We’re joined by the team behind Avon Valley’s FEAR Scream Park, a family-run adventure park with more than 35 years of experience, and now home to one of the UK’s most terrifying Halloween events. Winners of Best Event Entertainment at the 2024 Thrill Nation Halloween Awards, Avon Valley has mastered the art of blending immersive theatre, multi-sensory scares and spine-tingling attractions that keep thrill seekers coming back for more.
We’ve got a frightfully good episode for you today on Skip The Queue. We’re taking a trip to the dark side… where screams echo, shadows stir and the scare actors never seem to take a night off.
We’re joined by the team behind Avon Valley’s FEAR Scream Park, a family-run adventure park with more than 35 years of experience, and now home to one of the UK’s most terrifying Halloween events.
Winners of Best Event Entertainment at the 2024 Thrill Nation Halloween Awards, Avon Valley has mastered the art of blending immersive theatre, multi-sensory scares and spine-tingling attractions that keep thrill seekers coming back for more.
From scare zones to scream-worthy shows, and even a ‘scaredy-cat lanyard’ for those who’d rather keep the monsters at arm’s length, there’s something for everyone who dares to step inside.
Let’s unmask what’s new this year at FEAR…
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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Crowd Convert. We provide attractions with the tools and expertise to create world-class digital interactions. Very simply, we're here to rehumanise commerce. Your host is Andy Povey.
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Show references:
FEAR Avon Valley Scream Park
Avon Valley Adventure Park
Doug Douglas on LinkedIn
National Farm Attractions Network (NFAN)
Halloween and Scare Attraction Association (HSAA)
Avon Valley Adventure Park is a family business with 35 years of experience
Winner of Best Event Entertainment at the 2024 Thrill Nation Halloween Awards, Avon Valley’s FEAR Scream Park offers a unique and thrilling experience for Halloween and adrenaline lovers across the UK and beyond.
Re-opening on Friday 10th October, FEAR Scream Park will welcome visitors for 11 nights of scares. Boasting two zones, five multi-sensory and immersive scare attractions, it will also play host to fire and laser shows, street entertainment and a ‘bolt on’ scare experience known as The Exorcism. Visitors will be challenged to hold their nerve as they navigate the attractions and enjoy a night that is as thrilling as it is terrifying.
FEAR welcomes all who dare to experience its horrors but for those who prefer a less intense night the park offers a 'scaredy-cat lanyard,' which lets actors know to keep their distance allowing all guests to have a bloody good night.
FEARless at Avon Valley Scream Park
For those on half term, younger scare-lovers can experience the award-winning FEAR Scream Park with FEARless, a frightfully fun experience that invites under 16 year olds to navigate a tamed-down version of four attraction mazes with no major scares (but still plenty of spooks) along the way. With street performers, food stalls and fairground rides, the event is running for select daytime slots from Saturday 26th - Thursday 31st October.
Andy Povey: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast telling the story of the world's best visitor attractions and the amazing people who work in them. I'm your host, Andy Povey. We've got a frightfully good episode for you today on Skip the Queue. We're taking a trip to the dark side where screams echo, shadows stir, and the scare actors never seem to take the night off. We're joined by the team behind Avon Valley's FEAR Scream Park, a family-run adventure park that's been operating for more than 35 years and now home to one of the UK's most terrifying Halloween events. Winners of Best Entertainment at the 2024 Thrill Nation Halloween Awards, Avon Valley has mastered the art of blending immersive theatre, multi-sensory scares and spine-tingling attractions that keep the thrill-seekers coming back for more. From scare zones to scream-worthy shows and even a scaredy-cat lanyard for those who'd rather keep the monsters at arm's length, there's something for everybody who dares to step inside. And let's just do that.
