UK Scare Entertainment Producers AtmosFEAR! Entertainment Group Create Greece’s First Scare Attraction at Country’s Biggest Theme Park
A leading UK scare entertainment company has gone global after creating Greece’s first permanent scare attraction on the grounds of the country’s biggest and most popular theme park.
The newly created ‘House of Fear’, located at Allou! Fun Park, in Athens, is an interactive scare attraction created by AtmosFEAR! Entertainment Group (AEG) www.atmosfearuk.com , based in Lancaster, UK.
The House of Fear is AEG’s 47th scare entertainment project over its 11 year history, with Ireland being the only other European country which has hosted their attractions outside Britain.
The House of Fear represents a significant investment for Allou! owners, Hellenic Entertainment Parks, who have made theme park history by introducing the first attraction of its kind to Greece.
The new scare attraction is expected to stun Greek audiences who are not used to these kinds of horror based entertainment experiences. Allou! welcomes more than 3 million guests per year and The House of Fear has been designed with a variable throughput to allow for high and low season operation.
Eleven professional scareactors, a 2,300 square foot set with 13 individual horror environments, special effects, illusions, environmental scents, specialist lighting, a multitude of soundscapes and Hollywood style costumes and makeup combine to create the chilling House of Fear including a seasonal scare in the form of a twisted version of Santa Claus.
The attraction was launched just before Christmas 2011 with a national television and radio commercial campaign, and wide media coverage, which has generated 3.5 hour queues on busy nights. Greek scream-seekers are clearly eager to experience the horrors inside the House.
AtmosFEAR! Entertainment Group’s creative director, Jason Karl, said: “Creating the first scare attraction for Greece has been an interesting journey for the AEG creative team. With no obvious cultural benchmark or point of reference we had to develop a theme which the Greek audience could relate too, but without creating an actual storyline. After exploring several ideas we finally decided that The House of Fear would challenge guests to endure a series of disconnected ‘nightmares’ featuring instinctive and common fears like coulrophobia, cannibalism, madness, inanimate objects coming to life, demonic possession, blood sacrifice, murder, being burned alive, total darkness and claustrophobia.”
“Each environment is vaguely thematically related to its predecessor which creates cohesion in the production design, but we can adapt and add different scares, environments and characters as the attraction evolves in the future. This way the attraction can remain permanently fresh, maintain guests interest and encourage return visits to see what has changed inside.”
Vaya Klingou, Commercial Director of Allou! Fun Park, said: “Allou! Fun Park introduced The House of Fear to the Athenian people during this Christmas period. Thousands of people queued up to live the fear experience and many of them returned for more!
“The AtmosFEAR! Entertainment Group team worked tirelessly to create the attraction in only a few weeks! AEG did an excellent job in training the scareactors which made The House of Fear the talk of Athens. We are certainly glad that we found AtmosFEAR! Entertainment Group and trusted them to create the first scare attraction in Greece.”
The three casts of 11 performers are a team of 33 scareactors who will inhabit The House of Fear. They each underwent specialist scareactor performance training from AtmosFEAR! Entertainment Group’s ‘Scream School’ over three days in Athens, the training course is usually based in Blackpool, UK.
The House of Fear is now open permanently at Allou! Fun Park in Athens.
For more information on AtmosFEAR! Entertainment Group visit www.atmosfearuk.com For further details of The House of Fear visit www.allou.gr
