa children and to fit with its school theme, but we're still working out the basics on that."
The group took one last look at the Spotty Powder room, then they flew through another hole at the end of it in order to continue to their next destination.
In the next room, everyone was met with the strong scent of cinnamon. Looking down, they could see tons of Oompa-Loompas, all dressed in white chef outfits, carrying trays full of cookies and taking them out of ovens. They would then put the cookies on trays for cooling, then other Oompa-Loompas would put them in a nearby machine which would package up the cookies for selling.
"This is the Cinnamon Farts room!" proclaimed Mr. Wonka proudly, and he was met with weirded out looks.
"Cinnamon Farts?" Chris asked. "What on earth does that do?"
Giggling with a childlike expression on his face, Mr. Wonka replied, "Once you take a single bite of these lil' cookies, you'll begin farting red gas that smells like cinnamon! Isn't that neat?"
"I should give some of those to Kevin Prune," Tyler Smith said softly to himself. "He'd definitely find a use for those, hehe."
"It sounds like something for April Fools' Day," Jenna chuckled.
"Precisely!" Mr. Wonka answered. "You could also use them on people you don't like to see their reaction, haha!"
Flying on to the next room, this one resembled an aquarium. All of its walls were covered by water and glass, and they could see pink jellyfish swimming inside. Every few seconds, a blue object no bigger than a pebble would pop out of their tentacles and sink to the bottom of the tank. Oompa-Loompas in diving uniforms were swimming around in the tank and picking up these objects, then dropping them into a nearby bucket, located outside of the tank, for testing purposes, as well as for packaging them.
"These blue boogers are Sour Stingers!" Mr. Wonka proclaimed. "Simply start suckin' on one'a these, and your lips will start a'puckerin', and an extraordinarily sour taste will come upon you for three hours that you can't wash away no matter what you try, haha!"
"The Sour Stingers used to be located in the Prototype Candy Testing Room," Charlie Bucket explained, "and once they passed all the tests in there, they got moved into their own room with a totally new concept. That's how most candies in the Willy Wonka Candy Company start off. We have an idea, then we work to get the idea approved by the Oompa-Loompas, as well as my parents, to see if it's good enough or not. Once it's manufactured, it stays in the Inventing Room until it passes a series of tests, then the Prototype Candy Testing Room. Once it passes through that room, it gets a place to call its own."
After taking one final look at the Sour Stingers room, the group continued their biplane tour through yet another hole. Chris Davidson got curious and decided to thrust his lever up, then down, to see what would happen. He did a perfect loop-de-loop, then laughed joyfully at his successful stunt. Jenna saw his accomplishment, and copied him with a smile. This caused the parents (except for Kitsune), especially Mr. Sparkman, to do tricks with their biplanes, including the aforementioned loop-de-loop, various flips, turns, and dives. Daniel Sparkman, the boy obsessed with technology, got bored by watching what he called "babies" having fun, and Tyler and Kitsune were as scared as ever, the tricks having reminded them that they were hundreds of feet up in the air.
"I don't like this one bit, mom," Tyler said, flying near his mom's biplane.
"Don't worry, son," Kitsune replied. "We'll be back on solid ground soon enough, and then we'll really cause trouble!"
Several minutes after these biplane tricks first started, Mr. Wonka and Charlie Bucket redirected the group through another hole, where they were met with a blast of extremely humid air which now surrounded them. Curiously looking around at where they ended up, everyone was in awe.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of Oompa-Loompas, could be seen walking on the floor of the room, each of them wearing a different variety of outfits. One group of Oompa-Loompas could be seen wearing deerskins, and a group of female Oompa-Loompas could be seen wearing coverings made of leaves. Still others could be seen with long, green hair, orange skin, and brown and white-striped uniforms.
There were also several trees scattered throughout the room, each of them extremely gargantuan in size. The trees were so large that each of them contained multiple buildings of various sizes, with wooden bridges to connect them. Some of them were based on Western cities, such as London or New York, while others resembled ancient monuments, such as Egyptian pyramids or Aztec pyramids. Gigantic, circular pods were located between the branches of these trees, and many suburbs could be spotted on some of the tree branches. Various attractions and monuments were spread throughout the room, giving it a bustling atmosphere, and the entire ceiling, as well as the walls, of this room were covered by cotton candy the color of a sunny afternoon sky.
"It's gorgeous," Chris Davidson said, unable to believe what he was seeing. As Mr. Wonka and Charlie Bucket were guiding the group towards another building, undoubtedly a landing hangar, he could see a large sign, made entirely out of chocolate. It was on a grassy-looking hill, and it spelled out the words, "NEW LOOMPALAND."
Author's Note: Well, what did you think, everyone? The fact that Sour Stingers used to be in the Prototype Candy Testing Room was a subtle reference to the original Next in Line. The prototype name for Spotty Powder in this story, "Children's-Delight", was a reference to Dahl's original name for Spotty Powder in early drafts. Also, the snake design of the Spotty Powder room was made by Sonny April, and appeared in the original story. The biplanes and New Loompaland were my favorite parts of this chapter to write by far, as MysteriousMaker1185 gave me permission to include New Loompaland once again, and he suggested a transportation resembling Snoopy's biplane from Charlie Brown, based off the Guest suggestion to include his instrument transportation from A Box of Chocolates. The "upgrade" segment of Spotty Powder was also a nod to his design of the Spotty Powder Room in A Box of Chocolates, and Chris' "It's gorgeous" was Kokatsu's reaction to New Loompaland when they first entered it. Unsurprisingly, the description of New Loompaland was also based on MysteriousMaker1185's description as well. Additionally, the remark about the time of the tour was also inspired by the one in A Box of Chocolates, which was in turn suggested by user Ethannalon. A Hilliard (who has reviewed this story, as a matter of fact!). If you see this, MysteriousMaker1185, I hope you're safe man, and I hope you're enjoying this story. I tried as hard as possible to give your universe justice, and I hope that I succeeded in this regard.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter, everyone, and I can't wait to get working on the next one! Feel free to review this chapter, leave feedback, and tell me what you like about my writing as well as how it can improve. I have amazing ideas planned for the next chapter, and I can't wait for you guys and gals to see them!
Until then,
Gabe S. :)