Doug Douglas: I'm Doug Douglas, Avon Valley. I've been running the park nearly 12 years now. Took over from my father 2013-14. It was just a little kiddie adventure park. Nice little small park. Me and my wife took over Hannah. We just had kids at that stage, so we wanted to do different things. My background before that was in the army, so I was in the army for 11 years, doing all that fun stuff. Got a bit fed up with that, because that time of the 2014 it was pretty pretty hectic what was going on in the army. So I decided to come home. Well, not to put my feet up, but to come home and take over the adventure park, which was on about 35– 40 acres of farmland. The family— I'm from a farming background. We own 200 acres in between Bristol and Bath, and have for years. The heritage of the park was pick your own soft fruit.
Doug Douglas: That's when we started being like a place to visit, if you like. So we've always had people on the farm from a young age. You know, I can remember. Five, six years old, running around the farm, seeing cars parked everywhere, people picking soft fruit, and all that sort of stuff. So even though we were sort of not a visitor attraction, we've always had people on site. So I've sort of grown up with
Andy Povey: You're born into it.
Doug Douglas: Yeah, growing up with a lot of people around, and then went off for a few years. And then when I came back, I remember a couple of things. My brother was living in New Zealand at the time and he was talking about... A really weird event he went to where he went to a cornfield and someone was dressed as a mass murderer jumping on top of a caravan with a feathered head and they all ran for their lives. And I was like, 'Oh, that sounds quite interesting.' And then we started doing a bit of research. And before we knew it, we were going down into the FEAR sort of Halloween world for one of our events. So we'd always knew we wanted to layer on Halloween and Christmas onto the business.
Doug Douglas: We didn't quite know where we would go with it. Back then, 12 years ago, it was quite a junior industry. It still is quite minor now. So that's how we started. And then we did a test event. I think it was Avon Valley FEAR, we called it back then. But we're now FEAR Scream Park.
Andy Povey: And how long ago was that first event?
Doug Douglas: So that would have been 2014, was our first event. And funny story, we went round, we're good friends with... Stu from Tully's. We're part of a farm attraction network and a few of the farm attraction operators run these sort of events. And we're quite a sharing sector, as I know you know. We went down to Tully's, had a look around Tully's. And I remember going through a queue line with someone and they were like, 'Oh, my God, isn't this amazing?' I said, 'Oh, yeah, we're building one.' We're building one. And they were like, 'For when?' Next year. And I said, 'Oh, no, no, no.' We're this year. We're going to go around this year. We're building it. He said, 'Have you built it yet?' No, no, we're going to start next week. So our first event we built in two weeks, we had two attractions and it ran for four nights.
Andy Povey: Man, that's a phenomenal business model, being able to turn something around that quickly.
Doug Douglas: I think. If you speak to anyone who is a small family business, we have quite a short flash to bang point, meaning we can come up with an idea and deliver it pretty quickly. The team gets a little bit annoyed by me because I'm quite like that. And I call it throwing a happy hand grenade. So I give them a warning that I'm coming in with a happy hand grenade today. And they're like, 'Oh, no, what's going on here?'
Andy Povey: I love that idea, that speed to market. And I suppose it's part of being from a farming background as well, isn't it? Do what you need to do and get it make it happen.
Doug Douglas: Yeah, we partnered at the time with we had they called Unlock Vision, they uh helped us in the early years, we partnered with them to deliver some of these attractions, and we learned a lot. We learned a lot and I think one of the first lessons I learned is that this is just generically with events in our sector. I remember a chap telling me, 'You've got to remember it. Use ready, steady, go.' Year one is 'get ready.' Year two is 'get steady.' And year three, you should be going by that event.
Doug Douglas: So you're going to lose money year one. You're probably going to lose money year two. But year three, you need to make money and try and get some of that money that you've lost back. So you've got to give it three years to get going.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Doug Douglas: And we certainly found that that was held true with FEAR, yeah.
Andy Povey: For just a four-day event, I assume that was just the two weekends around the half-term, the Halloween week half-term?
