Park Profile
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Place to Escape
Allou has two meanings in Greek. Literally it means that you want to go somewhere else, but the slang meaning is that you can be a little high or you are in your own world; it’s escapism. I don’t know many parks that feel like us, with this product mix. Certainly no one opens as late as we do, and no one has such loud music! We want our park to be an entertainment destination, not just an amusement park. There were two other two luna parks in Athens when we opened, the largest of which was about 5,000 square metres and considered quite big at the time. I think the reason no one had ever done anything bigger was that the people who were already in the business could not get the money, and the businessmen who could have afforded it probably considered it more of a risk than an opportunity. Being in the centre of Athens is crucial to our success. Around 60% of the Greek population lives in this area and we have two-and-a-half million people within a 20-minute drive. How many places do you get that?
I know people have been to check out the market because of us, but it is an uphill struggle to get a park open here. First of all, they would not find the land. The size of the park we have is very small, even by European standards, so no big group would ever look to do a park on this scale, it wouldn’t make sense. Our main park is 20,000 square metres, and in 2003 we added Kidom, a 6,000 sq m children’s park across the road. Then we started acquiring more pieces of land and in total today have something like 93,000 sq m of land, split into five different pieces. One of these was an extreme park, until some archaeological remains were discovered, so for the moment it is an excavation site. This happens a lot in Athens! The Log Flume (La Isla) is one of the most popular rides, and so is the Crazy Mouse. These, together with the “G” rides – the Booster, Air Diver and Slingshot – are probably park’s top five attractions. Manufacturers know the kinds of numbers we are doing when they see how quickly we order spare parts! It would be nice to have higher capacity rides, but there simply isn’t the room.
Hellenic Entertainment Parks owner Dimitri Kontoyiannis, pictured right, with Allou operations director Stratos Drimalitis
4D Frenzy
Allou!’s last big summer event was timed
to coincide with the launch of the park’s 4D Gate effects theatre from Kraftwerk/3DBA, and the park embarked on an ambitious marketing campaign to educate the general public about its new attraction. “The first thing we did was bring in all the journalists,” explains HEP director Dimitri Kontoyiannis. “Instead of doing a normal media day, we wanted to explain what 4D is. Ours is the first in town, but some of the cinema companies are marketing 3D as 4D. We wanted to explain we are the real 4D! Then the advertisements started hitting TV, and Coca-Cola started featuring 4D in their advertising. In the park we had everything based around 4D, it was on our all uniforms, on the signage, the staff wore 3D glasses; we made a real event of it.”
Big Apple, one of the park’s three coasters
MAY 2010
Allou! runs a rotating programme of six films inside a 48-seat theatre, all by nWave. Jett and Jin runs daily until 3pm to cater for younger guests, followed by
Panda Vision until 7pm. Haunted House
and Haunted Mine both run evenings until the park closes, and are popular with teenagers. Also shown are a couple of seasonal films. Kontoyiannis says nWave boss Eric Dillens was shocked when asked for so
4D Gate
many movies. “Eric thought two would be enough, but you have to constantly change and adapt, especially in a city park with so many repeat visitors. I have to say nWave were excellent, they realised we were testing this method and backed us up with the price. They could easily have sold us six movies and at six prices, but I think we have proved to them that this approach works. This is a great product, and would work well in any city, either in an amusement park or as a standalone attraction with a nice cafeteria attached to it.”
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