Live Event ????
www.parkworld-online.com
Happy Halloween! S
tuart Beare is the third generation of the Beare family to run Tulleys Farm and the founder of Tulleys Entertainment Group, which hosts several seasonal events, spearheaded by Shoktober Fest.
Stuart joined the family Pick Your Own business in 1991. “At that time, we were just doing strawberries, raspberries, blackberries anything you could sell as Pick Your Own”, he tells me. To have a business running alongside it, he set up quite a high market farm shop. “I think it was probably one of the better farm shops in the UK at the time. We went all out on the theming, the entertainment, we had a tractor in the middle of it, it was great fun,” he says.
Stuart with his mother, Marion
Stuart soon realised his passion for creating an experience could be used to develop the farm and was aware of the booming Halloween industry in America, as well as the potential to develop this market in the UK. Stuart’s answer, in 1994, was to grow pumpkins; attempting to sell them in the shop. “We only sold three because people didn’t really celebrate Halloween in the UK at time. I think they were for a bonfire party, actually!”
Being out in the countryside, four miles from the nearest town, Stuart knew that if he was to grow the business, he had to make it a destination. The following year the first Halloween
56
event was held at Tulleys, the Pumpkin Festival, which had a “very simple village fete type atmosphere”. Customers carved their own pumpkins, placed tea lights inside and these were then unveiled by a ‘lights out’. The pumpkin carving competition grew in popularity, with 400 visitors in the first year and most attending in Halloween fancy dress.
The pumpkin carving competition and festival became a well-established attraction at Tulleys over the next two years, leading to the development of ‘The Creepy Cottage’ haunted house in 1997: “our first ‘spooky’ attraction”, which attracted 3500 visitors to the farm. Stuart explains, “There were travelling haunted houses at that time and one on Brighton Pier, a ghost train, but that was pretty much all there was from an attraction point of view.
“A big step for me was going out to a conference in the states in 1998, which exposed me to other farmers, growers, producers of pumpkins and their fall activities. The friends I met and the people I got to know gave me got a lot more confidence in what we were doing,” he says.
Growing in popularity There were two major factors in the growth of Halloween in the UK 20 years ago, says Stuart. “The first Harry Potter book
IAAPA EXPO EUROPE EDITION
Europe’s largest scream park, Tulleys Shocktober Fest returns on 1 October celebrating 25 years of screams. Park World editor, Becci Knowles, has the story.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