Doug Douglas: We did the Thursday night. So this was before Halloween. So we did the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I think it was, if my memory serves me right. I think we had 500 people a night, which was amazing. We never even thought we'd get that sort of number. But I remember after the first night, we sort of did feedback for people. We had two attractions, one in half of a marquee that was a pop-up clown maze. And then we had a bar which was run by some fairground people that we knew. And we had fairground food on site. And then we built an attraction called Anarchy. And it was a high impact. Jump scare maze built out of pallets. We just went and got as many pallets as we could. And we just built an attraction in a field out of pallets. And then put little marquees in the entrance, a queue line, and it was brilliant. It was strobes, one audio soundtrack and people jumping out with chainsaws and knives and things.
Doug Douglas: And it was, it was very, very cool. And that, that, that attraction actually stayed with us for, I think, it was about seven or eight years. I'd like to bring it back, actually.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. How have the attractions changed over your 14 years? I mean, are you still putting bunch loads of pallets together in a field at two weeks' notice? Or are there things you have to improve?
Doug Douglas: Yeah, one was really interesting because everyone came to us in fancy dress, nearly every member of the public. was it was seen as a fancy dress party and then people then realised what it was and I said on after that first night we got some reviews and people were like oh well It was sort of like an hour's worth to do. So I went and bought a surf machine, one of these blow-ups, like a bucking bronco surf machine. And we started doing win another go in the attraction, have a go on the surf machine. So we learned pretty quickly that, again, we could be quite. quite reactive to people and make things a bit more fun.
Andy Povey: And you did that in the first year?
Doug Douglas: The first night and then the following morning, I bought the machine, set it up, and then we ran it that evening.
Andy Povey: Man, that's incredibly impressive.
Doug Douglas: And then, by the second evening, we had a fairground ride because we had fairgrounds, our fairground friends doing food. And I said, Charles, let's get a ride in. And I think he brought in a waltz or something. So by the last night, we had, I think, we were up to, you know, 600 people, which was our, we were pretty happy with that. And we had farm machinery with lights and smoke machines in. We used everything we could find to make it look a bit freaky and crazy. I think we even had someone being run over by a... steamroller or something that was left on hire from some event. So yeah, we it was all about being a bit more a bit reactive and back to your question. We have professionalised pretty quickly. I think the first three years was very much fact finding. We ran, you know, four nights, two attractions. Second year, we ran three attractions and we ran for another night. And then by the third year, we knew that we sort of had something going here that was going to be good. And then we still went for three attractions, but that's when we first put in our fire show stage, which we've become sort of renowned for, our flames, fire and shows that we've been doing.
Doug Douglas: And from that point, we were having to be a bit more grown up in how we were doing things. Doesn't mean we don't have fun.
Andy Povey: Fire's got health and safety written all over it, hasn't it? I mean, as if a field full of pallets hasn't.
Doug Douglas: Exactly. And, you know, we've got. So my father diversified one side of the farm quite heavily into a unit rental business. And I was walking around there one day and this was probably year two of our Halloween event. And I saw this flame thing going off and I walked over and went, 'Oh, hi, hi, I'm Doug.' You don't know me, but, you know, John's son. Who are you? And they were like, 'Oh, we're a special effects company. We do loads of stuff with Top Gear at the time.' I was like, 'Oh, brilliant. That sounds cool.' Let's come and have a look.
Andy Povey: It just so happens.
Doug Douglas: Yeah. So I went into their unit there and they had flames. They had like rocket launchers. They had backpack flame guns that have been using with Metallica. I was like, 'My God, I just went, this is going to be fun.'
Doug Douglas: So we then had our icon character who our first character was called Frank. And I actually played him for two years and he had a backpack with flamethrowers. And I love that. That was so much fun.
Andy Povey: I was going to say, this is coming across in bucket loads, but is this Doug's plaything rather than a business?
Doug Douglas: You've got to have a bit of passion, don't you? Absolutely. It did catch me. And along the way, we brought some really good people into the business who have helped us professionalise and develop the event.
Andy Povey: That's a lot of history in how you got to where you are today. So tell us about what we can experience this year. What's happening at FEAR Scream Park?
Doug Douglas: FEAR Scream Park, we're now running five attractions. We have two upsell attractions as well. So we've got a brand new shooting experience called Lock and Load, which is where we take up to 45 guests into a bunker and they get armed with a metal. As real as you can get, you can sort of see where this might have come from. And they get attacked by some of our creatures that have come out of one of our attractions called X4, which is... a military base that's been developing a new secret weapon. And this weapon, which is sort of like a superhuman machine, comes out and you have to fight it. and you have to fight it back, you get three rounds. So we've made it quite tongue-in-cheek, it's quite fun, it's quite computer gamey. The first round is target practice, so we have all these targets that flip up, so you can get used to how you shoot your gun and whether you want to turn it onto automatic fire and shoot 100 bullets in two seconds or just shoot one at a time.
Doug Douglas: And then round two and round three, and we're not going to give away too much, but you then get assaulted by these creatures and you've got to fight them off.
Doug Douglas: A finale where there's a juggernaut that comes out that you've got to destroy. So that's Lock and Load, which is our sort of upsell. Brand new for this year. And then we also have our exorcism, which is a proper exorcism around a bed with a girl on it. And that is a very bespoke, unique attraction where you sit on a stool and are involved in the exorcism. And we can only put 12 people every 15 minutes through that attraction. So we went for a very theatrical event and there's some really cool special effects. Burning Bibles, nuns flying around the room and stuff like that.
Andy Povey: I mean, that all sounds incredible. Absolutely incredible. There's a real contrast, I imagine, between the adventure park business during the summer and the fear business. That's got to be two completely separate audiences, isn't it?
Doug Douglas: Yeah. And up until 2022, 2021, we were very much any age could come to FEAR We needed an adult with you. So, you know, and if a parent thought that their 10-year-old could come through FEAR, we we recommended that. We had a load of feedback from the majority of our guests at FEAR saying that actually, that model... What they weren't happy with was queuing, having a night out with a load of teenagers that have been let loose by their parent that's just sat in the bar having a drink. So, so we made controversially the decision to be a 16 and above Halloween event. So FEAR is our is our adult.
Doug Douglas: Halloween event and the dynamic has changed massively, so it's made it a much nicer event for people that are coming to it. Um, it's made it a bit more of a mature event, and we are.
Doug Douglas: We're not just about horror and crazy scares, because that's not where the mass market is. The mass market is on a fab night out. It's about coming shows, having fun. And for me, there's a real gap in the market of bringing older parents and children together in an environment that they can. And it's a bit like the theme park environment where I love watching mum and dad with their 16-year-old. Daughter and their 18-year-old son, who's just come back from the first year of university or whatever, come to fear first time. They're all like, 'Oh, dad or mum or whatever And I always stand outside the exit to the first attraction that they go through. And you just watch them hugging each other and laughing and smiling. And I'm like, 'That, that there. is what we want to deliver.' We want to deliver a fantastically fun night out.
Doug Douglas: We're not the scariest. Some people think we are. Some people say we've got the best props. I don't. I like to think that we are really targeting being the best Halloween night out for anyone. Even if you don't like Halloween, you can come and experience some very cool stuff.
Andy Povey: It sounds fantastic. The hairs on the back of my neck are going up as you were describing the reaction of people as they leave. Ultimately, that's what we're all selling, isn't it? We're all trying to achieve.
Doug Douglas: Yeah, and off the back of that, we now run FEARLESS, which is our 10-year-old to 15-year-old, 16-year-old event. And that runs from 12 in the morning until 4:30 in the afternoon. So that runs now three or four times a season, where we run the same attractions apart from the core, which is an attraction that you have to put waders on because you walk through water.
Doug Douglas: It's the only one in the UK, actually, that we found. I can imagine. But we can't put kids through it because the waders are too big. And for that reason, it's quite a logistical nightmare. So we run all of our attractions for the kids. And we only put one actor in each of the attractions. And they're not scary. They're buoy.
Doug Douglas: And that is for a younger kid. So we're trying to progress three-year-olds to eight-year-olds at Avon Valley.
Doug Douglas: FEARLESS, FEAR, and then you keep coming back to fear until you're 18.
Andy Povey: That's a fantastic business model. I know a lot of parks and attractions get really stuck with that. Those age breaks. So having that segmented product is going to be a fantastic business model.
Doug Douglas: Yeah. You've got to make it make money. That's always the challenge.
Andy Povey: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do it because we love it, but we need to pay the mortgage as well. Yeah.
Andy Povey: Okay.
Andy Povey: So when you're designing what's going into FEAR, how are you looking at repeating what's worked really well this year or last year versus adding something new for the repeat visitors to drive the repeat visitation?
Doug Douglas: So I think there's two. There's two phases here or two areas. If you speak to Sam, Sam is my full time creative director for FEAR.
Doug Douglas: He will say, 'Hey, we've got to do something new. We've got to change this. We've got to do this. We've got to do changes. This has to be done. I'm like, yeah, that's fine. I get it.' We want to keep developing the site.
Doug Douglas: Okay, let's say, what is it? 95% of all facts are incorrect. I'm going to give you a fact. I feel that 95% of our guests go through our attractions once a year. They might be in that attraction for 20 minutes. They probably don't know the name of the attraction. They've had a great time. The whole night has been a great time. So they'll certainly know the name of the event, FEAR. They will go, oh, that clown one or that one where we went in a lift or that one we shot people. That is the core.
Doug Douglas: That's the bulk. The 5% are your mega enthusiasts who write reviews, do the podcast, do all that. And they're the ones who Sam and me will listen to and hear and we'll be like, 'Oh, maybe we need to do something different.' But we have to sometimes just go, 'Hang on.' Let's go back and think about the most people who are coming through our attraction. They're coming through for a short period of time. They do forget about the names. As much energy as we put in, we put a huge amount of energy into the scenarios, the theming, the stories, you know, the backstories of these attractions are huge and all the actors have got the backstories. Does Joe Public understand that? Not all the time. The people who do absolutely love it. They love it. And that's where we're at. So I think, to answer your question, I would say we don't have to change it every year.
Doug Douglas: The creators will say we have to change it every year. And we come to a halfway house where we tweak things. But this year, for instance, we've... we have completely rebuilt one of our attractions. So we've got a brand spanking new attraction called Seeds of Evil. It's completely different from anything we've ever done before. And it is very, very cool. And that was all down to Sam's creative mind pushing in the direction. Sam fought the battle and won. I said what I wanted and he took it and spun it and got what he wanted. So, hey, we're all right.
Andy Povey: What is your biggest operational challenge in running FEAR?
Doug Douglas: I would say in the first five years for a scare event, it was awareness. Just what are you about? It started off a Halloween party and then we probably went down more of a scary route than we probably are now. But we wanted to sort of try and make a name for ourselves. And then we realised, actually, that's not where the market is. Most people really don't like horror movies. A lot of people like them, but the majority of people don't like horror movies. So we need to be that thriller. Fun tongue-in-cheek but also have a scare element. So, for me, it was getting our offering to a point where we're happy with it, and I would say that I don't think any of the team would have said we've ever been happy with our offering until this year. Like this year, I think we are at the level now where we've always wanted to be, but have never been able to get to it. You know, we've got 120 actors on site, that's a challenge in its own right,
Andy Povey: That's phenomenal.
Doug Douglas: We recruit train all our own actor team. We don't use agencies for it at all. And that is all down to Sam. Sam pretty much does that with a small team himself.
Doug Douglas: And the way we split it, he does the creative, the acting. He's working on fear. The whole year round. So Sam's been with us two years full time now. So he can give the space, the mind, and he can give the energy to the event. And we're only running, you know, people say, you're only running 14 days and you're paying someone all year round. Yeah, but if you want to be good, that's you've got to, you know, and the event can afford that now.
Andy Povey: That is knock your socks off kind of impressive.
Doug Douglas: It worried me. But after year one, I was like, this is the best thing we've ever done, because I like to think I can do a lot of things.
Doug Douglas: But I can only do a few things well. So the danger is we end up doing, we all end up doing too much of what we shouldn't be doing and not enough of what we should be doing.
Doug Douglas: With FEAR, it's getting someone who can run in it all year round, can take the direction that we're given as a team and pass it on and deliver that event. And, you know, the day before I was still putting up Harris fencing. I was still, I was on my knees. Was I painting something going, 'Oh my God, I've been doing this for 12 years. Why are we still painting things the day before?'
Andy Povey: Because you love it.
Doug Douglas: That's events. That is events. And I've always thought the day that we're not doing that, you're either spending, well, the day you're not loading in tech, two days before you open, you're spending too much money on tech.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Doug Douglas: You've got too much money to blow. It's those, you know, and it's that real chicken and egg thing where we end up loading in tech at the last minute because we can't afford to rent it for another two weeks. We'd love to have it two weeks before. So everything gets pushed and then you are painting things on the last day.
Andy Povey: That makes absolute sense. You mentioned Christmas being part of what you're looking at. How significant is FEAR in comparison to the other 300 and however many days are left of the year?
Doug Douglas: I can give you some very broad figures. So we turn over gross about 4. 2, 4. 2 last year, 4. 2 million was gross turnover.
Doug Douglas: FEAR is about a million of that. Christmas is about 700,000 of that. Pumpkin Patch, that we run as well, a different event, is about 800,000 of that. And then the park is about 1. 2. So this time of the year, September to December, is effectively two-thirds of our income is coming in in this period. So it's completely changed our business model. When I took over the park, two-thirds of the income came in the summer holidays. Yeah. The summer holidays for us is the calm before the storm.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Doug Douglas: And have we got the business model right? I don't know. We certainly don't make enough profit, we're probably about 8%, 7%. We need to be a lot higher as a mature business, but then we've been spending a lot getting things going.
Andy Povey: You're making a product, and you say you're a mature business, but if you're doing that level of innovation, then...
Doug Douglas: It does cost. It comes at a cost.
Andy Povey: You're new every year. So that's very impressive. And what I really like, we were at the VAC conference in London where everyone was demoting the weather. It's too hot so people don't go out or it's too wet so people don't go out. But I'd imagine everything you're doing with FEAR and Christmas is slightly more weatherproof.
Doug Douglas: Yeah, apart from wind. Wind is our, you know, I don't mind rain. Rain plays havoc with our car parking, but we can get over that with matting. It's just money, which is luminexpensive, and I hate spending on it, matting, but anyway, you do. Wind is something we cannot control because we're in, you know, we're not marquee, we're out of marquees now, but, you know, it's just too dangerous to do anything when that wind gets up to sort of, you know, 40 miles an hour. Yeah. That for me this time of the year is our biggest worry. But Halloween events.
Doug Douglas: People expect to come out in welly boots, jackets, umbrellas. So we're not—completely undercover. You know, friends of ours, Tom at York Maze, he runs Hallow Scream. He's completely undercover. There are Pharmageddon. They're not undercover. They're semi-undercover. I think people sort of expect it. And we've sort of become in that model. You can get undercover if you need to. Like Sunday, it was raining. But people get into a queue line or go to an attraction or go to another bar. And we've put in a few other bars. So for me, it's this time of the year also feels like a good win because. There's no—one— no one's really doing events this time of year. There's no, there's no fates. There's no free events. There's no agricultural shows and things. That was all done in the summer. So, you know, personally.
Doug Douglas: We've played around with music events and things, but you're just competing with a plethora of other things to do in the summer. So we'd rather focus on the fall season and Christmas than anything else.
Andy Povey: No, very interesting. So you've mentioned a few other operators and listeners. If you aren't part of the Farm Attractions Network or you don't understand how farm attractions work, that community is so open and so open to sharing ideas, much more so than any other that I've worked with in the attraction space. Because we all share quite a lot anyway. The Farm Attractions Network is phenomenal for it.
Doug Douglas: It's really special. And I remember going on my first visit, I think it was literally when I took over the park, and my old man said, 'Oh, don't give them any ideas.' And I went there and I came back with a notebook full of ideas, full of contact numbers people who could help me and never look back. It's just made the whole sector grow, and more importantly, it makes us all safer. Because if we're doing things the right way and we've got people we can lean on, we can. You know, I'm all for being inclusive and helping people, even people who are up the road from us, who someone else from the outside would say, 'Oh, you clearly compete with,' you know, these people. And I'm like, 'Well, we don't.' You know, people don't just come to us.
Andy Povey: You mentioned Armageddon, which is in Lancashire, isn't it?
Doug Douglas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mark Edmonds' place. That's a great night out.
Andy Povey: And then Tom's place up in York. Yeah, yeah. You've got three ring visitors between the two of you. Yeah.
Doug Douglas: No, no, they're so far away. They're so far away. And we have a... We have a really good network. And I think that is something that we can all lean on quite nicely when things and, maybe, you know, right now with what's going on with the budget, and what's not going on— which is actually worse than probably what the budget is going to be. But everyone's like, that's what it feels like. That's basically what it feels like now.
Andy Povey: Imagine we're at NFAN in January and I'm a new farm attraction operator. What's your advice to me about opening a scare event?
Doug Douglas: Don't do it. No. No. Personally, if I was a farmer with land, I would grow pumpkins and run an amazing pumpkin patch event with theatre, shows. There is money to be made in them pumpkins. If you're wanting to go down the scare route, it is there. It takes a long time to get going. And I'm going to be completely honest with people. I said, 'Ready, steady, go.' By year three, we just managed to turn year three profitable by a couple of hundred quid. But we didn't reclaim anything from the other two years. It probably took us till year five to show sort of a reasonable profit, to then go on again.
Doug Douglas: Yes, they turn over a lot of money, but they cost a lot of money. You know, 200 actors. I got a staff of 280 with op staff. You know, look at that wage bill at the end of the month. Actually, I've got a really good friend in Edinburgh who's starting this year. And he started with some advice that we've given him, which is go three attractions, go five days, just go short, sharp, see if there is the desire there. And by all accounts, I think he's just started outside Edinburgh. They're going whole hogs yeah connie fox adventure farm just started so go small and build it.
Andy Povey: Yeah yeah there's a plug for our listeners our audience in Scotland get to Connie fox.
Doug Douglas: Yeah, Connie fox just outside. They're right next to the airport, I think.
Andy Povey: Looking ahead, Doug, before we started the recording, we reminisced over meeting at IAAPA in Orlando a few years ago. You're obviously there picking up ideas and learning from... I don't know. Can we call them the experts anymore? The Americans in the scare market? Probably. Yeah, yeah. But we're catching up. We're catching up.
Doug Douglas: We're catching up quite quickly. I think we've really, they're sort of plodding, and we're sprinting as an industry.
Andy Povey: So how do you see the Halloween events and scare industry evolving over the next couple of years?
Doug Douglas: I would really like, so you talked a lot about NFAN, the National Farm Attraction Network, being this organisation, and really that came into its own right when there was a really nasty outbreak of Ecoli.
Andy Povey: I remember.
Doug Douglas: And the sector went... Let's join together. We can't have operators operating like this. Let's get a code of practice. Let's work together. Let's cooperate to make all of our lives and our businesses thrive. The scare industry doesn't have that. It's still broken. It's still separate. It's still got lots of reviewers and enthusiasts who maybe have come from the theme park world and they've come into the sector and then this is their hobby and they can be quite critical of it. But that's fine. They can be. And there's there's numerous people out there. What we want, what I really want to do is try and get the sector to come together in a professional manner where we level off at safety, because we've been very lucky in this country. We've not had a bad incident. And a bit of a plug, I don't know if you heard of the organisation, it's called the HSAA, the Halloween and Scare Attraction Association. And that's been set up by myself, we got Stu from Tully's, we've got all the big operators at the moment have set up this network.
Doug Douglas: And it's about collaboration and sharing. And we meet once a year to go through some ideas. We've met at Tully's at the beginning of the year to share ideas. And that was all about actor recruitment, safety, how you look after your own team and how you build attractions. So I would really like— and it's— and it's. It's on the back burner because no one's getting paid for this association. It's just us. But I would really like us to grow that organically without the need of having a major incident to pull the industry together. And we're, we're supported with, the event industry form as well. The IEF, I don't know if you know them. So we're part of them. And HSAA is where I think the industry. Or certainly the owners should be involved because it's a great network. I mean, on the group this morning, someone was saying, 'Where can we get, what was it talking about?'
Doug Douglas: Marshmallow and marshmallow sticks. And we were like, 'Oh, there we go.' It's everything from that to how do you build a safe attraction?
Andy Povey: No, those kind of associations, those connections, one of the things that make this whole industry really a delightful place to be. Yeah. So just plug that again. What's the name of the association?
Doug Douglas: HSAA, the Halloween and Scare Attraction Association. I can give you the link and you can probably put it in the description.
Andy Povey: Absolutely.
Doug Douglas: It's got trade members and it's got park members. And it's about collaboration. It's absolutely about collaboration and sharing. That's all it is. And we've generated our own code of practice that we all sign up to as operators. And that has everything from how you should fire, assess your site to how you should conduct actor training and look after guests and things like that. But, but where, where's the sector going? I think we're never going to go down the American model of big warehouses in a city, that's very expensive over here to do.
Doug Douglas: Warehouses and getting space in a city in America is a lot easier than here. So I think we've often thought those models are quite nice, but... You just can't make it work here. I think this— the screen park model— is a really like we're sat to where you come in and it's almost like theme park. You can go on the attraction as many times as you want, if you want to do one attraction or ten attractions, you can go and just go round. And I think the big boys will all try and get on it. Merlin is, you know, already getting on it. But quite frankly, they don't do it very well. They try their best, but they're not as good as us. The bang to flash is so long. You know, if... someone had a good idea and wanted to get it through the hoops to put it into one of these big parks.
Doug Douglas: It's going to take six months. While we had, you know, someone came up last year. What about electric shock chairs? We could use a TENS machine to make an electric shock chair. Within three days, we had a test up. And then within a week, we had it in the attraction.
Andy Povey: I love that. The bang to flash moment. I think we've come up with the title for the podcast.
Doug Douglas: Flash to bang. Sorry, flash to bang. Bang to flash. Flash to bang. It doesn't matter. Everyone gets it.
Andy Povey: So final question then. Avon Valley is still the family-founded and family-run business, isn't it?
Doug Douglas: Yep, 100%. So, yeah, owned by me and my dad. He's 82. He walks around. The FEAR event. He was only in it three nights ago. And it's quite funny when he gets scared by an actor. He's 82. He shakes him by the hand. Well done. Well done. That was very good. Well done. And walks off. So doesn't really get it. But loves and understands that that's where we've moved to. And if, you know, we certainly want to keep going in that direction.
Andy Povey: For him, it is all still about the smiles, isn't it?
Doug Douglas: Definitely. Do you know what? That can be so easily forgotten about. We all focus on the one negative review that we get from, you've had 2,000 people in, you've got one person complaining about the queues. Come on, get with the programme. I think it was someone from Disney who said, 'Any more than 10% complaints, and you start worrying about it.' Then you start worrying about it. I worry about it at 1%, to be honest.
Doug Douglas: But yeah, but we need to focus on the people who are having a great time. And not everyone has the time to write reviews, but they, you know, I take that if no one writes a review, then we're doing the right thing because they're going and having a great time.
Andy Povey: That's a brilliant line to end on, though. Before we go, when can we get there? When can we go and buy a ticket? How do we get a ticket?
Doug Douglas: So you can go to Fear Screen Park. Google Fear Screen Park will come up. You can go onto our Avon Valley website and you can buy tickets online, which is the only way we sell tickets. And we are running up until the 1st of November. And then we pack down and get ready for fireworks. I've got a three-day turnaround to be able to set off the most amount of TNT in Bristol or something like that. It's ridiculous.
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Today's episode was written by Sami Entwistle, editing was by Steve Folland, and production was by Wenalyn Dionaldo. Thanks for listening, and see you again next week.